Church, Saunderscourt, Co. Wexford

Co. Wexford |

Churches & Chapels

Church, Saunderscourt, Co. Wexford

The most arresting thing about the old parish church of Kilpatrick at Saunderscourt is its doorway, which does not quite belong to it.

Set into the west wall is a decorated pointed arch of two orders, early 13th century in style, that is thought to have been brought here from Ballynaslaney, a site several kilometres away. The doorway stands 2.2 metres high and less than a metre wide, carved with some care for a building that would eventually lose its congregants entirely. Above the gable, a bellcote once rose over the same wall; it is destroyed now. The building itself survives to the eaves, a single rectangular cell about fourteen metres long, its windows blocked, a large mullion and transom window inserted later into the east wall. On top of the graveyard wall at the northwest corner, someone has placed the base and part of the shaft of what may once have been a wayside cross, its section hexagonal or octagonal, its original location unknown.

The church sits on a slight rise, with the inner shore of Wexford Harbour roughly 700 metres to the southeast, within a D-shaped raised graveyard enclosed by masonry walls. When the Protestant bishop of Ferns, Thomas Ram, conducted a visitation in 1615, he found the church in reasonable repair but the chancel already in ruins, served by a curate named Richard Hore and tied financially to the distant parish of Glascarrig. By the 19th century it was functioning as a private chapel for Saunders Court house, which stands about 300 metres to the northeast. From the 1840s, the eastern end of the building was converted into a mausoleum for the Napier Gore family, a fairly common fate for redundant rural churches where a landowning family wished to retain a presence on the site. Worship ceased altogether in 1869, when a new Church of Ireland church opened at Kyle, some 2.5 kilometres to the northwest.

The 1839 Ordnance Survey six-inch map shows the graveyard sitting within a circular wood roughly 140 metres across, connected to a larger wood to the northwest. Whether this planting was deliberate landscaping associated with Saunders Court, or something older, is unclear; there is no evidence it marks an earlier ecclesiastical enclosure. About 85 metres to the northeast lies St Patrick's Well, a circular drystone structure with steps descending to the water. Aerial photography has revealed the cropmark of a roadway, around 200 metres long, that once approached the graveyard from the south, suggesting this quiet corner of County Wexford was rather more frequented than it appears today.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Church, Saunderscourt, Co. Wexford. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement