At Screhaneroe in County Cork, the ancient parish church of Clontead has left no visible surface trace whatsoever. No tumbled walls, no dressed stone, no ghostly outline in the grass. The ground simply holds its secret.

By 1615, the church was already described as being almost in ruins, a detail recorded by Brady and suggesting a structure that had been declining for some time before anyone thought to write it down. When the Ordnance Survey produced its six-inch maps in 1842, the cartographers could note only a site, not a building. Two centuries of further weathering, stone robbing, and agricultural activity have apparently done the rest. Parish churches of this kind were typically modest, early medieval structures serving rural communities, and many across Ireland suffered similar fates as parishes were reorganised, populations shifted, or congregations moved to newer buildings elsewhere. What survives at Screhaneroe is the associated graveyard, which is recorded separately and presumably still identifiable on the ground, even if the church that gave the burial ground its purpose has entirely disappeared beneath it.