Ecclesiastical enclosure, Kilcommadan, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ecclesiastical Sites
On a south-east-facing slope in County Galway, the grass gives little away.
What was once a significant early ecclesiastical enclosure at Kilcommadan has been so thoroughly worked over by land reclamation that only a fragment of its original outline survives, a degraded earthen bank tracing an arc from the north-west through to the north-east. A quarry pit has interrupted the eastern edge; a modern field boundary and trackways cut across the interior. The enclosure itself, subcircular in shape and measuring more than 38 metres along its longer axis, is now largely a matter of inference rather than observation.
The site's importance, though, was once considerable. Historical sources identify the church of Kilcommadan as one of the seven chief Coarbships of Hy Many, the medieval Gaelic territory that covered much of east Connacht. A Coarbship, in early Irish ecclesiastical usage, referred to a hereditary successorship to a founding saint, with the Coarb acting as the custodian of a saint's church and its associated lands and privileges. To hold one of seven such positions within Hy Many suggests that Kilcommadan carried real ecclesiastical weight, not simply as a local parish church but as a site of some regional standing. Scholars Gwynn and Hadcock, writing in 1970, classified it as an early site, placing its origins within the broader tradition of pre-Norman Irish monasticism. Associated with the enclosure are the remains of a church site and what is recorded as a cillin, a burial ground typically associated with unbaptised children or early Christian communities, both of which suggest layers of use extending well beyond any single period.
The enclosure sits in reclaimed pastureland, and there is little to announce it. The clearest physical traces are along the northern arc, where the earthen bank, though much reduced, can still be made out. The rest requires a degree of imagination and a knowledge of what the landscape once held.