Kilconierin Church (in ruins), Kilconierin, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Churches & Chapels
In a graveyard set among Galway pastureland, the medieval church at Kilconierin has been reduced to little more than a single wall and two short stubs.
The east gable, roughly nine metres wide, is the only substantial section still standing, and it holds the sole intact architectural feature to have survived the centuries: a two-light ogee-headed window. An ogee is a double curve, convex below and concave above, that gives the window's arched head a distinctive pointed, flowing profile associated with later medieval Gothic work. Everything else, the nave, the roof, the greater part of the side walls, is long gone.
What remains tells an unexpectedly tidy story of salvage and incorporation. The north wall, just over two metres of it, has been absorbed into the boundary wall of the surrounding graveyard, which is itself still in use. The south wall survives for only about a metre before it breaks off entirely, and at that broken end someone has gathered together the loose worked stones, including further fragments of ogee moulding, and placed them in a small collection rather than let them scatter further. It is a modest act of preservation, neither restoration nor reconstruction, just an effort to keep related pieces in the same place. References to the site appear in local historical accounts from as early as 1910, with further notes in 1927 and 1952, suggesting that the church was already a ruin well before anyone began formally recording it.