Tomb, Aghnameadle, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Tombs & Memorials
One of the more quietly telling details at this site on the west bank of the Ollatrim River in County Tipperary is a doorway that has been lifted out of its original context entirely.
The main entrance to a medieval church that once stood here, a two-centred arch (meaning an arch formed from two curves meeting at a point, typical of Gothic-influenced ecclesiastical building), was at some point physically removed from the south wall and reset as the entrance to the MacEgan family tomb, which dates to the eighteenth or nineteenth century. A piece of medieval stonework pressed into domestic funerary service, carrying a new function several hundred years after it was first set in place.
The church itself appears in the ecclesiastical taxation of the Diocese of Killaloe in 1302, which places it firmly in the medieval administrative landscape of Munster. What survives today is a long rectangular structure built in roughly coursed rubble, a modest but durable form of construction. The east and south walls remain intact, the north wall survives only at its eastern end, and the west wall is reduced to footings at ground level. A pointed doorway still sits in the surviving eastern section of the north wall. A tower house stands to the southeast, suggesting this was once a cluster of associated structures rather than an isolated ruin.


