Church

The National Monuments Service's description

Located a field set back from the Ballyboughal road. Westpalstown church ruins stand in N quadrant of a rectangular graveyard enclosed by hedgerow. In 1615, the Royal Visitation of Dublin recorded that in the Deanery of Garristown that Westpalstown Church was served by the curate, Nicholas Bacon, the chancel was in ruin (Ronan 1941, 23). In 1630, Archbishop Bulkeley’s Visitation of Dublin, recorded that Westpalstown; ‘is an impropriation. John Weston of Dublin is farmer. The tythes are usually sett for a hundred barrels of corne per annum. William Tedder is curate, and hath but xxxtie or xl tie shillings a-yeare for servinge the cure. The church and chauncell is downe. The parishioners all are recusants saving one man called Thomas Millinton. They resort to Mass to the howse of the Lady Dowager of Howth. The Mass-preists name is Roger Begg' (Ronan 1941, 68-9). Church ruins described in 1887 as; 'It would very difficult to say from existing remains what were the original style and shape of this church. Great blocks of rugged masonry, covered heavily with ivy, suggest there was once a large building here' (Walsh 1888, 246).
The remains of the late medieval parish church comprise the lower courses of a plain rectangular building (int. dims. 17.4m E-W x 6m N-S) built of randomly coursed masonry (H 0.85m) with dressed quoins used at the nave end. This is the church at Westpalstown described as 'the walls of ye parish church' in the 1654-56 Civil Survey of Dublin (Simington 1945, 42). A former division between nave and chancel is indicated by the presence of two openings on the N side of the church. The W doorway has a round arch and chamfered jambs. There is a door rebate in the E opening. In the E end of the S wall there is a plain headless recess which is probably the remains of a piscina (Anon 1892, 182). There is a single slit ope with widely splayed embrasure in the S wall. The top of the walls are uncapped and the facades are pointed with concrete which may create internal decay.

Compiled by: Geraldine Stout

Updated by: Christine Baker

Revised by: Caimin O'Brien

Date of revised upload: 26 March 2023

References

Simington, R.C. (ed.) 1945 The Civil survey, AD 1654-1656. Vol. VII: county of Dublin. Dublin. Irish Manuscripts Commission.

Ronan, M.V. 1941 Royal Visitation of Dublin, 1615. In Archivium Hibernicum 8, 1-55.

Walsh, Rev. R. 1888a Fingal and its churches. Dublin. William McGee.