Church

The National Monuments Service's description

On top of a steep slope on the S-SE side of a small valley, surrounded by tillage and grassland. On the N side of a roughly lozenge-shaped graveyard (KK012-059002-). There are good views in all directions, especially along and across though valley, though somewhat limited to the S. According to Healy (1874-9, 44) this church is dedicated to St. Drenan whose feast day is the 12th of December. A rectangular undivided church (int. dims. 12.6m E-W; 7m N-S) of roughly coursed rubble, the mortar has a high pebble content (wall T 0.68m). The E end of the church is best preserved with side walls (H 3m) and E gable surviving. The E window and a window at the E end of the S wall survive but are obscured by ivy. The W end is poorly preserved, the W end of the N wall (L 4.8m) is missing as an area at the W end of the S wall where the doorway was located. The W gable largely survives to only a metre high. According to the OS Letters (1839), when the church was, 'entire excepting fifteen feet [4.5m] of the northern side wall near the western gable', the W gable had a broken belfry (O'Flanagan ed. 1930, vol. 1, 172 (56)). The E gable window is described as being round-headed, 'eight feet [2.4m] high and five feet eight inches [1.73m] wide on the inside, three feet six inches [1m] high and six and a half (?) inches [0.16m] in breadth outside, built up with cut stone' (ibid.). This E gable window survives, as does a window at the E end of the S wall. There is a 13th/early 14th-century graveslab (KK012-059003-) associated with this church.

Compiled by: Jean Farrelly

Date of upload: 14 June 2019

References

O'Flanagan, Rev. M. (Compiler) 1930 Letters containing information relative to the antiquities of the county of Kilkenny collected during the progress of the Ordnance Survey in 1839. Bray.

Healy, W. 1874-9 Notices of ecclesiastical ruins. Ossary Archaeological Transactions 1, 41-56.