Church

The National Monuments Service's description

Located at the base of a S-N peninsula (dims c. 70m N-S; c. 30m E-W at S) which might once have been a small island close to the W shore of Lough Allen. There are no known references to this church, which was probably a chapel-of-ease to the parish church that might have been at Kiladiskert (LE018-028001-). This area is described as church land on the Down Survey (1656-8) map of Inishmagrath parish, but the land may have belonged to the nunnery of Curragha (LE020-010001-), c. 1.3km S along the lake-shore. For the Down Survey map see this web-page accessed on 16/12/2016: http://downsurvey.tcd.ie/down-survey- maps.php#bm=Drumaheir&c=Leitrim&p=Inishmacra According to John O’Donovan writing in the 1830s this church was dedicated to St Patrick (Herity 2012, 419-20). Currag Church is depicted as being in Co. Roscommon on Taylor and Skinner’s Maps of the Roads of Ireland dated 1783 (Andrews 1969, 234).
The church is a rectangular mortared limestone building with dressed quoins (int. dims 16.85m E-W; 6.1m N-S) and survives complete (H c. 3.5m), except for the S wall which has largely disappeared. The pointed E window has lost much of its tracery but it had two cusped ogee-headed lights indicating a fifteenth century date, and the external hood-moulding with a carved face at the apex is intact. There is a plain window in a lintelled embrasure high in the W wall and a fragment of a window embrasure towards the E end of the S wall. In the 1940s a pointed doorway of undressed stone survived at the W end of the S wall (ITA Survey). Holes for corbels suggest that the church had a gallery at its W end, and there is a cupboard towards the E end of the N wall. The church is inside the N wall of a small subrectangular graveyard (dims c. 30m E-W; c. 20-35m N-S) defined by masonry walls, which contains some 19th-century headstones.
Archaeological testing (04E0613) on a large area (dims c. 160m E-W; c.100m N-S) just to the S of the graveyard produced no related material (Read 2007).

See the attached views: _1 E window; _2 church from NE

The above description is derived from 'The Archaeological Inventory of County Leitrim' compiled by Michael J. Moore (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2003). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research.

Compiled by: Michael Moore

Date of revised upload: 16 December 2016

References

Andrews, J.H. (ed.) 1969 Maps of the roads of Ireland. Shannon. Irish University Press.

Irish Tourist Association. Surveys undertaken in the 1940s for the Irish Tourist Association (now Fáilte Ireland) relating to ‘Natural features, antiquities, historic associations etc.' Extracts from these surveys were copied into the Topographical files of the Office of Public Works and these have been incorporated into the Sites and Monuments Record files (National Monuments Service).

Read, C. 2007 Curragh South: no archaeological significance. in I. Bennett (ed.) Excavations 2004: summary accounts of archaeological excavations in Ireland, 234, No. 956. Dublin, Wordwell