Religious house - unclassified

The National Monuments Service's description

In pasture, located at the furthest reaches of a long peninsula, which stretches from the western shore of Lough Conn into the centre of the lake. The location is associated with St Tigernan, who is said to have established a monastery here in the 6th-century. A relic of the saint, known as Mias Tighernain or St Tigernan’s Paten, was preserved in the locality until the early 20th century (Crawford 1923, 173; 175-6). A nearby holy well (MA038-129003-) was also associated with the saint.

This small, enigmatic church or oratory, a National Monument in State ownership (no. 308), is named ‘Templenagalliaghdoo’ on the 1838 and 1922 OS 6-inch map. The name translates as Church of the Black Women or Nuns, hinting at the presence of a convent here, but no documentary sources confirm this or throw light on the history of the building. It appears to pre-dates Errew Abbey (MA038-129001-) located 100m to S, which was probably an Augustinian house and whose buildings range in date from the 13th- to 15th-century. It is possible that Templenagalliaghdoo is the only extant structure to survive from an earlier phase of monastic activity at Errew.
It is a rectangular stone-built structure (5.35m E–W; 2.90m N–S, int.) with a small rectangular annex (c. 3m E–W; 1.80m N–S, ext.) appended to the exterior of the N wall. The walls (T c. 0.7m) are faced externally with large, edge-set stone blocks and slabs, a style of cyclopean stonework which may date to the late 10th- or 11th-century. However, the walls survive to no more than two or three courses in height (H 0.50-1m) and there are no other architectural clues to the date of the building.
A gap towards the W end of the S wall may mark the location of a doorway. In the N wall a narrow gap opens into the annex. Set in the floor of the annex is a rectangular sunken, stone-lined structure (1.50m E–W; 0.70m N–S) which has a slightly different alignment to the annex walls. It is unroofed and holds water. Interpretation of these features is uncertain: the annex may have served as a sacristy or a hermit’s cell, and the rectangular cavity has been variously interpreted as a tomb, perhaps even a founder’s grave or a well (OPW Topographical files 1936-7; Harbison 1970).
A rectangular enclosure (c. 20m N–S; c. 15m E–W) is shown surrounding the oratory on the 1838 and 1922 OS 6-inch maps. This was described in the 1930’s as ‘a roughly formed bank, approximately circular in plan’ (OPW Topographical files 1936-7). The current drystone enclosure is a reconstruction.

Attached images:
MA038-129002-_01.JPG Church viewed from SE
MA038-129002-_02.JPG Church viewed from S
MA038-129002-_03.JPG Church viewed from NW
MA038-129002-_04.JPG Church viewed from NE
MA038-129002-_05.JPG Annex viewed from N
MA038-129002-_06.JPG Annex viewed from W
MA038-129002-_07.JPG Sunken rectangular feature in annex, viewed from W

Compiled by: Jane O'Shaughnessy

Date of upload: 26 April 2021

References

Crawford, H.S. 1923 A descriptive list of Irish shrines and reliquaries. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 53, 74-93.

Harbison, P. 1970 (Reprint 1992) Guide to the national monuments in the Republic of Ireland. Dublin. Gill and Macmillan.