Church

The National Monuments Service's description

In pasture, at the foot of an E-facing slope, 150m SW of the Owenmore River. The roofless ruin of a rectangular church (ext. 21.5m E-W; 7.65m N-S), built of roughly coursed limestone blocks bonded by a lime mortar, with a low base-batter. A vaulted tower formerly stood at the W end but this has collapsed and its walls are reduced to the height of the side-walls and are in a very fragmentary condition.
The church was entered through a doorway, W of the centre in the S wall, which has fallen, apart from its rear segmental arch and a drawbar-socket on the E side. Just inside it, on the W side, was a crossing-wall of which only a fragment survives. A large pile of rubble occupies the W end of the interior. The entire E gable is structurally unsound. Its central window is missing its tracery, which has recently fallen; fragments of the latter lie on the ground nearby. The light appears to have had two round sub-arches with switchline tracery above (MacDonagh n.d., vol. 18, 36). Above the light is a hood-moulding with stepped terminals. Near the E end of both the N and S walls are broken openings which may have held windows. This is the ruin of the late medieval parish church of Cloonoghill, which is probably on the site of a 6th-century monastery (Gwynn and Hadcock 1970, 377). There is no evident trace of the associated graveyard (SL033-140002-). There is a fish-pond (SL033-140004-) 30m to the SE and a dovecote (SL033-140003-) 40m to the WSW.

The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Sligo' compiled by Ursula Egan, Elizabeth Byrne, Mary Sleeman with Sheila Ronan and Connie Murphy (Dublin Stationery Office, 2005).

Date of upload: 18 January 2008