Kilcoo old graveyard

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Fragmentary remains of a late medieval church and accompanying overgrown graveyard, set at the end of a lane to the W of Ballymoney Road, 4 miles SW of Castlewellan and less than half a mile N of the small village of Kilcoo.

The ruins of the church and the graveyard are contained within an irregular enclosure which is roughly square in plan but curved to the S. The enclosure has stone revetment wall, now topped with a modern fence with timber and concrete posts, and is entered from the W where there is a gate consisting of a pair of square, rubble-built pillars with cement moulded pyramidal caps, and a 19th century looking wrought iron gate. Little remains of the rectangular church itself save fragments of the rubble walls to the N, E and W, now much overgrown. At their greatest extent the walls stand at roughly 3m with the dimensions of the former building itself roughly 18m by 8.5m. Around the ruins are various headstones with the earliest legible stones dating from the 18th century.

A short distance to the N of this enclosure is the remains of circular rath enclosure.

Historical information

Kilcoo or ‘Church of St Mochua’ is first mentioned in a taxation record of 1291, when it was valued at one mark (13s 4d). The present ruins, however, probably belong to a later building, probably constructed in the 15th century by Odo Magennis, the de facto lord of Iveagh. This building continued in use until the 17th century, but, like many other Ulster churches, it was a victim of the civil unrest of the 1640s and by 1658 had been abandoned and was in ruins. In 1712 its functions as a parish church were superseded by the new chapel of ease built by James Hamilton at Bryansford, but the graveyard continued in use into the nineteenth century.
The ruins of the church are described in the OS Memoirs of 1836 as ‘plain’ and as such ‘not an object of interest to the antiquarian nor…at all picturesque’.

References- Primary sources
1 PRONI OS/1/3/42 OS maps 1st ed. 1834, Co Down sheet 42
2 ‘Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland vol.3: Parishes of County Down I’, ed. Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams (QUB 1990), p.44
3 PRONI OS/6/3/42/3 OS maps 1st rev.1859, Co Down sheet 42

Secondary sources
1 ‘Archaeological survey of Co. Down’ (Belfast HMSO 1966), p.303
2 ‘Kilcoo Parish Church, Bryansford’ (Newcastle 1971) [This short book quotes the medieval refences relating to the church.]

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Fragmentary remains of a late medieval church and accompanying overgrown graveyard.