What is recorded here

Killoughane Church stood in County Kerry during the Papal Taxation Lists of 1302-06, casting a long shadow over the children buried beside it. The Macgillycuddy tower house at Dromloughane watched the smaller chapel, while innocent bodies waited beneath the southern soil for prayers that may have faded as the church declined. When men levelled the burial ground in the 1920s, they did not merely move dirt; they erased the last visible address of those tiny lives. The ivy-clad wall remains, but the children vanished into the unknown, leaving behind a hole in local memory that no amount of forgetting can truly close.

Killoughane Church/Cill Lócháin: This church is recorded in the Papal Taxation Lists of 1302-06, and it has been suggested by Ó Cíobháin that it was relegated in favour of nearly Knocknane Church at Churchtown (KE065-012001-) by the early fifteenth century (1985, lxx). Lewis noted that it was dependent on the Macgillycuddy tower house (KE065-059----) at nearby Dromloughane (1837, 237). The only apparent remains of the church is a short stretch of ivy-clad wall, located at the rear of a modern bungalow. Rubble-built and bonded with sandy mortar, it measures 3.5m long, 1.2m thick and 3m in maximum height. A rough corbel, 2.2m above present ground level, projects from the inner wall-face. The church is depicted on both editions of the OS map as a rectangular structure, aligned E-W. The surviving remains appear to represent a portion of its S side-wall. Digging at its N and E side in the 1970s revealed stone foundations, which were subsequently removed (local information). A children's burial ground (KE065-058002-), located on the S side of the church, was levelled in the 1920s (local information). The above description is derived from A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan (compilers), 'The Iveragh peninsula: an archaeological survey of South Kerry'. Cork University Press (1996), no. 1094. In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload: 31 July 2013

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