What is recorded here

Kilmurry holds a broken circular enclosure eighty-eight metres wide where a small medieval monastery likely stood before the bog and plough erased most of it. A narrow boreen still cuts the eastern half, dividing the faint scarp and depression that once marked the boundary between sacred ground and ordinary farmland. Neary wrote that bones appeared in quantities beside the church, suggesting the site continued as a burial place long after the monks departed. The land has kept its shape even when memory faded, preserving the outline of a house of prayer now reduced to a subtle curve in low-lying ground.

In open low-lying farmland on W edge of an extensive bog. Probably the site of a small medieval monastery, either Franciscan or Dominican (Gwynn and Hadcock 1970, 233, 279; Knox 1902a, 401; 1903, 293; Neary 1914, 124-5, no. 98). It consists of a poorly preserved subcircular enclosure (E-W >88m), the E half of which is cut across by a boreen running roughly N-S. To E of the boreen, a curving scarp (H 0.7m) defines the enclosure from N to E. A curving depression (Wth 8m) at S and the short arc of a bank at W may indicate its continuation to W of the boreen. No definite trace of the 'segment of the old cashel wall or bank' noted by Neary (ibid., 124) '70 yards [64m] N.W.' of the church was found, though there is a straight stretch of a substantial bank (Wth 4m) 45m to W. The church (GA017-121001-) itself lies in W part of the interior. The OS Letters (O'Flanagan 1927, Vol. 1, 103-4) refer to this site as a small graveyard but no visible surface trace of such now survives. However, Neary (ibid.) mentions that 'Bones were dug up in quantities on N. side' of the church. The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Galway Vol. II - North Galway'. Compiled by Olive Alcock, Kathy de hÓra and Paul Gosling (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1999). Date of upload: 05 August 2010

A small early-medieval ecclesiastical enclosure, likely associated with a Franciscan or Dominican monastery, situated on the edge of a bog in open farmland. It is not specifically linked to fairy folklore, though its religious significance may have contributed to later local traditions.

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