Kilmakilloge Church

In the NW corner of a graveyard (KE108-002----). The remains of a rectangular church (int. dims. 11.3m E-W; 4.65m N-S) which comprises heavily ivy-clad walls of local sandstone with shaped quoins. The external SW corner is collapsed. The church is entered through a doorway (int. H 2.24m; int. Wth 1.24m; D 0.77m) near the W end of the S wall; the doorway contains a draw-bar socket. The door surround consists of a round-headed arch with five well-cut, red sandstone voussoirs. Diagonal tooling was noted on these voussoirs and three are decorated on the soffits with two incised bands in false relief. There is a central window in the E gable with a narrow round-headed light (H 0.99m; Wth 0.2m). There is a ruined window ope at the E end of the S wall, with a narrow light (Wth 0.19m), which, according to Bigger (1898, 315) was 'square-headed'. The top of a round-headed window ope is visible in the W gable, externally. A lintelled water stoup (original D c. 0.19m) is situated on the E side of the doorway; the top and the rear of the stoup niche have collapsed into the drawbar-socket. There is a lintelled wall-press (int. H 2.68m) at the E end of the N wall. This appears to be originally a smaller 12th-century Romanesque church which was rebuilt on a slightly larger scale in the 15th century (Lynch 1898, 323-4). The round-arched doorway is Romanesque in style but would originally have been located in the centre of the W wall. The attic window in the W gable, to light a loft, is a feature of 15th-century churches. Lynch (ibid.) suggests that the original church was as small as 6.4m by 4.1m. The interior of the church has long been used as a burial ground. According to Lansdowne (1937, 144), this church is indicated as roofed in the Carew Survey map of 1600. There is a hermitage (KE108-003----) is c. 350m to the NE. Compiled by: Elizabeth Byrne, Ursula Egan and Sheila Ronan, Archaeological Survey Unit, University College, Cork. Date of upload: 30 May 2011

Kilmakilloge Church is a small rectangular early Christian church, likely built in the 7th to 9th century, constructed from local sandstone with shaped quoins. It is dedicated to St. Killian (Cillian) and represents a typical example of an early monastic church, possibly associated with a wider ecclesiastical network in the region.