Mayo Church (Mayo)

Detached three-bay double-height single-cell Board of First Fruits Church of Ireland church, built 1811, on a rectangular plan with single-bay three-stage tower to entrance (west) front on a square plan. Closed, 1907. In ruins, 1923. For sale, 2011. Roof now missing with no rainwater goods surviving on lichen-covered cut-limestone eaves. Part ivy-covered roughcast snecked limestone battered walls; roughcast surface finish (tower) with lichen-covered cut-limestone stringcourses including lichen-covered cut-limestone stringcourse (bell stage) supporting battlemented parapets having lichen-covered cut-limestone coping. Pointed-arch window openings with cut-limestone chamfered flush sills, and remains of cut-limestone surrounds having chamfered reveals with no fittings surviving. Overgrown "Rose Window" (east). Pointed-arch door opening (tower) with overgrown threshold, and cut-limestone surround with no fittings surviving. Roundels (second stage) with cut-limestone surrounds framing rendered infill. Pointed-arch openings (bell stage) with cut-limestone sills, and concealed cut-limestone voussoirs with no fittings surviving. Interior including vestibule (west); camber-headed door opening into nave with no fittings surviving; interior in ruins with ivy-covered walls. Set in unkempt grounds on a corner site with piers to perimeter having dragged cut-limestone shallow pyramidal capping supporting spear head-detailed wrought iron double gates.

A church erected with financial support (1810) from the Board of First Fruits (fl. 1711-1833) representing an integral component of the early nineteenth-century ecclesiastical heritage of County Mayo with the architectural value of the composition, 'a small plain edifice' (Lewis 1837 II, 258), suggested by such attributes as the standardised nave-with-entrance tower plan form, aligned along a liturgically-correct axis; the "pointed" profile of the openings underpinning a contemporary Georgian Gothic theme with the chancel defined by an overgrown "Rose Window"; and the pinnacle-like elongated battlements embellishing the tower as a picturesque eye-catcher in the landscape. Although reduced to ruins in the early twentieth century, and thereafter the subject of a prolonged period of neglect, the elementary form and massing survive intact together with remnants of the original fabric, thus upholding much of the character of a church making a pleasing visual statement in a sylvan setting: meanwhile, a discreet benchmark remains of additional interest for the connections with cartography and the preparation of maps by the Ordnance Survey (established 1824).