Church in Burnchurch

Carrigan (1905, vol. 3, 375) describes how Burnchurch parish appears in the Red Book of Ossory as ‘Kiltranyn, Kiltranen, Kyltranyn and Ecclesia Combusta’ and states that the present name ‘dates from at least the year 1374, and may be much older’. The parish was appropriated to the Priory of Kells but Maurice, son of Maurice, during the Episcopate of Hugh de Rous (1202-18) (ibid.). Commins (1906, 267) speculates that the church was burned in either 1316 or 1327, as on ‘Palm Sunday in the former year, Edward Bruce burned Kells; and it is stated in Clyn’s Annals that almost the whole barony of Kells was burned by Lord Bermingham and the Geraldines in November of the latter date’. According to Carrigan (ibid.) the medieval church, ‘turned to Protestant religious service at the Reformation, became so ruinous that it had to be abandoned in the year 1800, and was taken down to make room for the present Protestant church in 1810. Its patron was St. Dallan or Dallawn, whose feast was celebrated here …on the 31st of July’. The C of I church is now also abandoned and has become a roofless ruin. Within the associated graveyard (KK023-072002-) Carrigan (ibid. 376-7) notes two medieval graveslabs (KK023-072003-; KK023-072004-) and the mensa of a 16th-century chest tomb (KK023-072005-). Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of upload: 23 August 2021