St. Patricks Church — Curraghs South

Located at the base of a S-N peninsula (dims c. 70m N-S; c. 30m E-W at S) which might once have been a small island close to the W shore of Lough Allen. There are no known references to this church, which was probably a chapel-of-ease to the parish church that might have been at Kiladiskert (LE018-028001-). This area is described as church land on the Down Survey (1656-8) map of Inishmagrath parish, but the land may have belonged to the nunnery of Curragha (LE020-010001-), c. 1.3km S along the lake-shore. For the Down Survey map see this web-page accessed on 16/12/2016: http://downsurvey.tcd.ie/down-survey- maps.php#bm=Drumaheir&c=Leitrim&p=Inishmacra According to John O’Donovan writing in the 1830s this church was dedicated to St Patrick (Herity 2012, 419-20). Currag Church is depicted as being in Co. Roscommon on Taylor and Skinner’s Maps of the Roads of Ireland dated 1783 (Andrews 1969, 234). The church is a rectangular mortared limestone building with dressed quoins (int. dims 16.85m E-W; 6.1m N-S) and survives complete (H c. 3.5m), except for the S wall which has largely disappeared. The pointed E window has lost much of its tracery but it had two cusped ogee-headed lights indicating a fifteenth century date, and the external hood-moulding with a carved face at the apex is intact. There is a plain window in a lintelled embrasure high in the W wall and a fragment of a window embrasure towards the E end of the S wall. In the 1940s a pointed doorway of undressed stone survived at the W end of the S wall (ITA Survey). Holes for corbels suggest that the church had a gallery at its W end, and there is a cupboard towards the E end of the N wall. The church is inside the N wall of a small subrectangular graveyard (dims c. 30m E-W; c. 20-35m N-S) defined by masonry walls, which contains some 19th-century headstones. Archaeological testing (04E0613) on a large area (dims c. 160m E-W; c.100m N-S) just to the S of the graveyard produced no related material (Read 2007). See the attached views: _1 E window; _2 church from NE The above description is derived from 'The Archaeological Inventory of County Leitrim' compiled by Michael J. Moore (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2003). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of revised upload: 16 December 2016