Church (in Ruins) — Rinnagan

Situated c. 200m outside the town wall of Rindown. Possibly founded by King John and Philip de Angelo c. 1215 as the Church of St. John the Baptist at Tea-eon, as a house of Crutched Friars. References date positively from 1372 when the poet and historian Sean O Dubagain was buried here. It was suppressed and granted to Christopher Davers in 1569 and leased to George Goodman in 1588. In 1596 it was described as a church roofed in shingles, a cloister, and three decayed houses. A belfry is mentioned in 1605-06. (Bradley and Dunne 1988a, 76-7; Gwynne and Hadcock 1988, 215-6) Only the church oriented N-S, which may be the S transept of a larger church, survives almost complete as a rectangular building (int. dims 11.05m N-S; 5.9m E-W) with dressed quoins, those at the NW and NE angles with chamfers. The E wall is featureless, while the S wall has one robbed window in a round-headed embrasure and the W wall has two destroyed windows which have diagonal tooling on their dressed ingoings. The church was entered through a flat-arched opening (Wth 1.8m; H 2.2m) in the N wall. This was approached from the N by a passage through a later structure (RO046-004028-) (ext. dims 7.3m E-W; 4m N-S) to its N which may have been a tower. Only the base survives, but it has a mural stairs in the E wall. A post-Suppression phase of use is suggested for the church by the partial blocking of the S window over a robbed brick-lined window, but this would have been ended by the late 18th century when table tombs dating from 1779 were installed in the interior. The church was conserved in 2009 (Collins 2013, 28). Jus S of the church is a building (int. dims 8.3m plus E-W; 2.9m N-S) defined by masonry walls (max. H 0.7m) with good quoins which is truncated by the graveyard wall at W. This (RO046-004038-) could represent part of the cloistral surrounds, and a raised grass-covered and flat-topped but stony mound (Wth of top 4m; Wth of base 7m; H 0.3-0.6m) extends eastwards from it (L c. 27m), with a gap (Wth at base 2.8m) just 4-6m E of the visible building. At its E end the mound turns NNE as a broad but still flat-topped stony mound (Wth of top 8m; Wth of base 12m; H 0.1-0.4m). The cloister may have been contained between these structures and the church, although there is no evidence of a lean-to structure against the E wall of the church. The church is within a D-shaped graveyard (RO046-004029-) (dims 43m NE-SW; 35m NW-SE) defined by masonry walls, which partly fell in December 2010, revealing a stone head. This will be replaced on the outer face of the reconstructed wall. Within the graveyard is a 16th century graveslab (RO046-004037-) (dims 1.67m x 0.76m) with a raised roman inscription commemorating John Clysk who died in 1539 (Collins 2012, 3-4) and some architectural fragments (RO046-004030-) including part of a cloister arcade. The graveyard (RO046-004023-) is immediately to the NE and the walled garden (RO046-004026-) is c. 30m to the N, while the possible fish-pond (RO046-004039-) is c. 30m to the NW. (Bradley and Dunne 1988a, 76-7) See the attached views from the SE (001) and of the interior looking S (002) Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 19 December 2012 Amended: 29 April, 2015