Dangan Church (in ruins) — Knockroe (drangan Par.)

On a natural platform of a N-facing slope in hilly terrain. The church, located centrally within a roughly rectangular graveyard (TS063-016003-), is situated at the E end of Drangan village. It is composed of limestone rubble, roughly coursed and is heavily ivy clad. Only the S wall (ext. surviving L 18.4m, with a further 2m of rubble; T 1m) and the S end of the W gable (H 3.5m; ext. L 5.5m; T 1-1.05m), including the SW angle survive above ground. Though the N wall is no longer upstanding there is a suggestion of the line of the wall where the ground is more compact and there are some stones which appear to be foundation stones, this would suggest that the external width of the church was c. 8.7m). According to the OS Letters the 'west gable, south wall and a fragment of the north wall six feet [1.8m] long' was still visible in 1840 (O'Flanagan 1930, vol. 1, 73-4). The OS Letters give the overall dimensions of the church as 'seventy four feet [22.55m] long and twenty two feet four inches [6.8m] broad and its sidewalls three feet four inches [1m] thick and about ten feet [3m] high' (ibid.). There is a pointed doorway in the S wall (H 1.35m; Wth 0.96m) with a roughly tooled external chamfer. Immediately, 0.4m, W of the doorway, on the S external side, there is a jambstone with convex and concave mouldings which appears to have come from another doorway, probably an opposing doorway the N wall. Apart from the doorway there are no other openings visible. According to the OS Letters 'At a distance of ten feet [3m] from the east end there was a window on the south wall but it is now totally destroyed (O'Flanagan 1930, vol. 1, 74). A number of gutter stones have been re-used as headstones. There is a graveslab (TS063-016005-) of 16th or 17th-century date, lying within the church, immediately N of the E end of the S wall and a reference to another graveslab (TS063-016004-) of similar date. There are also a number of late 18th/early 19th-century headstones within the church and a 19th-century table-top tomb on the line of the N wall of the church. Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of upload: 26 August 2011