Rathcool Church (in ruins) — Ballintemple (rathcool Par.)

On top of a hill in undulating pasture. Rathcool motte (TS070-008---) is located 350m to the N and Rathcool Castle (TS070-007001-) and possible 17th-century house (TS070-007002-) are located c. 390m to the N. Barrettstown Castle (TS070-035001-) is visible 2km to the SSW. A nave (int. dims. 19.6m E-W; 6.68m N-S) and chancel (int. dims. 6.9m E-W; 4.4m N-S) church, with evidence of an internally projecting wall (T 0.9m) between the nave and chancel, probably the remains of a chancel arch. The church is built of roughly coursed limestone rubble and is heavily overgrown. It has no datable features. The quoins at the NW and SW angles have been robbed. The church occupies the N side of a rectangular graveyard (TS070-009001-), the N wall of which has been keyed into the NE and NW angles of the church. There is a broken-out doorway (Wth 1.9m) in the S wall towards the W end of the nave and another broken-out doorway opposite (Wth 2m) 4.55m from the W gable, now blocked up with masonry. A stone embedded in the ground immediately S of the S doorway has a chamfered edge (Wth 0.08m) and was probably a door jamb. The W gable survives to full height (c. 6m) with a few of the dressed coping stones still in position. It has an inner skin (H 2.4m; T 0.3m) which is not keyed into the side wall of the church. It was probably built to support a gallery or first-floor accommodation at the W end. There is a breach (Wth 2.85m) in the N wall of the nave, 1.6m from the chancel, which has been blocked up with masonry. According to the OS Letters (O’Flanagan 1930, vol. 2, 165 (470-71) the blocking up of breaches in the walls had been done by 1840 (ibid.). There are a lot of gravestones in the church interior, the earliest is a 17th-century graveslab (TS070-009002-) in the chancel while the latest visible headstone dates to 1951/1953 and is just inside the S wall to the E of the doorway. Adjacent to this 1950s headstone there is a block of chamfered limestone embedded in the ground, with possible punch tooling. Just outside the S doorway there is ogee-headed window head with punch tooling embedded in the ground. The chancel is narrower than the nave, the kick-in is visible on the N side but is obscured by vegetation on the S side. The E gable is c. 1.6m high and the S wall of the chancel appears to be largely broken out and the opposite N wall is c. 1.4m high. As described in the OS Letters (O’Flanagan 1930, vol. 2, 165 (470-71) the ‘side wall of the choir [was] destroyed at east gable; the north wall is repaired; the east gable was reduced to a state of ruin and was repaired in the middle part which forms the west wall of a tomb at the exterior of it’. The OS Letters also mention a window in the S wall of the chancel, near the E gable, with chamfered jambs and another window in the S wall of nave, near the chancel (ibid.). A wall monument dating to 1919, with the last date commemorating a burial in 1989, has been concreted into the external S wall of the church, E of the doorway. At the graveyard entrance there is a stile with a number of stepping stones projecting from the wall. These stones appear to be re-used corbels. They are all very similar with a flat top and base, and a flat vertical front (Wth 0.025-0.035m) with a deep chamfer (Wth 0.12-0.18m) undercut towards the base. They may have been supports for a gallery or first-floor at the W end of the nave. Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of revised upload: 9 April 2018