Church (in ruins) — Garryntemple

On a natural hillock in gently undulating pastureland, land falling gradually to SW. Small area of quarrying, now grassed over, c. 7m N of N wall. A rectangular church (dims. c. 14.6m x c. 6.75m), built of limestone rubble, roughly coursed (wall T 0.9-0.95m), in bad state of repair. The N wall is mostly intact, as is the E gable (H c. 6m) which has a steep-pitched roof. Dog on chain in interior of church made access impossible. Interior is used as a dumping ground, with two old cars and assorted discarded items. Old iron bed-head is used to block-up access via broken out E window. The centre of the S wall is broken out. There is a broken-out window at the E end of the S wall, only the upper side of the W splay surviving. The W gable has completely gone. Centrally placed in the E gable there is a flat-headed splayed embrasure but the light is missing and the masonry below the embrasure broken out. There is a large break in the N wall, E of centre, and a flat-headed single-light window 2.6m from the external NE angle. The W end of the N wall does not survive. The church is described in the OS Letters (1840), when it appears to have been relatively intact. The interior measured 'forty two feet [12.8m] in length and seventeen feet [5.18m] in breadth. Its east gable contains three windows placed one over the other, a thing very unusual in old Irish churches. Of these windows the lowest is now entirely disfigured; the middle one is placed at the height of twelve feet [3.6m] from the ground outside, quadrangular inside and outside and is about five feet six inches [1.6m] square inside and constructed of cut limestone; on the outside it is about four feet [1.2m] high and fourteen inches [0.36m] wide and constructed of cut sandstone of a brownish color. The highest one is about eighteen inches [0.48m] high and four inches [0.1m] wide and constructed of cut sandstone. There were three windows on the south wall but they are all now disfigured and the same number on the north wall also reduced to formless breaches. The doorway was on the south side at the distance of eleven feet [3.3m] from the west gable but it is now destroyed except a small portion of its top, from which it appears that it was built of thin stones in a rude style. The west gable contained two windows placed on a level with the two upper ones in the east gable already described; of these the lower one is destroyed but the upper one is in good preservation; it is constructed of brown sandstone chiselled and is about fourteen inches [0.36m] in height and six and a half inches [0.16m] in width. The walls of this church are three feet [0.9m] in thickness and about eighteen feet [5.5m] in height and built of field, not quarried, limestones, irregularly laid and lime and sand cement. The graveyard is tilled and now producing cabbages and turnips, the human bodies being resolved into their ultimate (component) elements' (O'Flanagan 1930, vol. 1, 42-3). There is no visible evidence of an associated graveyard (TS082-049001-) and no visible gravestones within the church interior. Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of upload: 04 February 2014