What is recorded here

Gowran’s lost chapel stood beside the Magdalen hospital until men stripped its remains around 1840 and hid the spot beneath new trees. A thunderstorm decades later tore those trees out and exposed skeletons beneath the soil, returning the dead to sight in a single night. The church is gone, but its angle of roads and buried bones still mark where worship and mourning once shared one small place.

Located c. 50m NE of the former ‘Magdalan Gate’ at the E end of Gowran town and indicated as, ‘Church (Site of)’ on the 1900 revision of the OS 6-inch map. According to Carrigan (1905, vol. 3, 410), the Magdalen or medieval hospital (KK020-060011-) was, ‘just outside the town wall. About 1840 the remains of the chapel attached to this Magdalen were removed and trees planted on the site. The exact spot occupied by the chapel is the angle formed by the public roads to Bagnalstown and Goresbridge, at their point of divergence opposite the pike house’. During a thunderstorm in the 1960s/70s a number of trees were uprooted revealing skeletons underneath (pers. comm. Mary Moran, 6 July 1992). There is no visible trace of the chapel above ground. Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of upload: 25 March 2021

This remains an important historical record, but the official description says the monument is no longer visible or has been destroyed. The monument record does not grant public access. Check the route and ask the landowner before entering private land.