What is recorded here

Goeran is a place of loss and change. The old church is gone, its stones scattered or forgotten. What remains is a chamber of shadows, not sacred but honest. It shows what happens when memory fails: even love becomes a wound, and greatness collapses into nothing. Goeran does not punish. It reveals.

Fragments of an effigy, including two pieces of the head which fit together, where identified by Hunt (1974, vol. 1, 168; vol. 2, plate 35) in St Mary’s parish church (KK020-060006-), Gowran. Hunt (ibid.) describes them as, ‘the head of a civilian with hair curling below the ears, well-drawn and in high relief. There is a part of a moulding above the head. Beside it lies another piece of stone carved with an animal of which the left front leg and part of the body remain. On its back is part of a shoe of a civilian. The hair style of the head suggests a date at the end of the thirteenth century’. Fragments from the church are stored on-site in the Keally mortuary chapel (projecting from the S wall of the nave) and in the former C of I church at St Mary’s. Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of upload: 14 August 2019

Effigial tomb fragment; medieval period. The presence of an effigy indicates a burial of some social status, likely associated with a local noble or gentry family, reflecting medieval funerary practices in the region.

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