County: Cork Site name: BALLYNOE
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 46:33–01 Licence number: 95E260 ext.
Author: Eamonn Cotter
Site type: Church
Period/Dating: Late Medieval (AD 1100-AD 1599)
ITM: E 593351m, N 589658m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.058841, -8.096951
A second season of excavations was carried out at Ballynoe, this time outside the graveyard, to the north of the medieval church. Trenches were opened parallel to the north walls of the nave and chancel and to the west wall of the vestry, which runs northwards from the chancel. A third trench (Trench C) extended 3m westwards from the north-west corner of the vestry, and a fourth trench (D), running north-south, was located 3m west of this. Much of the area close to the nave and chancel was disturbed by burial-pits containing disarticulated human bones. The fills of these burials contained fragments of post-medieval pottery along with masonry rubble.
Trench C revealed that a mortared stone wall, probably the original boundary wall of the site, had run westwards from the north-west corner of the vestry. Removal of ivy from this corner of the vestry revealed that the boundary wall had been built into the north wall of the vestry from a height of c. 2m upwards and was topped by a wall-walk, part of which survives on the vestry wall. The nature of the stonework indicates that the boundary wall was a later construction. A deep draw-bar socket in the vestry wall, c. 1m above ground level, indicates the presence of a doorway here giving access to the church precincts.
The boundary wall was built on soft deposits which proved to be the fill of an earlier ditch. Trench D was dug to investigate this further and revealed a U-shaped ditch 3.3m wide at the top, 0.8m wide at the base and 1.6m deep. The ditch extended in an arc under the wall of the vestry, explaining why this wall leans so dangerously.
Taken together with the previous discovery of the foundations of an earlier structure under the wall of the nave, and the finding of a cross fragment of possible twelfth-century date (Excavations 1995, 6), it is most likely that this ditch is the enclosing element of an early ecclesiastical site which has been obliterated by the building of the thirteenth-century nave and the later addition of the chancel and vestry.
Ballynanelagh, Rathcormac, Co. Cork
