1994:030 - KILQUANE CHURCH, Kilquane, Cork

The licence was granted for the purpose of supervising the restoration and clearing work being carried out in and around Kilquane church by members of the local community, and the re-erection of a holed stone.

Kilquane lies in a narrow valley on the banks of the Clyda river. The main site is the medieval church, now badly ruined, with a graveyard immediately to the south, both enclosed by a relatively modern boundary fence and bounded on the north by a public road. Some 30m to the north-west on the far side of the road is a holed stone lying on the ground. Approximately 45m to the south-west of the church, close to the river bank, is a circular mound, c.1.5m high and 5m in diameter. This mound is constructed of stones set on edge and packed with earth, in the manner common in field fences in the area. Its function is uncertain.

The church is aligned approximately east-west and consists of a nave with a doorway in the west wall and an added chancel at its east end. The original structure, now the nave, measures 11.33m east-west x 6.7m north-south internally. Its walls are c.1m thick and stand to a maximum height of 3.24m. They are constructed of large blocks of masonry, roughly coursed, interspersed with courses of flat slabs and set in a strong mortar of river gravel with a high lime content. The walls were laid on a foundation of flat slabs forming a plinth which projects c. 0.1m from the wall on all sides. Only the footings of the east wall of the nave survive, including the south jamb of a doorway, indicating that this wall remained standing after the chancel was added, with a doorway mined out to connect the two.

The west doorway of the original structure measured c.1m wide with a slight internal splay. Traces of a drawbar socket survive. The surviving traces of the jambs are of yellow sandstone blocks displaying diagonal tooling marks.

The chancel measures 8.14m east-west x 6.45m north-south internally and its walls stand to a maximum height of 3.2m, with a pronounced base batter. In the construction of these walls less use was made of large blocks of masonry than in the walls of the nave, and these walls do not have a foundation course as do the latter.

Closer inspection of the walls of the chancel shows that on the north and east sides the unmortared base batter was added to an existing mortared wall, while on the south side the base batter is an integral part of the wall, with no mortar. The likelihood is that at some point this south wall collapsed and was rebuilt with a base batter, while at the same time a base batter was added to east and north walls.

Within the chancel a section of window jamb was uncovered which suggests a 15th-century date for this section of the structure. This was a splayed, chamfered jamb with a rectangular groove to hold glass.

Three phases are suggested for the site :
1) the original construction, now the nave, in the 13th century;
2) the construction of the chancel and the mining out of a connecting doorway between the two in the 15th century;
3) the rebuilding of the south wall of the chancel and the addition of the base batter to the north and east walls, again probably in the 15th century.

The holed stone, known locally as the Sinner`s Stone, measures 1.96m long x 0.7m wide and c. 0.3m thick. It is roughly triangular in section with the hole near the thin side, 1m from the base. The hole itself measures 0.11m in diameter. A small-scale excavation was carried out in the vicinity of the stone. No archaeological features were uncovered and the stone was subsequently re-erected in this area.

Ballynanelagh, Rathcormac, Co. Cork