County: Cork Site name: BALLYNOE
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 46:33-01 Licence number: 95E0260
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
The site appears on the 6" OS maps as 'Abbey, in ruins' and local tradition ascribes it to the Knights Templars. However, there is no documentary evidence for this and it is more likely to have been a parish church.
Of the nave, only the extreme east end survives, measuring 7.4m wide internally. The ingoings of the large east window survive, showing that it measured 3.4m wide. The east wall of the nave shows a slight, crude base batter. The added chancel measures 10.42m east-west x 6.2m north-south. Fragments of window fittings surviving in the south wall are of 13th-century style and may originally have been in the nave. The east window of the chancel is a later insertion into an obviously narrowed embrasure. It is a perfectly preserved two-light ogee-headed window. Many of the stones used in its insertion are reused and may also have originally been in the nave. A documentary reference from 1615 notes the 'church in ruins, chancel repaired'. A large vestry (9.2m north-south x 4.1m east-west) extends northwards from the east end of the north wall of the chancel, its east wall flush with the east wall of the latter. This is a later addition and the quality of its construction is much superior to that of the chancel.
Trenches were excavated on both sides of the east wall of the nave, outside the south wall and within the east end of the chancel. In the latter trench the base of an altar was discovered. This was a stone and mortar construction measuring 2.7m north-south x c.1m east-west, with a maximum depth of 0.8m. However, the surface and much of the west edge were quite irregular and uneven, so that it would originally have been higher and slightly larger in area. A foundation pit had been dug into the subsoil to a depth of 0.2m to accommodate the structure. Two holes in the east wall of the chancel, 1.1m above, are so symmetrically located in relation to both the east window and the altar that they are likely to be related to the latter and may well have been sockets holding supporting beams for a wooden altar top, or alternatively beams built into the mass of the altar to tie it into the wall. Part of a piscina survives in the south wall of the chancel, close to the altar.
Traces of the foundations of an earlier structure were uncovered under the east wall of the nave. Also discovered in the area, though in a very disturbed context, was a fragment of a stone cross measuring 0.22m high x 0.18m wide. It shows one side of a robed figure with the left arm outstretched and appears to be 12th-century in style.
A number of 13th-century window fragments were also discovered.
Ballynanelagh, Rathcormac, Co. Cork
