County: Tipperary Site name: THE OLD PROTESTANT CHURCH, Holycross
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 47:110 Licence number: 00E0634
Author: Paul Stevens, for Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd.
Site type: No archaeology found
Period/Dating: N/A
ITM: E 608658m, N 654174m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.638710, -7.872073
Monitoring was undertaken, in December 2000, at the old Protestant church in Holycross village. The site lies within the area of archaeological potential of a possible pre-Norman ecclesiastical enclosure and Anglo-Norman church and graveyard site, centring on the old Protestant church. The site is also immediately north of the medieval abbey and village of Holycross, which is also a recorded monument (SMR 47:30).
Holycross village was previously known as Ceall Uachta Lawyne or Lamund or ‘the upper church or small church in the territory of Lamund’, a name that W. Hayes (Holycross–Ballycahill Newsletter, 1996) attributes to as far back as the 8th century. In 1182 the present ‘Abbey of the relic of the True Cross’ at Holycross was founded, downhill from this church, on the banks of the River Suir. Donal Mór O’Brien, king of Thomond (North Munster), granted the lands of Holycross parish to the newly arrived Cistercian monks, who colonised the abbey from Monasteranenagh in County Limerick. However, the monks maintained the veneration of the older, ‘upper’ site and chose it as the site of a parish church, serving the locality. The earliest reference to a parish church in Holycross is in 1581, following the suppression of the monasteries (ibid.) The newly formed Church of Ireland then began to appoint curates to the monastic parish, and the abbey was abandoned by the Cistercians by 1650, following Cromwell’s campaign in Ireland. By 1792, the Church of Ireland records valued the parish church at £20. But by 1807, the church is described as being ‘in indifferent repair’. Funds were then sought from the newly formed Board of First Fruits for the construction of a new parish church on the site, and in 1821 the present building was completed in the Gothic style.
Excavation of an area measuring 5m square, to a depth of 0.3m, to the north of the chancel, for the construction of a toilet block, was undertaken. Nothing of archaeological significance was revealed.
2 Killiney View, Albert Road Lower, Glenageary, Co. Dublin
