County: Clare Site name: Oatfield Church, Oatfield Townland, co. Clare
Sites and Monuments Record No.: CL052-043---- Licence number: 14E0428
Author: Frank Coyne
Site type: Church
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 554249m, N 667282m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.754656, -8.677746
Engineering trial holes in the grounds of Oatfield Church RMP CL052-043---- Church were monitored, in advance of a planning application from a prayer garden and car park. A total of three trenches were opened. The church itself is thought to be one of only two surviving eighteenth-century barn churches in the county. Tradition has it also, that a thatched barn was reconstructed into a church about 1830, The finished building had a thatched roof with bog-oak rafters, and was used as a church and as a temporary school house at that time. There is no tradition of a graveyard at this site. The Church is marked on the 1st and 2nd edition map as R.C. Chapel..
Trench 1 (10m E-W, 1m wide, depth 0.15m) consisting of topsoil on grey clay.
Trench 2 (10m E-W, 1m wide, depth 0.15m) consisting of topsoil on grey clay.
Trench 5 (5m E-W, 1m wide, depth 0.15m) consisting of topsoil on orange-grey clay.
No archaeological features were noted during the monitoring.
Aegis Archaeology Ltd, 32 Nicholas St, King's Island, Limerick
