2014:512 - OATFIELD, Clare
County: Clare
Site name: OATFIELD
Sites and Monuments Record No.: CL052-043
Licence number: 14E0428
Author: Frank Coyne, Aegis Archaeology
Author/Organisation Address: 32 Nicholas St, King's Island, Limerick
Site type: No archaeology found
Period/Dating: N/A
ITM: E 554246m, N 667285m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.754683, -8.677791
Engineering trial holes in the grounds of Oatfield Church (CL052-043—- Church) were monitored, in advance of a planning application for a prayer garden and car park. Three trenches were opened.
The church itself is thought to be one of only two surviving 18th-century barn churches in the county. Tradition also has it 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 OS six-inch maps as ‘R.C. Chapel’.