2014:197 - SHANBALLY, Cork
County: Cork
Site name: SHANBALLY
Sites and Monuments Record No.: CO122-171
Licence number: 14E0192
Author: Maurice F. Hurley
Author/Organisation Address: 6 Clarence Court, St. Luke's, Cork
Site type: Church
Period/Dating: Modern (AD 1750-AD 2000)
ITM: E 575423m, N 564545m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 51.832597, -8.356595
It was proposed to apply for planning permission for the restoration and conversion of a former church to a community/heritage centre. The church is a Recorded Monument (CO122-171). The extant church was built in 1830 to the design of James Pain. It went out of use as a Church of Ireland parish church in the 1950s and was used as a school for a short time and thereafter as a steel workshop until recent years when the building became disused. The associated graveyard, lying to the south of the church, is separated from the church site by a stone wall and was originally part of the church grounds. A pathway through this graveyard formerly gave access to the church. The graveyard contains several 18th-century headstones. It was unclear if burials were placed to the west and north of the church building and this was one of the main possibilities investigated by the testing. In the light of the known existence of a 17th-century church on the site (an earlier church stood in this site in 1629, Brady 1863, II, 128-37) the likelihood of foundations and burials associated with earlier churches was considered to be strong.
In addition to the restoration of the existing building, the proposal also involved the construction of a single storey extension with new drainage and services. The test trenches were located to take account of the new foundations and the route of the drainage trench.
Testing did not reveal any evidence for the existence of a former church or for human burial in the area to the north of the wall now dividing the church from the graveyard. In general a modern concrete surface covered the entire site and beneath this a thin layer of modern rubble overlay hard stoney natural yellow clay. The only exceptions to this pattern were the result of modern drainage features. There was no evidence for the foundations of the former tower by the west door of the former church but several large stones and some fragments of cut stone flags were found in the fill of a drainage sump located to the south-west of the door.