Antiquities Near Miltown Malbay |
Thomas Johnson Westropp |
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Clare
County Library |
Kilmurry
Ibrickan Church
|
Kilmurry
Ibrickan Church (with Tromra Castle |
It
is a long very plain building, constructed of sandstone flags, and is
a familiar object as seen from the railway. It is surrounded and even
buttressed by a village of vaults, and, with the distant Tromra castle,
a few wind-beaten trees, and the background of the sea, the sheer Cliffs
of Moher, and the surf-torn rags of Inisfitæ, forms by no means
so un-picturesque a view as so ugly a ruin might be expected to make.
It is 86½ feet long by 24 feet 4 inches inside. The eastern end
had fallen even in 1839 and the south wall has a large gap in the middle.
The latter side has a small flat-headed light near the west end and a
slightly pointed door 19 feet from the west, 3 feet wide outside and 9
inches more inside. Another window like the more western slit is found
14 feet 6 inches from the door. There is a closed door 10 feet from the
east end and a window with a trefoil-headed light, not “pointed”
as stated in the O.S. letters. The north wall is featureless and gapped,
both side walls having a cornice (or rather water table) of large flag
stones. The western end is in a very shaken condition, though plastered
for a ball court externally, it has a small flat topped window, slit high
up the gable, and the ragged piers of a very tottering little belfry,
with a single chamber, the top of which has fallen. The only ancient carving
in the building is the lower part of a figure of the Blessed Virgin with
the body of Our Lord on her knee, the heads of both figures and the greater
part of the Virgin’s body are broken away.
The building is (as we noted) surrounded with vaults and crowded with burials, the graveyard also covers a considerable space to the opposite side of the road. Donald Mac Murcha of Tarrymon was buried here in 1603, the Wards in 1642, and the Stacpooles of Enagh from the time that their ancestor Clement Stacpoole was “transplanted” from Limerick city by the Cromwellian government [22]. |
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