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Ordnance Survey Letters by John O'Donovan and Eugene Curry, 1839

Parish of Kilrush (h)

5. About forty perches to the south west of the Round Tower, on the hill called in the Life of St. Senan, Ard na n-Aingeal, i.e., Hill of the Angels, there is another Church in ruins called after the hill, Teampull Cnuic na n-Aingeal. It measures forty feet six in length and sixteen feet eight inches in breadth. All its features are destroyed and the greater part of the fragments of the wall remaining are modern. The south wall is ten feet in height and about two feet seven inches in thickness. The north wall is nearly all destroyed, as are also the two gables except a small part of the west gable, which looks very ancient. The south wall contained a pointed doorway constructed of small rude stones and evidently modern. The south wall contained two windows which are now mere breaches.

There is another building joined to the south east side of this Church measuring thirty five feet ten inches from north to south and fifteen feet from west to east. A part of the west wall, fourteen feet long and five feet high joined to the Church remains, and a small part of the middle of the east wall, two feet nine inches in thickness.

For a legend about the selection of this spot for a church see Life of Senanus, given below. (This legend must be amongst the “Clare Extracts” as there is no allusion to it in the extract from Life of St. Senanus given in this letter.)

6. About fifty perches to the southeast of the Damliag there is a large Church now called Teampull na Marbh, i.e., ecclesia mortuorum, because it is the only one on the island in which people bury the dead, but surely this is not its original name. To describe this Church. It is sixty seven feet ten inches long, and eighteen feet six inches broad (measured on the inside). Its west gable is featureless. The south wall contains a doorway placed at the distance of twenty one feet from the west gable, but now reduced to a formless breach. East of this in the same wall there are three windows all decidedly modern and not worth particular description. There is in the east gable a large pointed window measuring on the inside eight feet eight inches in width and very high, and on the outside three feet four inches in width and seven feet in height. The lower part of it is built up with modern mason work. The north wall has at the distance of seven feet eight inches from the west gable, a round-headed but very modern doorway and eighteen feet to the east of it a rude pointed arch nine feet six inches high and eight feet four inches wide; and three feet ten inches to the east of it, another arch of similar characteristics and dimensions. At the distance of five feet four inches to the east of this there is a quadrangular doorway five feet four inches high and two feet eleven inches wide at the lintel and three feet two inches at the bottom. Its lintel is a thin flag four feet six inches long, one foot eight inches broad and only three inches thick. Over this doorway is a small rectilineally pointed window which looks very like a primitive one, but which is hardly to be depended upon! There seem to have been lateral Iardoms into which these arches and doorway led but they are all destroyed with the exception of one fragment of a wall projecting from the northeast corner. The walls of this Church are two feet six inches thick, and the side walls about seventeen feet high.

 

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