Churchtown Church

Knockane Church/ Teampall an Chnocáin: The remains of this church are located on a slight rise in a graveyard (KE065-012003-) situated a short distance E of the Gaddagh river. Ó Cíobháin suggests that it is to be identified with the parish church noted in Papal Annates of 1433, 1479, 1487 and 1511 (1985, lxx). It was described in 1615 as 'up and well' (Royal Visitation), and in 1622 was included in a list of parochial churches in the diocese. Its incumbent minister in 1633 was Willmus Lane, who was also minister of ‘Dunlo’ (TCD MS 2158 94, 37). The graveyard is the burial place of the Macgillycuddy’s of the Reeks, a branch of the O’Sullivan Mores who were associated with nearby Dromaloughane castle (KE065-059----). A nineteenth-century Protestant church stands close to the N side of the Medieval remains.

The church measures 21.35m x 7.2m internally. Burials obscure its interior and tombs abut it externally at S. The walls, which survive to almost full height, are rubble-built and set in a loose lime and sand mortar. The side-walls average 3.8m high and 1m thick. The E gable has a tall, narrow, round-headed window with splayed ingoings. Similar windows, averaging 1.1m high, occur towards the E end of both side-walls. A possible third window, obscured beneath heavy overgrowth, occurs adjacent to a ragged ope near the W end of the N wall. There is a lintelled niche at the N end of the E gable, and two further niches occur towards the E ends of the N and S walls. A round-arched tomb niche is located in the N side-wall, 3.8m from the E gable. The pointed doorway, with displaced jambs, in the S wall has a segmental rear arch, and drawbar sockets are retained in its splayed ingoings. A series of beam-holes occur toward the W end of the N and S walls, which, together with a .2m wide offset located 3.5m up the W gable, may indicate that a wooden loft or gallery formerly existed at this end of the church.

An ogham stone (KE065-012004-), now in NMI (1885:432), may derive from this site. Rhys, quoting from Graves, recorded that this stone was found in a churchyard ‘near Killorglin’ (1902, 16), while Macalister, also quoting Graves, recorded that it was first seen ‘standing in the churchyard at Knockane’ (1945, 248-9). The ogham stone measures 1.15m x .35m x .11m, and is split length-wise in half, removing the initial portion of the inscription. Macalister read the remainder, along the sinister angle, as:

MAQI RECTA

In the late 1980s a cross-inscribed stone from the adjoining townland of Killoughane (KE065-124----) was built into the boundary wall of the graveyard.