Newtown Church ruin

On a S-facing slope overlooking Kings River and commanding a good view from SE-S-SW. Located in the S portion of the accompanying subrectangular graveyard (KK027-012009-). There appears to have been a church in Newtown (Baker) since the early 13th, associated with the medieval settlement of Earlstown (KK027-012----). Carrigan (1905, vol. 3, 326) cites varies historical references, including, ‘By his charter of about the year 1200, Baldwin de Hamptonford, the lay patron, grant “the chapel of Newtown, which is now a mother church,” (capella de nova villa, quae nunc est matrix ecclesia) to the Priory of Kells. Robert, Dean of Newtown, is mentioned during the early part of the 13th century. In the oldest list of churches of Ossory which we possess, and which dates from about 13000, the Rectory of Erleyestoun [Earlstown], parcel of Kells Priory, is valued at £8, the Vicariate of same at £4’. In 1441, ‘the church of Erleyston, with its chapels and glebe, was confirmed to Kells Priory by royal letters’. The parish was united with Kells in 1661 and it is likely that the church went out of use at this time (Shine 2005, 60). The church is indicated on the Down Survey (1655-6) barony map of Shillelogher, County Kilkenny (Hibernia Regnum, courtesy of Trinity College Dublin).

A long rectangular (int. dims. 25.35m E-W x 7.85m N-S) undivided church constructed of roughly coursed limestone rubble (wall T 0.85m) with very roughly cut quoins. It is aligned ESE-WSW. At the nave end the floor has been concreted and the internal face of the walls rendered with plaster for use as a handball alley. The E and W gables stand to almost full height, with a chamfered limestone two-light ogee-headed window in E gable. At the E end of the S wall the drainage channel of a former piscina survives, along with fragmentary remains of an ambry. Shine (2005, 57) notes two opposing beam holes in the chancel end of the church which suggest the presence of a rood beam. The N and S side walls are breached at the chancel end to provide access to the handball alley. The chancel was lit by opposing single-light windows. In the nave end there are the remains of opposing doorways in each side wall, now blocked up. A blocked breach in the W gable may indicate the position of former window.

A cut and moulded sandstone fragment of the sill of the single-light window at E end of S wall, and a large number of sandstone architectural fragments within the nave, indicates that the architectural details of the church were originally executed in sandstone and replaced with limestone in the later medieval period. Two of the fragments are from a door jamb, with a large roll moulding with frontal fillet, dating to the 13th century (Shine 2005, 59).

There are a number of medieval graveslabs and chest tomb fragments (see KK027-012003-; KK027-012005- and KK027-012006-; KK027-012011- to KK027-012033-) associated with the church and graveyard, many of which were uncovered during a graveyard clean-up between 1985-7, as well as a cross (KK027-012004-) and the pedestal of a font (KK027-012002-) (Harte 1987, 408-17).

References: