Ray Church

Raymunterdoney Old Church (DG025-029003-): Repaired or rebuilt post 1622 (see Royal Commission, 218) this parish church continued in use until the new church of St Paul's was built in 1805 (Fagan Bk. 3, 1-2, Leslie 1940, 120). The remains are vested in the Office of Public Works as a National Monument (no. 23). The walls of the church, 14.6m by 5.9m internally, stand to full height and are built of rubble with ashlar quoins; the SW and NW only, being dressed. The presence of two punch-dressed blocks in the latter, two others cemented to the sill of the westernmost window in the S wall and the doorway in the W gable with stop-chamfered jambs and pointed head, suggest the re-use of these fragments from an earlier church. The S wall has four round-headed windows with splayed ingoings. There is a similar larger blocked-up window with flat rear-arch in the E gable. The outlines of two other blocked-up windows can be traced in the N wall. The Office of Public Works has erected the high cross (DG025-029001-) on a plinth against the interior face of the N wall and have flush-pointed the masonry. The 1754 aedicule of the Olphert family (Fagan Bk. 3, 2) which was set on the interior face of the W gable is broken and no trace of the inscribed tablet survives; sections of the broken columns and moulded frame are cemented to the window sills. The site is located in low-lying, wet land, close to the sea. It was believed by O'Donovan to be the site of the early ecclesiastical settlement, Rath Finan (O'Flanagan 1927, 39).