Saint Mary's Church

Medieval ruins of St. Mary's parish church situated on flat land N of the town of Templemore, in the present town park and adjacent to the pitch and putt club. An artificial lake lies immediately to the W. Church listed in the ecclesiastical taxation of the Diocese of Cashel in 1302 (Cal. doc. Ire, vol. 5, 283). Present remains consist of a much altered church (ext. dims. 8.24m N-S; 32.8m E-W) which had a cross-wall added, possibly in 1762 when the C of I repaired portion of the building. They shortened the church with the insertion of the cross-wall which became the new E wall of the church. The building remained in use as a place of worship until 1790 (Walsh 1991, 46). The W part of the church is best preserved with side-walls surviving up to a height of 3.85m. The cross-wall survives to a height of c. 5m. The W gable is a pastiche of architectural features. A massive buttress has been built up against the exterior wall, through which a large round-headed entrance was inserted. Above this buttress there is an inserted two-light traceried window which may have been in the E gable originally. The gable is surmounted by a large bellcote. The only original in situ feature is a flat-headed single-light transomed window. All the entrances into the church have been modified. That in the N wall at the W side of the church is a late insert, incorporating earlier worked stone, while that in the N wall at the E side of the church has had a chamfered door surround inserted in recent renovation work. The original entrance to the church may have been in the S wall where there is the base of a chamfered door surround under a later wall line. Within the church there are a number of loose architectural fragments, some of which have been inserted in a partially reconstructed window in the N wall. In the W section of the church there is a plain graveslab with an inscription in English around the edge, it reads: HERE LAYS THE BODY OF ISAAC HAIES OF KNOCRANROE WHO DYED THE 43 YEAR OF HIS AGE THE 15 OF APRIL 1703. It seems that Isaac Hayes was a Cromwellian who had been granted land in Knockinroe (Walsh 1991, 46-7).

There is a seventeenth-century tombstone in the NE corner lying recumbent on an altar table. It is a tapering slab, decorated with an eight-arm floriated cross which rests on a stepped calvary mount with a skull and cross-bones. The border inscription in Latin is a mixture of Gothic and English capitals: ....JACET RD: PATER D: EDMUNDUS DULLANY RECTOR BEATA MARIA DE TAMPLEMORE ET PRIOR COMMENDATORIUS INSULAE....FIERI FECIT AI 1632: CUIUS AIA PROPITIE.... which translates as: [Here] lies Rev Father D Edmund Dullany, Rector of St Mary's of Templemore, and Prior in Commendam of the Island...who had (me) made in the year 1632: on whose soul may [the Lord] have mercy (Hayes 1993, 186-8).