St Degumen's Church

Situated at the E edge of a plateau overlooking the valley of a N-S stream, which is c. 130m to the W. It is now at the SE edge of a large quarry with man-made cliffs just W and N of the graveyard. The parish church of Ballyconnick is within a subrectangular graveyard (int. dims 36.5m E-W; 32.8m N-S) defined by masonry walls. An original gate at N is now disused and there is a modern entrance at the SW corner. The church is reputed to be dedicated to St. Degumen, a Welsh saint (Culleton 1999, 130). For St. Decumen see this web-page accessed on 7 April 2014: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decuman According According to a Visitation by Thomas Ram, the Protestant bishop of Ferns, in 1615 Richard Devereux was the curate and the chapel was in repair but associated with Taghmon (Hore 1900-11, vol. 6, 268).

This is a nave (ext. dims 10.3m E-W; 6.6m N-S; int. dims 8,55m E-W; 4.2m N-S) and chancel (ext. dims. 5.5m E-W; 5.9m N-S; int. dims 4.4m E-W; 3.6m N-S) church, the walls of which are overgrown and reduced to a height of 1 1.7m. There are opposed doorways, now destroyed, towards the W end of the nave walls. The chancel arch (Wth 1.4m) is collapsed (H 1.2m). There is a subrectangular granite font (ext. dims 0.8m x 0.74m; H 0.2m) set in the ground inside the W end of the church. It is unfinished since the rectangular basin (dims 0.48m x 0.48m; D 0.17m) lacks a drain-hole.