St Sillian's church lands

Located at the S end of a N-S spur. This is the site of the medieval parish church of Tyholland or Tehallen. According to the Tripartite Life of St Patrick, an uncertain source, Patrick established Cillín as a bishop at Tech Taláin (Ó Rian 2011, 175). The church is listed as Thechtalbi in the ecclesiastical taxation (1302-04) of Pope Nicholas IV (Shirley 1879, 289), and the names of some of the priests are known from 1432 (Leslie 1929, 257-8). The church was described as ruinous in Bishop Spottiswood’s visitation of 1622 (McKenna 1920, 1, 290). In 1638 James de la Field of Derryneshallog (Shelvin?) left funds to build a chapel ’20 feet by 16 feet’ to be added to the church but it was probably not constructed (Shirley 1879; Leslie 1929). The church was built anew in 1788 (Lewis 1837, 2, 662) at the N edge of the graveyard. The tower was added in 1827 (Shirley 1879, 308), and St Cilian’s (or Sillian’s) Church of Ireland church continues to this day.

There is no evidence of the medieval church in a D-shaped graveyard (dims c. 80m NNW-SSE; c. 50m ENE-WSW) defined by masonry walls that enclose most of the spur and which has a curved edge at NE where there is a road. Most of the headstones, dating from c. 1800 to the present, are confined to the top of the spur in the area S of the present church, where the medieval church is likely to have been.