Templenoe Church

Templenoe Church / An Teampall Nua: This parish church stands in a graveyard (KE092-034----) on the N shore of Kenmare Bay, overlooking the Greenane Islands at S. It is noted in RIA MS 24 K 43 that both it and the nearby Cappanacush castle (KE092-033----) were built by Cor, grandson of Macarius, of the Sliocht Mac Crah – a branch of the O’Sullivan Mores. This personage has been identified as Conchur O’Sullivan, whose floruit was before c. 1450 (Ó Cíobháin 1985, lxx). A fiant of 1576 records the leasing of half of the rectory of ‘Templenoe, alias New Church’ to Thomas Clinton (Hickson 1891, 48), and the church appears to have still been in repair in 1615 (Royal Visitation). It was included in the listing of parochial churches in the diocese in 1622, and in 1633 Edwardus Grayne is noted as minister of both Templenoe and ‘Killcroghan’ (TCD MS 2158, 37, 94). The church was in ruins by the middle of the eighteenth century (Smith 1756, 71). The first edition of the OS map depicts a T-shaped Catholic chapel built against the N wall of the Medieval church. This appears to have been dismantled by 1895, when only the Medieval building is indicated on the second edition map. Tombs and graves, the earliest of which is dated 1881, now occupy the former position of the chapel.

The church is rectangular in plan and measures 21.95m x 7.6m internally. The walls survive to almost full height, except at W, where only the lower courses of the attached S return of the gable survives. Extensive burials in the interior of the church have resulted in a considerable rise in its ground level. The earliest grave-marker noted here dates to 1700. An inserted slab in the external face of the S wall, close to the W gable, is dated 1707 (IFC Schools’ Collection). The ivy-clad walls are built of coursed rubble, with limestone dressings, and are bonded in a lime, gravel and shell mortar. The lower 1.5m of the external wall-faces are built in limestone, while the remainder are constructed in purple sandstone.

The E gable features a tall, single-light, ogee-headed window with cut limestone dressings and a plain transom. Ivy obscures its jambs and sill. Internally the light is set in a round-headed embrasure with splayed ingoings; its bed has completely collapsed. A poorly preserved socket for the drawbar of a shutter is retained in the S ingoing. At the N end of the E gable is a lintelled, rectangular niche, while a second niche is located at the E end of the S wall. Located 1.7m to W of the latter are two corbelled niches; the niche at W is a piscina which features a shallow, circular basin with a central drainage hole. There are three windows in the S wall. The E example survives as a ragged ope, 1.95m high, set in a round-headed embrasure with splayed ingoings. At W is a lintelled rectangular ope with limestone jambs, 1.88m high; internally it is set in a lintelled embrasure with splayed ingoings. Directly above this are the remnants of the third window; the W ingoing of its embrasure is splayed and, externally, only its broadly chamfered limestone sill and the lower portions of its coursed jambs survive. Its presence at this level may indicate that a gallery or loft existed at the W end of the church.

Cut and broadly chamfered limestone blocks form the jambs and arch of the pointed doorway in the S wall. Overhead, externally, is a relieving arch of pitched lime-stone and sandstone slabs. Internally the doorway features .a segmental rear arch which was raised on wooden centring. The centring was supported in two small nib-holes, which occur just above its springing line. The splayed ingoings of the doorway retain the sockets and channel for a drawbar. A number of putlog or beam-holes occur internally along the length of the S wall.

There are two windows in the N wall. The window at E is blocked and its head does not survive. Internally it is densely overgrown with ivy, and it is set in an embrasure With splayed ingoings. A rectangular, lintelled wall-niche occurs just below it to E. The second window, centrally petitioned, is a nineteenth-century insertion designed to light the adjoining Catholic chapel. It is not clear if a window existed here originally. The major portion of the external N wall-face retains its nineteenth-century plaster.