Beneath the north chancel wall lies a battered plinth of coursed limestone, standing about 1.5 metres high. In the mid-1980s, archaeologist Lynn proposed that this sturdy foundation might actually be the remnant of a 13th-century castle built by Maurice Fitzgerald, one of the Norman lords who helped shape medieval Ireland. The plinth’s distinctive battered design, where the walls slope slightly outward at the base for added stability, certainly suggests something more substantial than a typical church foundation.

Yet the evidence remains tantalisingly ambiguous. Beyond its battered profile, the plinth displays no other defensive features you’d expect from a castle structure; no arrow loops, no signs of battlements, nothing that screams military architecture. Lynn argued that it would be unusual to build the eastern end of a church on such steeply sloping ground, suggesting the structure might have served a different purpose originally. However, this theory has its critics, who point to similar church sites at Buttevant and Timoleague in Cork, both built on challenging terrain without any underlying castle foundations.

Whether Maurice Fitzgerald’s castle truly stood here or whether the plinth simply represents pragmatic medieval engineering remains an open question. What we do know is that this limestone foundation has endured for perhaps 800 years, outlasting whatever superstructure once rose above it. The site serves as a reminder that Ireland’s medieval landscape was constantly evolving, with castles becoming churches, churches incorporating earlier structures, and the Norman and Gaelic worlds blending in ways that still challenge our understanding today.