Catholic Church, Cloonameragaun, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Churches & Chapels
A pointed arch doorway in the northwest wall of these ruins now serves as the entrance to the graveyard beside Aughrim village, which is a quietly odd reversal of purpose.
What was once a threshold into a place of worship has become a threshold into a place of burial, and the building that doorway originally served has been reduced, mostly, to foundations. The ruins sit within a D-shaped graveyard immediately southwest of the modern Catholic church at Aughrim, and what remains above ground is uneven: the southwest gable still stands to its full height, with a plain rectangular window hinting at a two-storey arrangement at that end, while the northwest and southeast walls survive only in short lengths before dropping away to ground level. Putlog holes, the small square sockets left in masonry where timber scaffolding poles were once inserted, are visible on both faces of the surviving gable.
The first edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map recorded a roofed L-shaped building on this site, labelled simply as an RC Chapel, its main axis running roughly north-northwest to south-southeast. The rectangular structure that survives measures approximately 24 metres in length and 8 metres in width, and is considered possibly partly medieval in date. The modern graveyard wall follows the line of the old northwest wall, which is one of those details that quietly reveals how thoroughly earlier fabric gets absorbed into later use. The moulded architrave framing the pointed arch doorway is a more refined piece of stonework than plain rubble walling would suggest, and it is this, along with the dedication of a holy well lying about 70 metres to the southeast, that prompts the question of whether the building has deeper roots than post-Reformation Catholic use alone. Researchers have raised the possibility that it represents the remains of a medieval parish church, or alternatively of an Augustinian priory known from other records, which was later taken over and adapted as a Catholic place of worship. Augustinian friars established communities across Connacht from the thirteenth century onward, and their buildings often passed through several phases of use and appropriation. The ruins have been recently conserved, though they remain poorly preserved overall.