Church, Ballyfermot, Co. Dublin

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Church, Ballyfermot, Co. Dublin

Somewhere beneath the grass and pathways of Le Fanu Park in Ballyfermot lies what was once a functioning medieval parish church, complete with foundations and gravestones that were still visible as recently as 1978.

Today there is nothing to indicate that the ground underfoot was ever anything other than a public park. The clearance and landscaping that created the park erased the physical remains so thoroughly that a visitor arriving without prior knowledge would have no reason to suspect a medieval church ever stood here at all.

The church was dedicated to St. Laurence and served as the parish church of Ballyfermot throughout the medieval period. It was connected to the Knights Hospitallers of Kilmainham, a military and religious order that held considerable property in the area around Dublin. By 1539, following the upheavals of the Dissolution, the church had passed to a John Allen. The property changed hands again in 1608, when the King granted it to Sir Robert Newcomen, the grant describing it at that point as a ruinous chapel. The Regal Visitations of 1615 confirmed the deterioration, recording both the church and chancel as ruins. What is striking, then, is the account given by the historian D'Alton writing in 1838, who described the structure as being in perfect condition, suggesting either a significant restoration had taken place in the intervening two centuries, or that D'Alton's assessment was optimistic. When the Office of Public Works inspected the site in 1978, they found the foundations still present, along with gravestones dating to the nineteenth century, before the whole site was subsequently cleared.

Le Fanu Park is a public green space in the west of Dublin city, accessible and well used by the local community. There are no markers, plaques, or interpretive panels to indicate the archaeological history of the ground. Anyone with an interest in the site is essentially working from documentary sources rather than anything visible on the ground, which makes the park an unusual case of a medieval ecclesiastical site absorbed entirely into urban leisure space without acknowledgement.

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