Church, Durrow, Co. Galway

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Church, Durrow, Co. Galway

A roofless church that still manages to feel architecturally complete is an unusual thing.

Saint John's, a Church of Ireland building near Durrow in east Galway, lost its roof covering long ago, yet its tower remains intact, topped with carved limestone pinnacles and crenellations that give it the silhouette of something older and grander than its actual age. Cast-iron railings from around 1850, each post finished with a spearhead, line the road boundary, and the graveyard holds a medieval-style tomb belonging to the Bagot family, also a product of the nineteenth century rather than the Middle Ages, though built deliberately to evoke an earlier era.

The church was built in 1832 and consecrated on 15 August 1833. It is what is known as a First Fruits church, a category of building funded by the Board of First Fruits, a body that financed the construction and repair of Church of Ireland churches and glebe houses across Ireland from the late eighteenth century into the 1830s. The design is typical of that programme: a four-bay nave with coursed rubble limestone walls, pointed-arch windows with chamfered ashlar surrounds, and remnants of metal latticework glazing still visible in the openings. The tower carries string courses between its three stages and chamfered corners, and above the pointed-arch doorway sits an uninscribed shield plaque, blank and oddly ambiguous. The church went by at least three names over its working life, being known variously as Oran Church, Drimtemple Church, and Ballymoe Church. It closed around 1962, having served its congregation for nearly a century and a half.

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