The ivy-clad walls of this medieval church have grown so thick over time that they’ve caused the stonework to bulge outward in places, creating an almost organic fusion of architecture and vegetation. Built from rubble and split stone, the surviving walls still reach an impressive 3.5 metres in height, though the western gable has completely vanished, leaving only the north, east, and south walls to tell their story.

The church’s architectural features reveal glimpses of its original form despite the ravages of time. Angle buttresses support the southeastern and northeastern corners, whilst additional buttresses brace the midpoints of the north and south walls; standard reinforcements for medieval church construction. The windows, now reduced to featureless gaps with their decorative stonework long since fallen away, once brought light into the sacred space. A curious segment-headed recess at the eastern end of the south wall, measuring roughly a metre high and 30 centimetres deep, may have served as either a wall press for storing liturgical items or possibly a small sedilia where priests would sit during services.

Archaeological investigations in 1999 revealed little about the church’s immediate surroundings; when developers cleared land for housing just 65 metres from the ruins, archaeologists found only natural subsoil beneath the topsoil, suggesting the church stood relatively isolated even in its heyday. Today, Templemoyle sits quietly in good farmland, its ivy-shrouded walls offering a romantic, if somewhat melancholic, reminder of Donegal’s ecclesiastical past. The nearby settlement of Greencastle provides the only hint of modern life, whilst the church itself remains frozen in its slow decay, a picturesque ruin that speaks to both the ambitions of its builders and the inevitability of abandonment.