Church, Lacka Lower, Co. Limerick
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Churches & Chapels
What makes Killagholehane parish church in Lacka Lower quietly odd is the layering of its stonework.
The roofless sandstone walls contain fragments from at least two distinct periods of construction, and a visitor who looks closely will find the earlier fabric interrupted at almost every significant opening by later limestone insertions, each one marking a moment when the building was rethought rather than replaced. A small stoup beside the west door, a broken font wedged into the base of an east window, corbels inside that once carried a timber loft; all of it speaks to a building that was repeatedly adapted rather than simply used.
The core of the church, along with its transept-like projections to the north and south, appears to be of one original build. The form of the three windows in the east gable points to an early 13th-century date, though the church was burnt in 1302, as recorded by antiquarian T.J. Westropp writing in 1904 to 1905. The present rectangular interior measures roughly 14 metres east to west and 7.6 metres north to south. The 15th century brought a substantial refitting in limestone: the west doorway was inserted into an earlier opening, the ogee-headed windows were added (an ogee being a double curve, concave below and convex above, common in late medieval ecclesiastical work), and the elaborate tomb niche was constructed into the east end of the south wall. That niche is particularly considered in its detailing; a moulded round arch sits beneath an ogee arch with a finial at its apex, the whole framed by pilasters that originally carried pinnacles, though the western one is now missing. Harold Leask's 1960 survey of Irish churches dates this type to the 15th century.
The ruin sits at the centre of a graveyard that remains in use, with recent burial plots occupying part of the interior alongside low grass. The Office of Public Works has carried out some repair work on the walls. The southern projection is almost entirely gone at this point, and only the lower portions of the doorways into both projections survive, each with chamfered limestone jambs. The altar below the east windows is still largely intact, built in sandstone with a dressed limestone edge along its top inner face. The slit windows in the north and south walls are simple unadorned openings, which makes the ornamental limestone work around the tomb niche and the west entrance feel all the more considered by contrast.