Inchicronan
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| Inchicronan - Plan |
The church is oblong, 66 feet by 16 feet 6 inches internally. The east window is part of an older church, with a wide splay and semicircular heads. The head of the light is cut out of a single block, the outer face of which is curiously carved, and dates at least from the end of the 11th century. The widow-head contains a well-cut spray of foliage, some of the leaves ending in spirals. Of this only inaccurate drawings have been hitherto published.[14] A small sacristy, with plain slit windows, adjoins the east end of the church on the north side, and is entered by a pointed door. The transept opens from the church by two neat, pointed arches, the central pier being only 8 inches thick. The moulding mark is as dating about 1400, to which period the cornice above it may be attributed. The south window had two shafts interlacing with cusping pieces over the main lights.
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Inchicronan
– Head of East Window (a on Plan). |
The other features of the nave and domicile
are defaced: the latter had two rooms. A small porch or chapel (b on plan)
projects from the eastern face of the transept. It has a doorway in the
east end, and is nearly filled by tombs of the Butlers of Ballyline, which
all but conceal the older monument. The latter is decorated with a shield,
bearing three covered cups. The epitaph is of Theobald Butler of Ballyline,
1735, grandson of Sir Theobald Butler, a well known lawyer of the time
of James II. From the south-east angle of the transept a wall projects
for some 200 feet, and has a late pointed arch, now closed (c on plan).
It bounds the present graveyard on the south.
Few people visit the overgrown ruins; and as no one has given a detailed
account of them, or of the two larger monasteries described in this Paper,
I have ventured to lay these notes, views, and plans before our Society,
to try to fill up one of the numerous gabs in the monastic topography
of Munster.[15]
