Cemetery: Bannow Church Ruins

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Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives
Wexford Index
Copyright

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File contributed by: C.Hunt and Celia Ewald

BANNOW CHURCH RUINS
    [From Lord Walter FitzGerald.]

'The ruins of Bannow Church consist of nave and chancel.  
The chancel is now inaccessible:  the side windows are built 
up, and a spiked iron railing, with a padlocked gate, 
extends across the chancel arch, which is a handsome, wide, 
round one, faced with cut Stone-work of a light brown 
sandstone.  Inside the chancel are some box-tombs belonging 
to the Boyses of Bannow and the Carrs Of Graigue.

'The east window is pointed arched, and judging by the 
remains of cut stone-work, it was originally a handsome 
erection.  In the north-east corner of the nave lies a 
fourteenth-century slab, wider At the head than at the foot, 
bearing a foliated cross, with the busts Of a man and his 
wife under a canopy at the upper end.  Inscrip-tions run 
parallel with, and on both sides of, the shaft of the cross. 
 It was cut in "the black-letter," with a capital Lombardic 
1b to the Hic iacet, with which the inscription commences.  
The latter is now illegible; but when read by the Rev. James 
Graves in 1649, the names of John Colfer and his wife Anne 
Siggin could be deciphered.*  A drawing of this slab, from 
Du Noyer's sketches in the Royal Irish Academy, is given on 
p. 389 in vol I of our JOURNAL.

'In the opposite corner of the nave is a stone coffin, with 
its lid, broken into four or five fragments, lying near.  
The lid bears no inscription, but was ornamented with a 
cross with trefoil terminals.

'A plain holy-water trough lies on the ground inside at the 
doorway in the south wall of the nave.  There are the 
remains of a vaulted porch to this southern entrance.

'Outside the church ruins, and attached to them on the north 
side, is an over-ground vaulted building, resembling a 
sepulchral vault, but it contains no coffins.  Near by is a 
ball court; a portion of the north wall of the ruins is 
cemented smooth to serve that purpose.

'A font, handsomely sculptured, is said to have been 
removed, many years ago, from this church, to the chapel at 
Carrick near by, where it is used at the present time.

'Bannow church was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary; a 
blessed well, called "Our Lady's Well," at which "patterns" 
were held on the 15th of August, lies a short distance off 
to the south-east of the ruins.

'Inside the nave there is a flat slab, fashioned like a 
headstone at one end; it bears two inscriptions running in 
opposite directions, both of them now hard to decipher.  
Commencing at the upper end, they read: --

+
I.H.S.

Here lieth the Body of the
Revd Laurence Esmond
Who departed this life
July the 26th 1785 Aged
. . . 8 Yrs Requiescat in Pace.

(the following was upside down on the picture)

Here lieth the Body of Robert Esmond who de
Parted this life May the 27th
1760 Aged . . . Yrs.
Also the Body of Allice Es
Mond alias [  ]anning who
Departed this life March . . th
1771 Aged (?) 63 Yrs.

'The missing letter in the surname, in the lower 
inscription, is possibly an M; the upright stroke at the end 
of the letter alone is visible. 'The tombstones in the 
burial-ground, of which there is none on the north side of 
the church ruins, are not earlier than the eighteenth 
century. 

'One flat slab, on the south side, bears the 
following inscription, facing the west':--

+
I.H.S.
Here lieth the Body of
The Rev.d. Andrew Corish,
P.P. of Kilmore,
Who departed this life Nov.r 7th 1807,
Aged 55 years.

Near this slab is a headstone to the family of Corish of 
Bally-owen


Source
*See the "Journal of the Kilkenny Archaelogical Society," 
vol. i, page 194 (now the "Royal Society of Antiquaries of 
Ireland").