This very old and ruined church has a nice old graveyard with many finely decorated gravestones, but the most interesting features are the two wonderfully decorated tombs or memorials inside the building.
The church has the altar to the northeast (75°). These two memorials are on each side of the altar, the most important places of churches.
The chest tomb against the south wall is fenced behind an iron gate. The top slab has a recumbent male figure with two female kneeling figures at his feet and head in a praying posture. The two kneeling figures miss their heads and the upper part of their torso down below the shoulder level. Their hands are also missing. The lying figure miss his hands, the legs seem cut away from his body at the hip level, they miss the part below the knees down to the feet. The remnants of the legs have been split and the top parts are missing. His face is very worn. High on the wall above the tomb there's a slab with the coat of arms of the Tynte family. In fact this is the tomb or Robert Tynte of Youghal. On the wall there is a commemorating slab with a long Latin inscription but the letters are very faint and hard to read.
The slab reads:
Hic jacet corpus Roberti Tynte militis aurati, hujus provinciae regis conciliis, filii quinti Edmund Tynte de Wrexhall comitatu Somersetenti in Anglia armigeri, qui honorem suum gladio acquisivit. Hanc ecclesiam atq monumentum fieri fecit, Dei omnipotentis providentia. Anno domini 1663.
translated as
"Here lies the body of Robert Tynte golden soldier, of the royal council of this province, the fifth son of Edmund Tynte of Wrexhall, county Somerset, of the English army, who won the honor of his sword. This church and tomb he had made, with the providence of Almighty God. In the year of the Lord 1663."
On the opposite wall from this tomb there's a memorial high on the wall. Into a niche there are two kneeling figures facing each other inside a moulded frame. Both the figures miss their heads and the upper part of their torso down to the shoulder level, and both miss their hands.
Below the two figures there was a plaque with a Latin inscription that is now missing. This plaque read:
Conditur in hoc monumento Edwardus Harrisius miles et regis curiae loci capitalis in Hybernia justiciarius secundus, et cum illo Elizabethae uxoris ejus primae cadaver est cum tumulatum. Ille 4to Aprilis 1636. Ilia primo Januarii 1622 hanc vitam discessit.
translated as
"Buried in this monument is Edward Harrisius soldier and second chief of justice at the royal court in the capital of Ireland, and with him is buried the dead body of his first wife Elizabeth (Fowell). He on 4th April 1636. She departed this life the first of January 1622."
I may presume that in the past years an antiques collector came over here and carefully removed one of the plaques and the heads of all the statues to keep them in his house as unique ornaments.
A special thanks to Phyl Irwin at historicgraves.com for her contribution.
|