Category: Kilbarron Church ruins

Kilbarron Church Conservation Plan 2023

We recently were told that we have been made a grant offer through the Community Monuments Fund to further work on the conservation of Kilbarron Church. We plan to replace the fractured lintel over the entrance and conserve the west gable wall which is almost still intact after being ruinous for over four hundred years.

Our thanks goes to Donegal County Council who shortlisted us for the Fund and to the Heritage Council who have been of great support and funding over the past nine years.

Lintel over the entrance doorway which is shattered through weathering and which we plan to replace with local stone sympathetic to the original stonework of the church.
A wider view of the entrance doorway which has been dated to the early 15th Century.

We must also thank our hard working committee and the supportive landowners and also the local community and wider diaspora who have been generous in their support and contributions to the wider projects.

Kilbarron Church is situated just off the road between Ballyshannon and Rossnowlagh. It was founded by St Barrainn in the 7th Century who was a kinsman of St Columcille. The ancient church gives its name to the ecclesiastical parish of Kilbarron of both Catholic and Church of Ireland.

The ruins of Kilbarron Church and its place in the landscape

Around a 1km from the Castle lies the ruins of the old church for the parish of Kilbarron. These ruins, once dedicated to St. Barron, may stand on the site of the original 6th Century Church.Bridget Brennan, a graduate from Sligo IT in Applied Archeology, made a study of the ruins and their surrounds. Here is an extract of that work.

Kilbarron Church ruins looking toward Sliabh Liag (Slieve League) on the far side of Donegal bay

Kilbarron Church is a small ruinous edifice in the townland of Kilbarron approximately four kilometres north west of Ballyshannon, County Donegal. It has been variously dated from the 14th to the 16th century and it thought to have been built by the O’Clearys who were historians to the O’Donnells. The church may have been built as a re-dedication to St Barron as it is situated on the site where an earlier 6th century church may have stood. It is also situated within an area that would have been a politically contested landscape as far back as the Neolithic, considering its strategic position as a fording point and a boundary between the west and north west of Ireland.

Landscape Analysis of Kilbarron Church and the Surrounding Area.

Read this study on full here: Kilbarron Church : Landscape Analysis

West wall, Kilbarron Church
Church doorway, south wall.