Furness Church is a 13th-century

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 9th and 10th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norma ...

church located in

County Kildare County Kildare () is a Counties of Ireland, county in Ireland. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster and is part of the Eastern and Midland Region. It is named after the town of Kildare. Kildare County Council is the Local gove ...

, Ireland.

Location

Furness Church is located outside Furness House; 2 km (1.3 mi) southeast of Johnstown,

The building

The church is in the grounds of Furness House, owned by Patrick Guinness. The church is Early Christian (c. AD 500) and it was extended by the Normans in 1210. On the

Norman conquest of Ireland The Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland took place during the late 12th century, when Anglo-Normans gradually conquered and acquired large swathes of land in Ireland over which the monarchs of England then claimed sovereignty. The Anglo-Normans ...

after 1169, lands in Kildare were assigned to

Adam de Hereford Adam de Hereford was one of the first generation of Norman colonisers in Ireland. Naval commander He was the Norman commander at a naval battle in 1174 when a fleet of thirty-two ships from Cork, carrying armed men under the command of Gilbert, ...

who in turn bequeathed them to the Abbey of St Thomas the Martyr, Dublin. This monastery extended the church in 1210, allowing a roof for the congregation. The name derives from the Irish ''fornocht'', meaning "bare hill." In the 1530s the monastery was dissolved by the Crown and its land at Furness was bought by the Ashe family, merchants in

Naas Naas ( ; or ) is the county town of County Kildare in Republic of Ireland, Ireland. In 2022, it had a population of 26,180, making it the largest town in County Kildare (ahead of Newbridge, County Kildare, Newbridge) and the List of urban ar ...

. The church has doors and windows edged with

tufa Tufa is a variety of limestone formed when carbonate minerals precipitation (chemistry), precipitate out of water in ambient temperature, unheated rivers or lakes. hot spring, Geothermally heated hot springs sometimes produce similar (but less ...

, a form of limestone favoured by Cistercians in Europe from 1150. The exception is a

leper window A hagioscope () or squint is an architectural term denoting a small splayed opening or tunnel at seated eye-level, through an internal masonry dividing wall of a church in an oblique direction (south-east or north-east), giving worshippers a vi ...

, usually blocked up now in older churches. At some point the church burned down and was abandoned. Despite being Protestant, the Nevill family owning the land allowed local Catholics to continue to bury their dead around the church alongside their ancestors. One gravestone from the early 18th century reads

IHS IHS may refer to: Religious * Christogram#IHS, Christogram IHS or ΙΗΣ, a monogram symbolizing Jesus Christ * ''In hoc signo'', used by Roman emperor Constantine the Great Organizations * Indian Health Service, an operating division of the US D ...

, signifying a Catholic burial. Burials stopped in the 1840s when the then owners built a wall around the estate as a famine relief measure. A standing stone is located 300m NNE of the church.

References

{{Reflist Religion in County Kildare Archaeological sites in County Kildare National monuments in County Kildare Churches in County Kildare