Annagh Church

Near Blennerville, three and a half kilometres south-west of Tralee, a small ruined medieval church stands in the old part of Annagh graveyard, in a townland whose Irish name, Eanach an Ambrósaigh, the marsh of Ambrose, recalls an Anglo-Norman family. Built between the 12th and 15th centuries of local limestone, with sandstone for its Gothic windows and doorways, it was valued at forty shillings a year in the papal taxation of 1306 and was already described as ruinous in the early 17th century; OPW rebuilt the west gable in the early 20th century. Its best-known feature is inside the south wall: a small, crudely carved sandstone figure of a horseman holding a weapon, thought to be a Norman knight of perhaps the 14th century, his stirrup the mark of a Norman rider. The pointed south doorway of chiselled sandstone has three concentric arches, and an early cross-inscribed stone is set into the outside wall beside it. The graveyard around it is still in use.