Kilcash Church

On the south-eastern slopes of Slievenamon, on the monastic site of the sixth-century saint Colmán ua hEirc, Kilcash Church is a small sandstone church whose first building became the chancel when a nave was added, entered through a weathered Romanesque doorway of three orders with chevron carving and lit by two round-headed windows. Around 1200 Baldwin Niger granted it to the Fratres Cruciferi of the Dublin priory of St John the Baptist, it was enlarged in 1389 and it was still roofed in 1656. The graveyard holds headstones from the 17th century, the 18th-century ones carved with elaborate Crucifixion scenes, and at its north end stands the sealed mausoleum of the Butlers of Kilcash, where Archbishop Christopher Butler of Cashel and two Earls of Ormond lie. Reviewers praise the tidy grounds and the old crosses, and many go on to look at the Butlers' tower house just up the road, which can be photographed but not entered.