Tullaroan Church

South of the village of Tullaroan in north-west Kilkenny, the medieval parish church of Our Lady of the Assumption stands roofless in a rectangular graveyard, its chancel the oldest part with a double cinquefoil sedilia of the 1200s and a 15th-century chancel arch flanked by small ogee windows. In 1543 Sir John Grace added the chapel on the south side, and its doorway is the showpiece: Tudor roses, vine leaves and grapes between crocketed pilasters, the Grace family's lion rampant above, and two Latin plaques in raised black-letter script recording the date. Inside lie grave slabs and memorials from the 13th and 14th centuries onwards, among them a slab with a seven-armed interlace cross, the lid of the tomb of Peter Butler, Lord of Bouncestown, who died in 1575, and his wife Helen Grace, and in Grace's Chapel the tomb of Richard Grace and Honora Shortall from about 1600. The graveyard is still in use, so visitors walk among family plots.