Donaghmore Church is a 14th century church built on the site of earlier pre-Norman foundations, it is situated just south of Ballyragget and east of the River Nore. The original Irish name is Domhnach Mór, meaning ‘Great/Big Sunday’, this referring to the day on which St Patrick founded this church and used for various others across Ireland. It is uncertain the date of the pre-Norman construction but it is known, according to William Carrigan’s History and Antiquities of the Diocese of Ossory (1905), that the church and parish of Donaghmore ‘belonged to the Abbey of St. Thomas in Dublin, almost from the foundation of the latter in 1177’. The church was seized during the Reformation and became a place for Protestant worship. In 1731 Edward Tennison, the Church of Ireland Bishop of Ossory, visited Donaghmore and found, ‘the roof of the church and chancel standing, but the slating so decay’d that both want to be new slated’. It appears the slating never happened and the church finally closed in 1747. There are burials within the nave and chancel church and some attractive and unusual headstones dotting the graveyard.
GPS: 52.7793, -7.32774