placenamesKilmolash
Cill Molaise
The ruined church preserves several building phases within a curved graveyard enclosure.
The name
These Irish name elements are associated with this record in the Logainm glossary.
An element’s translation is a clue, rather than a complete explanation of the name. Its form and meaning depend on local history and the full Irish name.
Recorded forms
- Cill Molaise · Irish · main form · validated name
- Kilmolash · English · main form
Place & story
A church with successive phases
Trisha Ryan’s 2021 account describes Kilmolash church within a D-shaped graveyard, reflected by the curve of the surrounding road. A chancel arch divides the nave and chancel. She identifies the chancel wall as possibly twelfth-century, while assigning the nave and east wall to a later medieval phase. That suggested sequence does not give every surviving wall a precise construction date. [2]
Details retained in the fabric
Ryan records an ogham stone incorporated into the arch, a holy-water stoup, a double belfry and a carved rosette in the lintel over the western doorway. Their survival brings different kinds of worked stone into the same ruined building. Her account also notes many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century graves in the surrounding enclosure. [2]
A story attached to Clough
Lewis’s 1837 parish entry records a tradition that King John and his attendants halted at the building called Clough on their journey from Waterford to Cork. He presents the visit as a reported tradition, rather than a documented royal itinerary. [3]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Civil parish
- County
- Waterford
- Barony
- Decies-without-Drum
- Barony
- Decies-within-Drum
- Coordinates
- 52.09713, -7.80276
- Mapped area
- 15.11 km²
- Logainm ID
- 2400 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Kilmolash. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Kilmolash Church, Co. Waterford, 11 March 2021 · Trisha Ryan, Our Irish Heritage
- Kilmolash: A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) · Samuel Lewis
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.