placenamesBennekerry
Binn an Choire
Bennekerry’s church and burial places connect the development of a rural parish with the painter Frank O’Meara and twentieth-century Irish church art.
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
- Binn an Choire · Irish · main form · validated name
- Bennekerry · English · main form
Place & story
From a thatched chapel to Saint Mary’s
The diocesan history records a thatched church at Bennekerry around 1700, preceding the present Saint Mary's. Granite for the later building came from Graigalug quarry. Bennekerry remained part of Tinryland parish until 1976, and the burial ground beside the earlier church continued in use until that year. These records distinguish the older worship site from the church serving the later parish. [2]
Frank O’Meara’s burial at Bennekerry
The painter Frank O'Meara, born in Carlow in 1853, was buried in his family's tomb at Bennekerry following his death in 1888. The architectural inventory records a cut-stone monument at Saint Mary's dated 1874, fashioned as a Hiberno-Romanesque doorway with a screen behind it. The family memorial therefore predates the artist's death, while his burial gives Bennekerry a specific connection with his life. [2] [3]
Artists in the church’s later development
Saint Mary's was remodelled in 1977 under architect J. Kenneth O'Brien. Michael Biggs supplied sanctuary stonework and Patrick McElroy created metal furnishings as the sanctuary was reordered and a sacristy added. A Marian statue by the Dominican sculptor Henry Flanagan followed in 1990. The diocesan record identifies these individual contributions, showing how later Irish artists helped reshape the nineteenth-century church. [2]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Carlow
- Barony
- Carlow
- Civil parish
- Urglin
- Within
- Bennekerry
- Coordinates
- 52.82081, -6.88736 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1412382 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Bennekerry. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Parish of Bennekerry:Saint Mary’s Church history · Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin
- Saint Mary’s monument,registration10300747 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
- Saint Mary's Church, Bennekerry illustration: based on a Saint Mary's, Bennekerry by liam murphy. AI-assisted watercolour and ink adaptation; cream paper margins added, incidental clutter omitted and fine details simplified. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.