Garrienderk, Co. Limerick

A church, a few farms and rich dairy land - one half of a parish, on the road between Kilmallock and Charleville.

Garrienderk is a small rural settlement and townland in south County Limerick, on the R515 road that runs between Kilmallock and Charleville, close to the County Cork border. It gives its name to the Catholic parish of Effin and Garrienderk, but it is the smaller half of that pairing - a scatter of farms, a church and the lanes between them rather than a village with a street. There is no pub here, no shop, no cafe. This is working dairy country in the Golden Vale, and the land is the business.

The one thing to know the name for is St Patrick's Church, a 19th-century church that is still in use and is one of the two churches serving the parish today, the other being at Effin itself. Inside it carries the usual record of a small farming community: memorial plaques and donations given in memory of the local families who built and kept it. It is a quiet country church, not a tourist site, and that is exactly what it is for.

The wider parish life runs through Effin, just up the road, where the parish church of 1835 to 1836 stands, along with Canon Hayes Hall and a GAA club that has been going since 1887. The Ballyhoura Mountains rise to the south along the Cork border. If you have come this far you are most likely tracing family - the Catholic registers for Effin and Garrienderk go back to 1843 - or simply passing through the dairy land on your way between the two market towns.

Come for the church, for the parish records, or for the flat green quiet of the Golden Vale. Garrienderk does not pretend to be more than it is, and there is something honest in that.