What is recorded here

Low earthen banks and a cut ditch still mark a subcircular enclosure in grassland south-east of Kiltullagh Lough, perhaps the oldest monastery there and later a Third Order Franciscan house after 1441. A boreen pierces it north and south, while a church and graveyard occupy the middle, their square wall and mortared stones belonging to the mid-nineteenth century rather than the distant monastic days. The land has kept its shape through forgetting, waiting for someone to walk the broken circle and imagine the prayers that once filled it.

In grassland SE of Kiltullagh Lough. Probably the site of an early monastery (Gwynn and Hadcock 1970, 395), it is also likely to have been the location of a house of the Third Order Franciscans founded sometime after 1441 (ibid., 275; Nicholls 1973, 36; Claffey 1983, 94-5). What survives is a poorly preserved subcircular enclosure (E-W 79m, N-S 75m) which is cut by a boreen at N and S. It is defined by a low earthen bank and external fosse. A gap (Wth 10m) at E may be original. The interior contains a church (GA018-027002-) and graveyard. The latter is shown as an unenclosed circular space on 1st ed. of OS 6-inch map: the present square plan and mortared stone boundary wall appear to date from the mid-19th C. Melvin (c. 1971, 15) noted the discovery of 'a rectangle of stones ... may be an ancient grave ... not very far from the churchyard but well outside the old boundary': no visible surface trace survives. (O'Flanagan 1927, Vol. 1, 229) The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Galway Vol. II - North Galway'. Compiled by Olive Alcock, Kathy de hÓra and Paul Gosling (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1999). Date of upload: 05 August 2010

An ecclesiastical enclosure in Kiltullagh, likely an early-medieval monastic site, is situated in grassland southeast of Kiltullagh Lough. It may have later been the location of a Third Order Franciscan house founded in the 15th century.

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