Gortnabishaun Abbey

Gortnabishaun Abbey is a low rectangular platform in north Galway farmland where a roofed building still stood when the Ordnance Survey first mapped Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century. Now only its north-east corner rises sixty centimetres above the ground, while a detached lump of mortared limestone lies twenty-five metres east, perhaps shaken loose from the walls. The abbey sits inside an early ecclesiastical enclosure, and a cillin burial ground lies nearby, marking the place as a long-centre of religious life even though its founders and founding date have not survived.