Tyone Abbey (in ruins) — Tyone (nenagh Par.)

Situated on a natural hillock with a nearby river to the E. Tyone priory and hospital of St John the Baptist was a foundation of Augustinian Hospitallers or Fratres Cruciferi (Gwynn and Hadcock 1970, 208-9). The site was founded by Theobald Walter whose charter to the priory is usually dated c. 1200 (COD, vol. 1, 10). In 1541-2 Tyone Abbey was secularised and placed under the authority of a warden (Gleeson and Leask 1938, 215). The priory was dissolved in 1551 (Gwynn and Hadcock 1970, 208-9). At its dissolution, Thady O'Meara the last prior was in possession of the monastery, belfry, cemetery, water mill and various pieces of land (Gwynn and Hadcock 1970, 215). By 1553 Tyone and its estate was in the possession of Oliver Grace (ibid.). The abbey was constructed of roughly coursed limestone rubble and is now much altered and poorly preserved. It was an early thirteenth-century foundation as evidenced by the mouldings on some of the sandstone blocks. It was largely rebuilt in the late fifteenth/sixteenth century and a large quantity of cut sandstone was reused. The present remains consists of a simple rectangular church building the E end of which survives intact and a series of claustral buildings to the S of the church. The round-headed embrasures with ogee-headed windows at the W end of the church date to the late fifteenth/sixteenth century. These windows appear to have been inserted into earlier sandstone windows which are now blocked up and visible in the S wall. The E wall has a large central window embrasure, the surrounds are of sandstone while the semi-pointed chamfered head is limestone. A nineteenth-century wall plaque has been inserted into a brick and stone infill. A window embrasure in the S wall has sandstone surrounds and a round, splaying limestone head. A limestone, cusped, ogee-headed, two-light window has been inserted into the S wall and the mullion is missing. The jambs are chamfered internally and double chamfered externally. There is a glazing-bar-slot and glazing-bar-holes. At the E end of the N wall there is a round-headed splayed embrasure with a two-light cusped ogee-headed window, very similar to the window opposite in the S wall. Some of the sandstone surrounds have simple mouldings. Immediately below the base of this window surround on the W side is the first stone of an offset composed of chamfered corbels carrying a thicker upper wall. The masonry in the upper wall is much more compacted and amidst the limestone blocks are numerous worked sandstone blocks, mainly jambs and surrounds. This corbel course stops just E of a second window in the N wall and restarts a short distance W of this window but only for two corbel lengths, the wall becoming one thickness. The whole area under this window opening has been rebuilt recently. The round-splayed limestone head is still in place, as is the head of a single-light cusped ogee-headed window, the jambs and base of which are gone. The N wall has a number of small beam-holes roughly at the level of the start of the embrasure head. At the W end of the N wall there is a solid projection of masonry of unknown function with two large limestone arched recesses to the N of the projection contained within the thickness of the N wall. The masonry at this W end of the N wall is quite different to that in the church proper - small randomly coursed stones are used with a heavy mortar. Three phases of building have been identified in the fabric of the church. The claustral buildings are in a ruinous condition.There are a series of two-storey barrel-vaulted chambers orientated on an N-S axis running S of the nave of the church. S of these chambers there is a stair turret, the ground and first floor of which survive in a ruinous state although the NW corner is very precarious. This turret was entered through a two-centred cut limestone doorway. In the SW angle of the turret are the remains of a garderobe. From this turret a wall extends southward which contains a loop at first-floor level. This wall returns to E, though most of the wall has collapsed and all the quoinstones have been robbed. There was a building SW of the church, only the SE angle and portion of the E and S wall of which survives. It has a flat-headed window with sandstone jambs and a limestone head in the E wall and a large embrasure in the S wall with both sandstone and limestone surrounds. Flush with the E gable of the church, roughly opposite the stair turret and slightly S of it, is the NE angle of a building survives to a height of c. 3m. According to a farmer with adjacent property this graveyard (TN021-042002-) was 'cleaned up' c. 1992 by a local committee. The clean-up involved a JCB which removed a large quantity of stone. Amongst the loose stones still in the graveyard there is an engaged pillar with a capital of moulded sandstone of thirteenth-century date. The site appears to have consisted of an abbey church along the N range with domestic buildings on the E, S and W with a possible cloister now used as a graveyard in the centre. The site was described in 1840 by O'Donovan as an abbey in a dilapidated state of which survived the E gable, the N and S walls of the choir (L. 59ft 7in (18m); Wth 27ft10in (8.5m); wall T 3ft 8in (1.2m)) along with the N wall of the nave and the crossing tower which divided the nave from the chancel (Gleeson 1915, vol. 1, 144). A pointed doorway in the crossing-tower gave access to a spiral staircase from which the first floor of the tower was accessed. There was a large pointed window in the E gable and a mural stairs in the S wall rising eastwards from which a gallery may have been accessed (ibid.). There is now no trace of the crossing tower with stairs or the mural stairs in the S wall. Licence No.02E1707 This site is in the same townland as Tyone Abbey, near Nenagh. To date, two house foundations have been monitored, and nothing of archaeological significance was encountered. It has been arranged that this project will continue intermittently into 2003. Tracy Collins, Aegis Archaeology Ltd, 16 Avondale Court, Corbally, Limerick. The above description is derived from 'The Archaeological Inventory of County Tipperary. Vol. 1 - North Tipperary' compiled by Jean Farrelly and Caimin O'Brien (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2002). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload/revision: 22 September 2008