Site of Abbey — Report the wrong picture

What is recorded here

Four centuries of weather and forgetting reduced the Augustinian house to two shallow rectangles and one rubble mound. The canons who prayed beside St Brendan's Cathedral are gone, but the earth still holds the shape of their rooms. What remains is not a ruin but a suggestion, waiting for someone to walk its unseen lines and remember that devotion once lived there.

Part of the monastic complex at Clonfert, this house of Augustinian Canons stood c. 160m to the ESE of 'St Brendan's Cathedral (GA101-017001-). Traditionally associated with St Mary de Portu Pero, it was possibly founded by Turlough O’Connor sometime between 1140-80 (Gwynn and Hadcock 1970, 164-5). By the mid-19th century the OS Letters (1927, Vol. 2, 108) recorded that the 'monastery' had all but disappeared apart from 'a small fragment of one wall 12 feet [3.6m] high, 7 [2.1m] broad, and three (3) [0.9m] feet thick'. All that now survives is a series of earthworks comprising two rectangular enclosures. The N enclosure (42.2m E-W; N-S 36m) is defined along its S and W sides by a bank (Wth 3.5m; H 0.2m), and along the E side by a scarp. An E-W running road cuts through its N limits. In the SE corner of the interior a rectangular structure (12m N-S; 8.5m E-W) is defined by grassed-over foundations along the N, E and W sides while a large mound of densely overgrown rubble (D 6.8m) forms its S side. Abutting the S side of the enclosure is the second larger enclosure (55m E-W; 32m N-S). It is defined along the E, S and W sides by a scarp. The E side is very irregular in outline. According to local information, some ‘graveslabs’ were found in the SE sector of the interior but no visible surface trace of them survives; they may be overgrown. Compiled by: Galway Archaeological Survey, UCG Date of upload: 16 January 2020

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