The ruin of Ross Errilly Friary, a medieval Franciscan abbey, is located about a mile to the northwest of Headford, County Galway, Ireland. It is among the best preserved medieval monastic sites in the country.
The church and bell tower are to one side of the small central cloister and the domestic buildings to the other. Among the latter are a kitchen (complete with oven and a water tank for live fish), a bake house, and a refectory or dining area. The dormitories are on the upper levels. One unusual feature is a second courtyard or cloister.
Like many other abandoned Christian sites in Ireland, Ross Errilly has since been used as a burial ground by area residents. In addition to tombs that date from the friary's active period, many graves dating from the 18th through 20th centuries can be found inside the church walls. In some cases, tombstones comprise the floors of walkways and crawlspaces.
History
Both Luke Wadding and the Four Masters (who refer to Ross Errilly in their Annals as Ros-Oirbhealagh) record that the abbey was founded in 1351. It was financed by the de Burghs, a locally prominent Norman family (from whence the modern name Burke derives).
It was greatly expanded during the 15th Century. In about 1473, a delegation of Franciscans from Ross Errilly went to Donegal at the request of the Tyrconnell clan and founded the Donegal Friary.
Life at Ross Errilly was disrupted by the English Reformation. The Franciscans had loudly opposed King Henry VIII's break with Rome, which would prove costly after the schism. In 1538, English authorities imprisoned two hundred of the monks and banished or killed an indeterminate number of others. The rest of the Franciscans' history at Ross Errilly would be marked by repeated evictions and other persecutions.
At the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the abbey was confiscated and given to Richard Burgh, Earl of Clanrickarde. Burgh, a descendant of the de Burghs who had helped found the abbey, quietly gave it back to the Franciscans.
In 1584, the English crown again confiscated the monastery from the Franciscans and gave it to an English noble who evicted the monks and plundered the building's contents. In 1586, the Earl of Clanrickarde purchased the monastery and again returned it to the Franciscans.
By the end of the century, however, the crown had once again expelled the monks and converted the monastery into an English garrison for use during the Nine Years War.
In 1604, Clanrickarde, continuing to honor the de Burgh tradition of supporting Ross Errilly, financed the rehabilitation and reoccupation of the monastery by the Franciscans. Their stay was short-lived; in 1612 Lord Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy of Ireland, ordered the Protestant archbishop of Tuam, William Daniel, to expel the monks and to demolish the abbey's altars. Daniel apparently complied with the order, but sent advance word to the residents of Ross Errilly and advised them to evacuate the abbey's most precious items.
In 1626, the monks returned to Ross Errilly and enjoyed a quarter-century of relative peace. The Irish campaigns of Oliver Cromwell brought that peace to an end, and for a few nervous years Ross Errilly served as an informal refugee shelter for Catholic clergy who had been flushed out of other parts of Ireland by Cromwell's forces. In May 1652, Ulick Burke, the Earl of Clanrickarde and erstwhile protector of Ross Errilly, was part of a group of Irish field officers who surrendered to Cromwellian forces at Galway.
On August 10, 1656, Cromwell's men finally made their way to Ross Errilly. The 140 Franciscans living there had fled a few hours earlier, but the soldiers ransacked the grounds, destroying crosses and other religious iconography and even defiling tombs in search of loot. Legend maintains that the fleeing monks somehow found the time to remove the bell from the bell tower and sink it in the nearby Black River, where it remains today.
Local records indicate that by 1712, Franciscans had returned to the abbey. The property was now owned by Lord St. George, a local noble, who picked up where the Clanrickardes had left off and secretly patronized the abbey. By this time, the Penal Laws were in effect and St. George risked life imprisonment by supporting the monks. In 1753, a vengeful family who had lost a lawsuit to St. George reported to the authorities that he was sheltering Catholic religious at the monastery. Before an inquiry could be organized, St. George learned of the accusations and the monks evacuated the monastery for the last time. By the time the authorities arrived at the abbey, St. George had arranged for the abbey's interior to be whitewashed and had employed a group of weavers and their looms inside the building. The inquiry was ended without further incident, but the sham factory was soon closed and the abbey fell into ruin.
Today, the ruin of Ross Errilly is maintained by Heritage Ireland and is open to the public, free of charge.
Reference
- The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Vol. V, No. I, October 1868 at Library Ireland