The tower of the church at Quin Friary, County Clare seen through one of its transept windows. Another of the outstanding Franciscan houses in Ireland, Quin Friary was established in the mid-14th century by members of the local MacNamara family. However, it was built on the site, and incorporated parts, of a castle built in 1280 by the Norman Richard de Clare in an unsuccessful attempt to subdue the same family: six years later this structure was attacked and burnt by Cuvea MacNamara who slaughtered most of its occupants. The subsequent friary had an equally bloody and incendiary history. In 1584, for example, Donough Beg O’Brian, having been half-hanged from a cart and his bones broken with the back of an axe was strung up while still alive from this same tower by Sir John Perrot; a few years later the building was again set alight by another of the O’Brians. Somehow, and with intermittent breaks, Franciscan friars continued to live on the site, the last resident only dying in 1820. Today there is little evidence of the friary’s turbulent past.