The somewhat scant remains of Inch Abbey, County Down. Originally on an island in the Quoile marshes (but since these were drained now on the banks of the river Quoile, the first monastic settlement here was established c.800 but few traces of it survive: the buildings were plundered more than once in the 11th and 12th centuries by the Vikings. The present monastery dates from 1180 when Cistercian monks from Furness in Lancashire were settled here by the Anglo-Norman knight John de Courcy and his wife Affreca as an act of atonement for his destruction of another religious house at nearby Erinagh.

Although wealthy, Inch Abbey seems never to have had a particularly large community; growth in numbers weren’t helped by Parliament restricting admission to the monastery to the English or Anglicised Irish. This helps to explain why in the 15th century, the transepts were blocked off and a small church created out of the chancel and the first bay of the nave, the rest of the space being abandoned. The tall east windows survive, as do those to the immediate north and south, but not much else, with few parts of the ancillary buildings still above ground. Inch Abbey was suppressed in 1541 and the site, together with some 850 acres, was granted to Gerald FitzGerald, 11th Earl of Kildare.