Popular belief proposes that Balleighan Abbey, County Donegal was founded close to the eastern shore of Lough Swilly by Hugh Dubh O’Donnell at the beginning of the 16th century. In fact the building is older than that and while it may have been associated with the O’Donnells, the place was a church of the Third Order of the Franciscans who had a friary directly opposite on the lough’s western side. The location’s name derives from the Irish The name is derived the Irish ‘Baile-aighidh-chaoin’, meaning the place of pleasant aspect, although this was hard to appreciate when the Irish Aesthete visited on a dank, grey afternoon. With little surviving decoration, the roofless church retains a singularly fine 15th century window with sinuous tracery, today mostly appreciated by cattle grazing in the surrounding fields.
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Hello Robert- Is this another Victim of English repression ? My guess is patrons in 17c were driven away and so they didn’t survive . the window design really cool – wish more of the placed survived.
Cows seem to have the best access to fine Irish architecture.
Tom
The relief-carved head above the east window caught my eye. It is remarkably similar to one I know well which has quite a story of its own. Local lore says the one in question was supposedly taken from Kilmacrenan Friary and built into the then-new CofI church (c. 1620) nearby. When this church was vacated in the 1840s and a new CofI church was being built in the village, the stone disappeared. In the 1950s, it was ploughed up from a field beside the RC church in Termon, a few miles away, also built in the 1840s. Joining the dots between Kilmacrenan and Balleighan makes this read very satisfying…