Just about enough survives to give visitors an idea of the former scale of the Franciscan friary on the edge of Armagh city. This was founded by Archbishop O’Scannail in 1263 and according to the Annals of the Four Masters, it was under the patronage of MacDomhnáill Gallogláigh (‘of the Gallowglasses’). The church, running to almost 164 feet, was supposed to be the longest of any of this religious order in Ireland, with a tower added between nave and chancel in the 15th century. Little now remains, because after the friary was suppressed in 1642, it fell into ruin, with Hugh O’Neill staging an ambush within the walls in 1596. The lands on which it stood passed into the control of the Archdiocese in 1620, and almost a century and a half later, during the primacy of Richard Robinson, much of the stone was used to build the garden walls of his new demesne, with the remainder left to serve as a picturesque ruin.

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