Tag Archives: Ruins

A Peculiar Melancholy Air



As previously mentioned, George Moore’s 1886 series of essays Parnell and his Island describes a duck shoot that brings him and another man to the ruins of Castle Carra, County Mayo. After leaving that building, the pair walk on an come across ‘the ruins of what is almost a modern house; there is a vast courtyard, and in the centre a colossal stone fox, and farther away is the ruin of a great gateway, and on the hill stand colossal foxhounds.’ This was what remained of a residence built probably at the start of the 18th century by Sir Henry Lynch and then abandoned by his son Robert. There was an earlier mention of the same property in 1836 when the Rev. Richard Butler of Trim and his wife Harriet (née Edgeworth) together with Harriet’s sister Maria and step-mother Frances came to stay with George Moore’s grandparents at Moore Hall, located to the south east of Castle Carra. The went to see the latter site which ‘had that peculiar melancholy air of modern decay belonging to houses which have been abandoned within the memory of man, and on passing through it to the grounds beyond, the party were startled at seeing immense busts on pedestals still standing in the long grass, the remains of former decorations. Ben Johnson, Congreve and some other of the later dramatists of Charles II’s time, were here, presenting a strange grotesque appearance, stained and weather-beaten in this wild and remote corner of the world.’ Since the time of the Butlers, and indeed of George Moore, the busts, as well as the colossal stone fox and hounds, have long disappeared, and the remains disintegrated much further, so that it is even more challenging to imagine how this great house and its surroundings once appeared. The best surviving remnants are the two immense stone gateposts, rising some 17 or 18 feet high. The ‘peculiar melancholy air’ observed by Harriet Butler also continues to hang over the place.



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Difficult to Locate without a Guide


In Parnell and His Island, originally published as a series of articles in Le Figaro in 1886, George Moore recalls an early morning duck shooting expedition on Lough Carra, County Mayo. He and his companion set off in the dark across the wind-tossed lake in a water-logged boat, landing before the remains of Castle Carra. Moore describes how, to escape the bitterly cold wind, the two men decide to take shelter in the building. ‘Dacre says he’ll be able to find the way, and after much scratching amid the bushes, and one cruel fall on the rocks, we reach some grass-grown steps and climb through an aperture into what was once probably the great hall. A high gable shows black and massy against the sky, and tall grass and weeds grow about our feet, and farther away the arching has fallen and forms a sort of pathway to the vault beneath. Centuries of ivy are on walls, and their surfaces are broken by wide fissures, vague and undistinguishable in the shadow and cold gloom. But as the moon brightens I see, some fifteen feet above me, a staircase – a secret staircase ascending through the enormous thickness of the walls. What were these strange ways used for? Who were they who trod them centuries ago? Slender women in clinging and trailing garments, bearded chieftains, their iron heels clanging; and as I evoke the past, rich fancies come to me, and the nostalgia of those distant days, strong days that were better and happier than ours, comes upon me swiftly, as a bitter poison pulsing in blood and brain; and regardless of my friend’s counsels, I climb towards the strange stairway, as I would pass backwards out of this fitful and febrile age to one bigger and healthier and simpler…’ 





Sited on a small peninsula on the eastern shores of Lough Carra, the castle here was built by the Anglo-Norman Adam de Staunton in the late 13th century. His descendants remained in possession of the property for the next 300 years, mixing with other local families and hibernising their surname to MacEvilly. In 1574 the castle’s owner was Moyler or Miles M’Evilly, but some time later the building and surrounding lands were acquired by Captain William Bowen, his possession confirmed by deed of feoffment dated November 1591 and made to him by Peter Barnewall, Baron Trimleston. How the latter came to have a claim on the place is unclear.  Following Captain Bowen’s death without an heir in 1594, Carra Castle passed into the ownership of his elder brother Robert Bowen who lived in County Laois. He in turn gave it to his younger son Oliver Bowen, who occupied the castle until the outbreak of the Confederate Wars in 1641 when he fled to Wales, dying there without issue in 1654. After the restoration of Charles II in 1660, Castle Carra was granted to Sir Henry Lynch, third Baronet, a member of the well-known Galway family. His grandson, Sir Henry Lynch (fifth baronet) took up residence in the area, building a new residence close to the old castle which was then abandoned. A series of formal terraces led from this house down to the lakeshore. However, following Sir Henry’s death in 1764, his heir Robert Lynch moved to another property in County Mayo, originally called Moate but then renamed Athavallie near the town of Balla; today this building is a community school. Sir Robert had married Jane Barker, granddaughter and heiress of Tobias Blosse of Little Bolsted, Suffolk and assumed the additional surname of Blosse, the family thereafter being known as Lynch-Blosse. Meanwhile, both the old castle and the more recently constructed house at Carra were abandoned, the latter building being described as ‘almost in ruins’ in a report on the estate prepared by civil engineer and land surveyor Samuel Nicholson in 1844. 





The core of Castle Carra dates from the time of Adam de Staunton in the late 13th century, although several alterations were subsequently made to the building. Measuring some 45 by 25 feet internally, and of three storeys with its entrance on the first floor of the south side, the roofless castle is an example of the mediaeval chamber-tower which typically comprised a rectangular block with large open spaces on the first-floor level. Later additions to the site include a plinth, bawn and gateway, these probably dating from the 15th century. Long neglected and in a relatively remote spot, an Irish Tourist Association survey undertaken in the early 1940s describes the castle as ‘difficult to locate without a guide’, and that remains the case to the present day. 


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Anno Domini Millessimo Sexcentessimo Decimoquinto



What survives of the original Castle Archdale, County Fermanagh. This was built in 1615 by John Archdale, originally from Suffolk, who had paid £5, six shillings and 8 pence three years earlier for 1,000 acres of land here. The residence he constructed was T-plan in form with a defensive bawn 15 feet high, measuring 66 feet by 64 feet and with two flankers on its northern corners above a steep rise of ground. In 1641, the castle was captured by Rory Maguire and while its heir, William Archdale, was saved by his nurse, his siblings were all killed. After the property was returned to the family, it was repaired and inhabited again until 1689 when, during the Williamite Wars, the castle was once more attacked and burnt out. Thereafter it was left abandoned. Above the semi-circular entrance gate on the south side is an inscription in Latin – Data Fata Secutus Johannes Archdale Hoc. Edificium Struxit Anno Domini Millessimo Sexcentessimo Decimoquinto – noting that the castle had been built by John Archdale in 1615. A large Palladian house, also called Castle Archdale, was built nearby by the family in the following century, but this was demolished in 1970 and now only the stableyard remains. 



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A Fair Stone Howse


Thought to have been born in Paisley, Scotland around 1577, Sir George Hamilton was a younger son of Claud Hamilton, first Lord Paisley. Following the accession of James VI to the English throne (as James I) in 1603, and the Flight of the Earls from Ulster four years later, Sir George and his older siblings were granted lands in that part of Ireland. By 1611, having received some 12,400 statute acres, he had moved to this country where he and was living with his family in the Strabane area of County Tyrone part of which, lying to the east of a 15th century former O’Neill tower house on Island MacHugh in Lough Catherine, was called Derrywoone. Unlike many of his fellow Scots Sir George was a staunch Roman Catholic, described in 1622 as “an arch-papist and a great patron of them.’ Following the death of his first wife Isobel Leslie, in 1630 Hamilton married Lady Mary Butler, a daughter of the 11th Earl of Ormond. When her father had difficulty paying the agreed dowry of £1,800, he granted his new son-in-law the manor, castle, town, and lands of Roscrea, County Tipperary for 21 years (for more on the castle, see A Dominant Presence « The Irish Aesthete). In 1646, during the Confederate Wars, Roscrea was attacked and captured by Owen Roe O’Neill, but it is unclear whether Hamilton was still alive at this date or had already died. In part the confusion arises because one of his nephews, likewise Sir George Hamilton and likewise married to another Lady Mary Butler, then lived not far away in Nenagh, County Tipperary. The latter Sir George, incidentally, was father of Anthony Hamilton, author of the famous Mémoires du Comte de Grammont, first published in 1713. 





Now deep in woodland but presumably once with clear views over Lough Catherine to the immediate west, Derrywoone Castle is believed to have been built for Sir George Hamilton around 1619; work there was almost complete three years later when it was recorded as being a  ‘fair stone howse, 4 stories high, which is almost finished, and a bawne of stone and lyme, 90 foot long, 70 foot broad and 14 foot high. The house takes up almost the full bawne. As soon as it is finished, he [Hamilton] intends to dwell there himself.’ The same report suggests that in excess of 80 families may have been settled in the vicinity of the castle, although an archaeological survey in 2013 revealed no evidence of houses here. More a fortified house than a castle, Derrywoone was designed as an L-shaped residence with large window openings on all sides and a fine gable end to the south. Stylistically, the castle reveals the Hamiltons’ Lowland-Scottish origins, not least thanks to a  finely carved corbelled out-staircase on the south-west side; a large round tower also survives on the north-east. 





Little information about the later history of Derrywoone seems to be available. Since Sir George moved to Roscrea following his second marriage and seems to have been based there, the castle may have stood empty or occupied by whoever was responsible for managing his property in this part of the country. He had one surviving son, James, who died unmarried in 1659. In the Down Survey for Tyrone, James Hamilton is described as ‘James Hamilton of Roskre Esqr. a minor Sone to Sr George Hamillton ye elder of Roskrea knight deceased who was a Scottish papist.’ Indeed, many of the Hamiltons, not just James’s cousin Anthony, remained both Roman Catholic and loyal to the Stuarts, going into exile in France and elsewhere in the late 17th century. However, eventually one of the family, James Hamilton, sixth Earl of Abercorn and a great-nephew of Sir George, conformed to the Established Church and inherited the Ulster estates. His descendants have lived there ever since, in the 18th century moving to a new residence. Located to the south of Derrywoone, it is called Baronscourt. 


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How the Mighty have Fallen


‘Sir Lucas Dillon, father of the first Earl of Roscommon, and son of Sir Robert Dillon, who was Attorney-General to Henry VIII, built the castle and church of Moymett, after having received the grants of the Abbey of the Virgin Mary at Trim, and the townlands of Ladyrath, Grange of Trim, Cannonstown and Rathnally, in the year 1567.’
From ‘A Continuation of Notes on Sepia Sketches of Various Antiquities presented to the Library of the Royal Irish Academy’ by George V Du Noyer, in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol. VII, 1862.





The tomb of Sir Lucas Dillon (c.1530-1593) and his first wife Jane Bathe in Newtown Trim, County Meath has featured here before (see Former Greatness « The Irish Aesthete). As mentioned above, he was the eldest son of Sir Robert Dillon, and member of a Norman family which had settled in Ireland in the 12th century and thereafter prospered. A Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas, Sir Robert, despite being Roman Catholic, assisted in the English crown in the dissolution of monasteries in Ireland and in 1537 was granted a 21-year lease of the demesne of St Peter’s at in Newtown Trim and three years later was allowed to buy the property (in 1546 he also purchased the Carmelite monastery at Athcarne, Co. Meath). Like his father, Lucas Dillon became a lawyer and in 1565 was appointed Solicitor General for Ireland. He would later become Attorney General, a member of the Irish Parliament, Chief Baron of the Exchequer (succeeding his late father-in-law), and then a member of the Irish Privy Council. During this period, he acquired the land at Moymet, some four miles north-west of Newtown Trim which he also owned. Again like his father, he acted in the service of the English government: in Terry Clavin’s entry in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, he notes that Dillon ‘believed that the best means of pacifying Ireland was by the extension of the common law to all corners of the island.’ He was especially close to Sir Henry Sidney, Lord Deputy of Ireland 1565-71 and again 1575-78 and accompanied the latter on his tours of Ireland; Sidney knighted Dillon in 1575. Inevitably as he grew older, the number of Dillon’s enemies increased – he often faced charges of corruption – but he managed to hold on to his offices until he died in 1593. His eldest son James would become first Earl of Roscommon, despite remaining Roman Catholic, although (although subsequent generations conformed to the Established Church).





In their guide to North Leinster, Professors Casey and Rowan described the buildings at Moymet as ‘a rare microcosm of late medieval life in Ireland.’ The ensemble begins with a substantial three-storey gatehouse, comprising an entrance archway, once vaulted, with a number of rooms above. On the west side, a narrow vaulted chamber has a spiral staircase in one corner giving access to the upper level. A short distance south of this lie the remains of the castle which would have served as the Dillons’ residence. Although now in poor condition, this was originally of four storeys, presumably with a typical vaulted chamber on the ground floor (none of the interior divisions survive). Several large window and chimney openings survive, as well as a garderobe in the south-east corner of the structure. There is also, seemingly a much-worn sheela-na-gig figure on the east wall, but the presence of an excessively inquisitive herd of cattle prevented the Irish Aesthete from seeing this. A long, low range to the immediate west probably acted as a service block. Meanwhile, further west of the castle stands a similarly ruined church, once dedicated to St Brigid. Like the other buildings on this site, it is thought to have been built, or perhaps rebuilt by Sir Luke Dillon since the church is in two parts, the nave wider than the chancel and lit by slender windows with trefoils carved into the spandrels, each then capped with hood moulding.  An internal staircase in the north-east corner of the nave formerly gave access to the rood-loft, where most likely a priest lived. At the east end, the chancel closes in a large rectangular window divided into three with ogee arches and, once more, a hood moulding over the whole. The church appears to have been damaged during the Confederate Wars of the 1640s and then abandoned, as were the nearby castle and its associated structures, leaving the whole to fall into decay.


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Some Highly Picturesque Remains



As the year draws to a close, some pictures of what remains of Corickmore, County Tyrone, a religious house founded c.1465 for Franciscans of the Third Order. The establishment had a relatively short life, being granted in 1603 to Sir Henry Piers and thereafter being allowed to fall into ruin. In Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837), we read ‘There are some highly picturesque remains of this abbey, affording an idea of the original extent and elegance of the buildings.’ Such is no longer the case, since only the east wall and window of the church survives in any substance, the rest of the building being reduced to low sections of masonry. The surrounding grounds, heavily overgrown, are filled with gravestones, some of which date back to the 17th century, not long after the site would have been relinquished by the Franciscans.



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The Fate of Carrigafoyle Castle


‘Carrick and Carrig are the names of nearly seventy townlands, villages and towns, and form the beginning of about 555 others; craig and creag are represented by the various forms Crag, Craig, Creg, &c., and these constitute or begin about 250 names; they mean primarily a rock, but they are sometimes applied to rocky island.
Carrigafoyle, an island in the Shannon, near Ballylongford, Kerry, with the remains of Carrigafoyle castle near the shore, the chief seat of the O’Conors Kerry, is called in the annals, Carraig-an-phoill, the rock of the hole; and it took its name from a deep hole in the river immediately under the castle.’
From The Origin and History of Irish Names of Places by P.W. Joyce (1869)





‘Sir William Pelham and the earl of Ormond set out early this year [1580] on a fresh campaign in Desmond’s territory; the first marching first to Limerick in the beginning of February, and the latter to Cork, and both forming a junction at the foot of Slieve Mis, near Tralee. They spared neither age nor sex in their march, and, owing to the state of desolation to which the country had been reduced, suffered not a little inconvenience themselves for want of provisions. They then marched northwards to destroy the castles still garrisoned by Desmond’s men, and first laid siege to the strong castle of Carrigafoyle (Carrig-an-phuill) situated in an islet in the Shannon, on the coast of Kerry. The Four Masters say that Pelham landed some heavy ordnance from Sir William Winter’s fleet, which arrived on the Irish coast about this time, and battered a portion of the castle, crushing some of the warders beneath the ruins; but other annalists make no mention of cannon landed from the ships.’
From The History of Ireland, Ancient and Modern by Martin Haverty (1867)





‘For the rebels it was a losing game all through. Pelham and Ormond took Desmond’s strongholds one by one. Carrigafoyle Castle on the south shore of the Shannon was his strongest fortress. It was valiantly defended by fifty Irishmen and nineteen Spaniards, commanded by Count Julio an Italian engineer: but after being by cannon until a breach was made, it was taken by storm about the 27th March. Without delay the whole garrison, including Julio with six Spaniards and some women, were hanged or put to the sword…A few days after the capture of this fortress the garrisons of some others of Desmond’s castles, including Askeaton, abandoned them, terrified by the fate of Carrigafoyle.’
From A Short History of Ireland, from the Earliest Times to 1608 by P.W. Joyce (1893)


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Seventy Years Ago…


The charming cathedral dedicated to St Brendan in Clonfert, County Galway has featured here before (see The Traveller’s Rest « The Irish Aesthete). And because Clonfert was, until the 1833, a separate diocese in the Church of Ireland (it remains so in the Roman Catholic church), there was also an episcopal palace, now alas a sad ruin. Standing a short distance to the north of the cathedral, the oldest part of this building is thought to date back to the late 16th or early 17th century, possibly constructed during the episcopacy of Stephen Kirwan (bishop of Clonfert 1682-1701) who served as a justice and commissioner for the province of Connaught. There is no doubt that Clonfert, today a sleepy hamlet, was then judged a place of some importance since in 1579, Elizabeth I, in her Orders to be observed by Sir Nicholas Maltby for the better government of the province of Connaught’ declared ‘We are desirous that a college should be erected in the nature of an university in some convenient place in Ireland for instructing and education of youth in lerninge. And We conceive the Town of Clonfert within the province of Connaught to be aptlie seated both for helth and comodity of the ryver of Shenen running by it and because it is also neere to the midle of the realme, whereby all men may, with small travel send their children thither.’ The queen may have heard that during a much earlier period, Clonfert had been a great seat of learning, or perhaps it was just that the cathedral and its ancillary buildings were located in a central location and, as she observed, close to the river Shannon, then a major means of travel through Ireland. However, the idea of establishing a college here never happened, and it was only in 1592 that the country’s first university was founded in Dublin.





As mentioned, while parts of the former bishop’s palace in Clonfert may go back to the late 16th century, a more substantial portion of the building dates from c.1635, during the episcopacy of Robert Dawson, who had become Bishop of the newly-united dioceses of Clonfert and Kilmacduagh in 1627 and would hold that position until his death in 1643 (incidentally, he was also the forebear of a family that would go on to become great landowners and developers in Ireland, not least his great-grandson Joshua Dawson who was responsible for laying out Dawson Street in Dublin and building what is now the Mansion House). Oak beams and roof joists in the palace have been dated to around this period, although further changes and additions were made at some time in the 18th century, when a Venetian window was inserted.
In his memoirs, published in 1805, the playwright Richard Cumberland wrote about the palace in Clonfert, which he knew well since his father Denison Cumberland had lived there while bishop of the diocese (1763-1772). ‘This humble residence,’ he recalled, ‘was not devoid of comfort and convenience, for it contained some tolerable lodging rooms, and was capacious enough to receive me and mine without straitening the family. A garden of seven acres, well planted and disposed into pleasant walks, kept in the neatest order, was attached to the house, and at the extremity of a broad gravel walk in front stood the cathedral.’ Cumberland also remembered how, while staying with his father on one occasion, he used ‘a little closet at the back of the palace, as it was called, unfurnished and out of use, with no other prospect from my single window but that of a turf-stack’, as a room in which to begin writing what would prove to be his most successful stage work, the comedy The West-Indian (first performed at London’s Drury Lane Theatre in 1771). However, Clonfert was always one of the poorest episcopacies in the country and as a result successive bishops – many of whom managed to have themselves transferred to richer dioceses after only a short period of time – were disinclined to make improvements to their residence. For this reason, it retained much of its 17th century character, being long and low, of eight bays and two storeys with dormer windows. The surrounding demesne also underwent relatively few changes. There survives, for example, a yew walk running south-west of the palace, which may be even older, but certainly has the character of 17th century baroque garden design. Like the building to which it leads, the yew walk is now sadly neglected.




Clonfert Palace remained home to successive Church of Ireland bishops until 1834 when, following the creation of a new united diocese of Killaloe and Clonfert, it became surplus to requirements and was sold to John Eyre Trench. In 1947 his descendants sold the building to the Blake-Kelly family who, four years later, sold it to the next owners who would be the last people to live in the former palace. By then the place was in poor condition and required extensive renovation, along with the installation of electricity, new bathrooms and so forth before it could be occupied; the new chatelaine drove over from her temporary residence in Co Tipperary to oversee this work. Finally, once complete, in February 1952 she and her family arrived, along with a retinue that included housekeeper, cook, maid and chauffeur, as well as a gardener to maintain the grounds. A local newspaper, the Westmeath Independent, reported that ‘‘Sir Oswald and Lady Mosley, who have a large staff, are charmed with Ireland, its people, the tempo of its life and its scenery.’ The same publication also briefly noted that ‘Sir Oswald was the former leader of a political movement in England.’ The ‘political movement’ had, of course, been the British Union of Fascists (later the British Union) and both Sir Oswald and his wife, the former Diana Mitford, had been interned for a number of years during the second World War by the British government, and had found themselves shunned in the aftermath of their release. Ireland had several advantages, not least the fact that two of Diana Mosley’s sisters already owned properties in the country, Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire at Lismore Castle, County Waterford and Pamela Jackson at Tullamaine Castle, County Tipperary. Country houses here were going cheap, and there were still sufficient other landed families still about to make life agreeable to the newly-arrived. For the next two years, the Mosleys remained contentedly at Clonfert, attracting little attention although they were discreetly observed by both the Irish and British governments. Such might have remained the case, had not disaster struck exactly 70 years ago, in early December 1954. At the time, Diana Mosley was in London, but her husband and their two children were in County Galway when fire broke out, seemingly caused by an old beam inside the chimney of the maids’ sitting room. The blaze spread quickly, so fast indeed that according to a report in the following day’s Irish Times, a French maid, Mademoiselle Cerrecoundo, who had run upstairs to rescue some clothes, became trapped in the building. Sir Oswald, his son Alexander and the chauffeur, Monsieur Thevenon, held a blanket beneath one of the windows and the maid leapt to her safety, with only minor injuries to her back and hand. Alas, the old palace was not so lucky and while a handful of rooms and their contents were saved, most of the building was lost as it took an hour and a half for fire brigades to reach Clonfert. The following day, hurricane-force winds and torrential rain ripped across the entire country, compounding the damage done to the house and leaving it a sorry wreck. In 1955 the Mosleys moved to Ileclash, a Georgian overlooking the river Blackwater in County Cork where they lived intermittently until 1963 when the couple moved to France. As for Clonfert Palace, despite being described on www.buildingsofireland.com in 2009 as being of national significance, it was left to moulder into its present advanced state of decay. What could have been saved as a rare example of late 16th/early 17th century Irish domestic architecture has been lost.


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Undaunted and Vigorous Still


‘Dunloe Castle stands on a bold promontory overlooking the river near the bridge. It has a worn, but wild and hardy look about it, as if it had suffered much at the hand of time, but remained undaunted and vigorous still. The view from the castle is most exquisite, and the row down the river will be found to be not the least interesting portion of the excursion…The castle has been kept in good repair by its various proprietors. Its position was, in former days, a strong one; and it was doubtless erected for the purpose of commanding the river and the pass into the mountains. In the time of Henry VIII and Elizabeth, it frequently stood the brunt of warfare; and in 1641 it was besieged and nearly demolished by the Parliamentary forces under Ludlow.’
From The Lakes of Killarney by Robert Michael Ballantyne (1865)




‘Let no one leave Killarney without rowing a mile or two down the Laune and visiting Dunloe Castle by water; – as we did in the “gloaming” of a summer evening, when the lake was calm – the grey fly floating on its surface, and the salmon and trout springing from the waters…but here stands the Castle on its bold promontory above the river – a firm, fearless looking keep, approached by a steep hill-road, recalling both by its shape and situation, one of the Rhine towers. Land, by all means and, as it is permitted, ascend; and passing through a turngate, walk along the terrace, which commands a view of the magnificent slopes, which a little pains might easily convert into hanging gardens. The greater part of the kitchen-offices were burnt some years ago, so that the dwelling-castle has a gaunt and isolated appearance, in accordance with the wild mountain scenery.’
From A Week in Killarney by Mr and Mrs S.C. Hall (1843)




‘As we drive along, behold beneath us a view of Dunloe Castle, the remains of an old fortress, that, like Ross Castle, was used by the turbulent chiefs of the country as a place of strength and security. It suffered many vicissitudes and, at last, during the reign of Oliver Cromwell, was partly demolished by bombardment. It has been, by some late repairs, converted into a very romantic residence by the late Major Mahoney, whose politeness and attention every stranger was sure to experience. There is an embattled walk around the top, from which an extensive view of the Lake and the surrounding mountains may be taken, if the stranger deem it of sufficient importance to pause for it.’
From A New Guide to the Scenery of Killarney by D.E. Fitzpatrick (1845)


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The Place of Pleasant Aspect



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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