Ballymote Friary

On the W side of Ballymote town; in the NE corner of Ballymote graveyard (SL033-163002-). The remains of this friary consist of a rectangular gable-ended church (int. 28.5m E-W; 6.7m N-S; wall T c. 1.05m), built of roughly coursed limestone in a lime mortar. The N and E walls stand to near full height but the S and W walls are reduced a little in height. The structure was repaired in the 20th century by the OPW.

The central doorway in the W wall is missing its door surround. Directly overhead, externally, is a limestone head with a three-tiered crown/tiara surmounted by a cross; H. G. Leask in an unpublished report dated 1940 (SMR (1989) file) noted that this might be the representation of a pope (but see Conlan 1991, 5). There is a smaller doorway near the E end of the N wall, which is rebuilt. Inside it, on the E side, is a broken limestone stoup, on the undersurface of which is a damaged carving of a beast, possibly an amphisbaena (pers. comm. M. A. Timoney). The E gable contains a large central window. The internal edge of the embrasure is plain except for a soffit rib with chamfered edges. Only a single jambstone and bottom corner stone, both on the N side, survive of the window tracery. Near the W end of the S wall is a tall wide, open archway (Wth 3.5m). A drawing dating from 1779 (Harbison 2002, fig. 67) shows a gabled structure against the S wall in this area but nothing of it stands. In the same illustration, a second gabled projection is shown further E on the S wall (ibid.). This is reduced to a pile of rubble (c. 5.9m N-S; c. 3.8m E-W). There are also three window opes in the S wall. The interior of the church contains many 18th- and 19th-century burials. A limestone stoup (SL033-115----) (H 0.15m; 0.49m x 0.29m) with a central round flat-bottomed bowl (diam. 0.22m; D 0.1m), which is in the nearby RC Church in Ballymote, may have come from the friary or from the former RC Church (now Loftus Hall) immediately E of the friary (pers. comm. M. A. Timoney).

These are the remains of a Franciscan Third Order Regular foundation (Ó Muraíle 2002, 241, n. 35), which was given a papal licence in 1444 , was attacked and burned c. 1483 and by 1584 was 'totally ruined' (Gwynn and Hadcock 1970, 268). According to Conlan (1988, 108), it was 'taken over by the First Order c. 1643, and was used by them for nearly a hundred years afterwards.'