Corcomroe Abbey

Listed in the RMP (1996) as ‘Abbey’. Situated in an unforgettable position amidst the stony mountains of the Burren, Corcomroe Cistercian abbey lies five miles west of Kinvara, on the S side of Galway Bay. Cultivation of the soil can never have been easy, but the spot was not as desolate as it first appears, a point appropriately made by the latin name of the abbey, Petra Fertilis. As there is no stream beside the monastery, its water supply probably came from local springs or a well. Tober Sheela (CL003-029004-) lies within the walled garden (CL003-029001-). The site was colonised from Inislounaght in 1194-5 and the founder was either Donal Mór O’Brien, king of Thomond, or his son Donough Cairbreach. The community was always small and in the later middle ages extremely poor. Although a titular abbot is named in 1628, the house had long ceased to exist as a monastic entity. In 1554 the abbey was granted to Murrough O’Brien, earl of Thomond, the site thus reverting to the same family who gave the original endowment over three hundred years before.

The church (L 40m E-W) dates from 1210 to 1225, and was planned as a reduced version of the normal Cistercian scheme, with only one chapel opening off each transept. There is an aisled nave (Wth 7m), though the roughly built arches are not arranged symmetrically north and south and there is some doubt about whether a north aisle was ever built. The E end of the building is distinguished by the high quality of its stonework – carved capitals, decorated bases, chevron and other ornament – much of it characteristic of the ‘school of the west’. The presbytery is rib-vaulted in two bays with rubble cells in curved form. The diagonals are embellished with a triple roll moulding and the transverse arch between the two bays is ornamented with deeply undercut herringbone chevron reminiscent of the Lady Chapel at Glastonbury (Stalley 1987, 135). The E gable is lit by 3 narrow lancet windows with a fourth window above and the chapel off the S transept has good evidence of wicker centring. Before work progressed beyond the transepts a serious deterioration in quality occurred, perhaps due to the famines of 1227-8. In the later medieval period the church was shortened by an inserted wall, surmounted by a bell turret, and at the same time the roofs and upper walls were extensively remodelled. Fragmentary buildings survive in the S range and there a number of featureless ruins in the outer precincts (CL003-029006-, CL003-029008-), including the remains of a gatehouse (CL003-029005-). Inside the church is a magnificent sedile, a single-arched recess with an undivided seat. The pointed arch of the sedile is decorated with a late form of chevron and it rests on robust shafts with foliate capitals; the rear wall is embellished with two blind arches, each supported on corbels. There is an effigy (CL003-029007-) of King Conor na Suidane O’Brien (d. 1267), grandson of the founder and an effigy of a bishop (CL003-029008-). There are also some incised architectural drawings on the walls and a Viking-type ship graffito in the plaster on the N wall of the chancel (Rynne 1968, 76). Corcomroe Abbey is a national monument in State care, no. 11. Roofing of the presbytery and S transept was completed by the Office of Public Works in 2006. (Stalley 1987, 244)