Rock Abbey

On the W side of road leading N from Glanworth village. The remains of the Dominican Priory of the Holy Cross consist in a rectangular church comprised of a nave and chancel divided by a tower; there are no standing remains of the claustral ranges, which stood N of the church (Leask 1960, 182). While the Roche family has been given as the main founders c. 1475 (Gwynn and Hadcock 1988, 225), a document in the Calendar of Papal Letters dating to April 1475 states that the bishop of Cork and Cloyne and a Dominican friar petitioned the pope to allow ‘John de Geraldinis, knight of Kerry’ to give the friars an ‘abandoned stone wall and certain lands adjacent thereto in the town of Gleannwyr’, which is the Irish form of Glanworth (Twemlow 1955, 433). This may have been the 6th Knight of Kerry, John Caoch fitz Nicholas (Mosley 2003). The Fitzgeralds were great benefactors of the Dominican order (Lafaye 2012, 106). Smith (1750, vol. 1, 344) says it was founded in 1227 but there appears to be no other evidence for this date. The surviving remains are late 15th/16th-century in appearance; though the chancel is earlier than the nave and tower, there was probably only a short period between their construction.

The chancel (int. 14.17m E-W; 6.82m N-S) has a door, facing inwards, E of centre in the N wall; the surround has a pointed arch and a wicker-centred vault covers the doorway to the rear. The central window in the E gable has four round-headed lights surmounted by switchline tracery, covered by hood moulding; this window was returned from the nearby C of I church (Manning 2000, 4); the rear arch of the window embrasure is bluntly pointed with chamfered edging (there is a similar rear arch on all other window embrasures in the church). Three windows in the S wall of the chancel all have double ogee-headed lights, with recessed spandrels and hood moulding, the stonework recently restored. A piscina niche, near the E end of the S wall, has a pointed arch; there is a credence shelf halfway up the niche. There is a small wall press at the E end of the N wall. The Nave (int. 13.9m E-W; 6.77m N-S) has a central window in the W gable, missing its light, and two windows on the S wall: the easternmost window has a single round-headed light, the other a twin ogee-headed light. There is a wall press under the easternmost window. Access to the nave was through a doorway at the W end of the S wall, but it is now blocked up.

Between the nave and the chancel is a 4-storey tower; the chancel appears to be earlier than the tower and nave (which are contemporary), judging by the line of quoins on the exterior N and S walls of the chancel, in line with the E face of the tower, which likely mark where the construction of the chancel ended and that of the tower and nave began. The tower rises from four tall pointed arches, facing N, E, S and W; the arches have chamfered edges and a central chamfered soffit arch rising from pointed terminals. Behind the N and S arches are wicker-centred vaults extending to the side walls; a central window on the S wall under the vault has a single ogee-headed light in a splayed and lintelled embrasure; the N wall has an outward-facing doorway under pointed arch, slightly E of centre. All floors and the roof of the tower were wooden. The first floor chamber is accessed via doorways at the E end of the N and S walls, from a wall walk along the N and S walls of the church; a lintelled ope in the E wall overlooks the choir. Stairs rise from the W side of the doorway in the N wall, to the second-floor level where a door at the W end of the N wall gives access to the chamber. The latter is lit by a window with single ogee-headed light, in the centre of the S wall; a lintelled door in the centre of the E wall gave access to the attic over the choir. The third-floor chamber was probably accessed via a trap door from the floor below; it is lit by a central window in each wall: twin ogee-headed lights to the W and S, single lights to the E and N. The flashing course for the roof of the nave and the chancel are visible on the W and E faces of tower; the W face shows the plaster shadow from the re-roofing of the nave.

A string course and corbels along the exterior N face of the chancel supported a cloister-walk lean-to roof; no other remains of the claustral ranges are now evident, though a report dating to the dissolution of the friary in 1541 mentioned a cloister, dormitory, hall and other buildings (White 1943, 149). According to local information, these were demolished in the 19th century to provide stones for the building of the Glanworth-Mitchelstown road (the New Line), immediately E of the friary.

This is a National Monument in State Ownership (no. 558).