Sligo Abbey, Sligo

Located on the S bank of the River Garavogue, c. 500m from the river estuary, in Sligo Town, in the townland of Abbeyquarter North.

Sligo Dominican friary is a National Monument in State ownership (no. 189). It was established in 1252 by Maurice Fitz Gerald, 2nd Lord Offaly, for the Dominican Friars, and dedicated to the Holy Cross. The Annals of Loch Cé record for the year 1253: ‘A monastery was erected and a cemetery consecrated for the Friars Preachers at Sligech’ (Hennessy 1871, 403). Having taken part in the conquest of Connacht in 1235, Fitz Gerald built a castle (SL014-065006-) in 1245 and established the settlement that would become the town of Sligo. Like most mendicant foundations, the Sligo friars benefitted from both Anglo-Norman and Gaelic Irish patronage. The Annals of the Four Masters record that the friary was destroyed in 1414, following a fire started by a candle, but was rebuilt two years later in 1416 ‘by Friar Brian, son of Dermot MacDonough’ (O’Donovan 1856, 817 & 825). An inducement to fund the rebuild was offered by Pope John XXIII in a papal bull issued in 1415, granting an indulgence to penitents who ‘on the feast of the Assumption of St. Mary the Virgin, and on that of St. Patrick the Confessor, visit the church and give alms for the repair of it and the house of the Friars Preachers of Sligo (Scligie)...whose said church and house, in which were lately twenty friars, have been recently burned.’ (Cal. Papal Letters, vol. 6, 484). Irish lords buried in the friary include Tigernan, son of Ualgarc Ua Ruairc, king of Breifni, in 1418 (MacCarthy 1895, 75), and Brian MacDonough, Lord of Tirrerrill, in 1454 (Coleman 1902, 98). After the Dissolution of monasteries, the O’Conor Sligo, patrons of the friars, pleaded with Queen Elizabeth for the friary to be preserved, and in 1568 she agreed, as she was assured that the friars had become secular priests. An inquisition in 1585 lists among the possessions of the friary, a fishing weir and a quarter of land called the Fryer quarter (Coleman 1902, 98), the boundaries of which survive in the townlands of Abbeyquarter North and Abbeyquarter South, to the S and E of the friary. In 1595 Richard Bingham, Governor of Connacht, took up quarters in the friary, and stripped out its timber fittings to construct siege engines with which to attack Sligo castle, then held by Red Hugh O’Donnell’s men.

James I granted the friary and its lands to Wm. Taaffe, who had been appointed sheriff of Co. Sligo in 1588. A single friar remained at this stage, but in 1608 Father Daniel O’Crean arrived from Spain to establish a new Dominican community in Sligo; by 1622 there were ten friars, and in 1627 a Provincial Chapter was held. However, in the course of the war of 1641, Colonel Sir Frederick Hamilton marched on Sligo, burned the friary and killed the friars. The Dominican community later reformed, and there were five friars in Sligo in 1703 (Coleman 1902, 99-100). In 1865 a new Dominican convent was completed, situated on Dominick Street, just a short walk from the remains of the medieval friary.

The remains of the friary include a nave and chancel church, with central tower, part of the south lateral aisle and the transept or chapel; and to N of the church, the cloister, the E range, and part of the N range. The chancel and nave retains some of their original 13th-century character, but most of the other standing buildings and structures, such as the tower, S aisle and chapel, the cloister, and the domestic ranges, are 15th century or later in date, many probably dating to the phase of reconstruction that followed the 1414 fire.

The abbey is noteworthy for the rare survival of the 15th-century sculpted high altar, the rood screen and the reader’s desk; also for its very fine cloister, several striking decorative and figurative carvings that enliven the grey stones of the buildings, as well as a number of fine 16th- and 17th-century funerary monuments.

The buildings are constructed of roughly coursed limestone rubble masonry, apart from the nave arcade and tower pillars, which are of dressed limestone blocks. In the church, the W wall and W end of the N wall of the nave (int. c. 17m E−W; 6.55 N−S) are gone. The N wall of the nave retains three 13th-century, double pointed lancets, the middle one partly blocked by the 1506 O’Crean canopy tomb (SL014-065027-). Traces of plaster survive towards the W end of the N wall. Amongst the graveslabs on display in the nave, four (SL014-065035-; SL014-065036-; SL014-065037-; SL014-065038-) appear to be late medieval in date.

The nave is separated from the S aisle by an arcade of three pointed arches, resting on two large, elongated octagonal pillars with moulded bases and capitals and two engaged semi-octagonal pillars. The arcade is a 15th-century insertion in the 13th-century S wall of the nave, which is clearly marked by a string course framing the arcade. The original S and W wall of the aisle are gone and have been replaced by modern walls. At the E end of the aisle is a round-headed archway with an internal rib, giving access into the S chapel (int. c. 9.50m N–S and c. 6m E–W). The E wall of the chapel survives, but little remains of the S and W walls. In the E wall of the chapel, there is an arched altar recess towards the N end of the wall, and remnants of another to the S, but the windows they contained are gone. There is a small piscina niche in the SW corner of the N altar recess, and an aumbry adjacent to S. At the S end of the E wall there are remnants of a window with wide splay, and another aumbry. A grave slab (SL014-065039-), on display on the N wall of the chapel, is probably late medieval date.

At the E end of the nave is a rood screen structure (int.: 5.8m N–S; 1.47m E–W), which post-dates the tower. This is a rare survival. The structure originally consisted of two arcades of three pointed arches, supporting a rib-vault of three bays and a gallery above. It would have been fitted with screens to hide the chancel from view, opened only at certain moments of the liturgy, such as during the Elevation of the Host. The rood, a large representation of the crucifixion, would have been mounted above the central screen, facing towards the nave. The engaged columns at the four corners of the structure survive, and the W arcade has been restored, with two octagonal columns featuring moulded bases and capitals. In the N and S walls are arched recesses, which may have served as secondary altars. The S recess has an aumbry in its internal W wall.

Immediately to E of the rood screen is the central bell tower, supported at W and E by tall, broad pointed arches. The internal ribs on the E side have simple chamfered conical stops, but on the W side they terminate in elaborately sculpted corbels in the form of a man’s head to S and woman’s head to the N, both in extravagant 15th-century headdress, the man also sporting a luxuriant moustache. Above the male head an angel bears an escutcheon; above the female head an escutcheon is held by a pair of angels in intricately feathered garb. The heads are most likely representations of the benefactors who funded the construction of the tower.

In the N wall beneath the tower, there is a doorway leading to the cloister; it is slightly impeded by the NW pillar of the tower. In the S wall there is a pointed lancet, the west-most in the row of 13th-century windows that lit the chancel; this window and the doorway indicate the original W extent of the chancel prior to the construction of the tower in the 15th century. Underneath the lancet in the S wall are three 17-century sculpted wall monuments (SL014-065029-; SL014-065030-; SL014-065031-).

Above the arches, the tower tapers into a two-storey square belfry. At first floor level there are rectangular single lights in the W and E walls, a large pointed light in the N wall and a cinquefoiled ogee-headed single light with concave spandrels in the S wall. At second floor lev