Abbey Church, Clones

Situated towards the bottom of a S-facing slope and now within Clones town. St Tigearnach was descended through his father from the Uí Bhairrce, an obscure Leinster sept who have given their name to the Barony of Bargy in Wexford, but his mother was descended from kings of Oirghialla, at that time a prominent Ulster kingdom occupying the area between the Erne and the Upper Bann. According to what are probably fourteenth century and later Lives, he was educated at Whithorn in England and visited Rome where he collected relics of Ss Peter and Paul before establishing a monastery at Clones where he died in AD 549-50 (Ó Riain 2011, 572-3). Three bishops of Clogher after the first, St Macartin or Mac Caorthainn, were based at Clones rather than Clogher (Gwynn and Hadcock 1970, 164) and there are many references to Clones in the annals from 714.

The monastery was plundered by Vikings in 836 and destroyed by fire in 1095 (McKenna 1920, vol. 2, 1-12), but probably from the 1140s it had been transformed into the Augustinian abbey of Ss Peter and Paul, under which name it is listed, separate from the church or parish church of Clones (MO011-010016-) in the ecclesiastical taxation (1302-06) of Pope Nicholas IV (Cal. doc. Ire, 5, 212). A copy of the Gospels that had reputedly been given to St Mac Caorthainn by St Patrick was enshrined at Clones in the mid fourteenth century, according to inscriptions on its sides that refer to John O Karbri, abbot of Clones who died in 1353 and John Barrdan, the craftsman who made it. The Domhnach was normally held at Clogher, Co. Tyrone, and it is now part of the Royal Irish Academy collection in the National Museum of Ireland. (Shirley 1879, 169-72; McKenna 1920, 2, 36-49; Bourke 2006)

By 1414 the abbey was so impoverished that indulgences were granted to fund necessary works to the church and cloister (Gwynn and Hadcock 1970, 164). It escaped the general Suppression of the monasteries in 1539-40, but c. 1586-7 it was identified by Sir Henry Duke of Castlejordan, Co. Meath (ME052-005----) who leased the premises and land from the Crown as the Manor of Clones. His widow, Mary, married again to Sir Francis Rushe, and the property descended through their daughter Elenor to the Barrett-Leonard family, with whom it remained into the nineteenth century. In a lease of 1629 the remains of the abbey are described as ‘containing half an acre, wherein standeth one church half covered with straw, the kitchen and divers other ruinous edifices, with one garden and orchard’ (Shirley 1879, 173-4; McKenna 1920, 2, 1-27)

Of the church founded by St Tigearnach there is no trace. The church known as the Abbey is the chancel of a twelfth century Romanesque style of church, although very plain. It survives as the conserved walls of a structure (ext. dims 12.7m E-W; 6.15m N-S) but most of the N and E walls (H c. 1m) are rebuilt. There is a single round-headed window placed high in the S wall, and the arch (Wth 1.77m) in the W wall led to a nave that has disappeared. On the outer face of the N wall is a carving of a high cross (H 0.25m), much as the Clones high cross (MO011-010005-) appears today, and a shallow hollow (diam. 0.3m) in a nearby stone in the wall is where pilgrims are said to have rested their heads while touching the carving. This church is in a small graveyard (dims c. 25m E-W; c. 20m N-S) that was part of the main graveyard (MO011-010003-) c. 40m to the WSW before the N-S Whitehall St. severed the connection. The round tower (MO010-011002-) is incorporated into the wall of the larger graveyard at W and the stone shrine (MO011-010004-) is inside its S wall. (Wakeman 1875)

The earliest map of Clones from c. 1590 (illustrated in Shirley 1879) shows a large church with a crossing tower and transepts close to the round tower. This would be the Augustinian abbey that required work to its cloister in 1414, and it was probably located in the large graveyard E of the round tower (MO011-010002-), as so many churches stand in that relation to their round towers, but of the Clones cloister or the Augustinian transept church there is no trace.

This is a National Monument in state ownership: No. 111

Compile by: Michael Moore

Date of revised upload: 29 November 2016