Ross Errilly Friary

Ross Errilly was founded around 1351 and rebuilt and extended into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and it survives more completely than any other Franciscan house in Ireland - church, tower, cloister, refectory, kitchen with a water tank for live fish, bakery, mill and two courtyards, most of it standing to full height with the vaults intact. Walking through it gives a genuine sense of how a friary functioned, which ruins reduced to foundations cannot. The community was expelled and returned repeatedly through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the political situation changed, finally leaving in the 1750s. The site sits in flat farmland by the River Black, prone to flooding, which may be why it was never built over. There is no visitor centre, no staff and no charge - just a car park, a gate and the ruins, usually with nobody else in them.

History

The friary stands on the Black River about a mile northwest of Headford, its church and bell tower south of a small, well-preserved cloister with the domestic buildings to the north, among them a kitchen with an oven and a water tank for live fish, a bakehouse and a refectory; like many abandoned church sites in Ireland it is still used as a burial ground (Wikipedia, Ross Errilly Friary).

The main sights

• The completeness - church, cloister, refectory, kitchen and mill all standing.
• The fish tank - the stone water tank in the kitchen for keeping fish alive.
• The tower and vaults - intact to full height across much of the site.
• The emptiness - free, unstaffed, and rarely busy.

When to go

April to October. The field floods in winter and the ground is wet for much of the year. There is no lighting, so daylight only.

Before you go

Unstaffed with minimal interpretation - you work it out from the layout. Uneven floors, open stairs and low doorways throughout. The approach field is muddy and floods. No facilities at all.

Nearby

Headford is close; Lough Corrib and Cong are north-west.

Key facts