| Boyle Abbey | |||||||
| Native Name: | Mainistir na Búille | ||||||
| Native Name Lang: | ga | ||||||
| Founder: | Mac Diarmada family | ||||||
| Established: | 1218 | ||||||
| Disestablished: | 1592 | ||||||
| Diocese: | Elphin | ||||||
| Status: | Inactive | ||||||
| Style: | Cistercian | ||||||
| Location: | Boyle, County Roscommon, Ireland | ||||||
| Coordinates: | 53.9736°N -8.2969°W | ||||||
| Map Type: | Ireland | ||||||
| Public Access: | Yes | ||||||
| Embedded: |
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Boyle Abbey (Irish: Mainistir na Búille)[1] is a ruined Cistercian friary located in Boyle, County Roscommon, Ireland. It was founded by Saint Malachy in the 12th century.
In the 12th century, Saint Malachy became aware of two new monastic orders in France, the Cistercians and the Augustinians, and he decided to introduce both orders to Ireland in an effort to reform the old Irish church which he felt had fallen out of line with much of the rest of Christian Europe.
The first Cistercian Abbey was founded at Mellifont, County Louth in 1142. St Malachy made arrangements that young aspirant Irish men who want to become Cistercians should be trained in St Bernard’s own monastery of Clairvaux or one of its daughter houses.
The Cistercians were invited to found an abbey in Moylurg as a daughter house of Mellifont. In 1148 Peter O’Mordha and twelve companions were sent to Connaught.
The Cistercians were welcomed and over many years were given land grants of about 50,000 acres (200 km2) scattered west of the River Shannon in 27 out-farms called granges. The Cistercians found the site of Assylin unsuitable owing to its geography, it is a height above the river and eventually built on the present site a few kilometres to the east which was more conducive to their plans which dictated that running water should be on the site for cooking, washing and toilet requirements. It was also more suitable for essential ancillary facilities such as mills and fish ponds, one of which existed until relatively recent times.
Boyle Abbey was founded in 1161.
The monastery prospered in the initial period, they made two foundations: Knockmoy Abbey in County Galway, and Assaroe Abbey in County Donegal. It had been raised to the status of Abbey by 1174.
When the abbey was suppressed under Queen Elizabeth and the remaining assets given away, the new owner allowed the Cistercians to remain. The last abbot Gelasius Ó Cuileanáin was executed in Dublin in 1580.
The monastery was laid out according to the usual Cistercian plan, a church on the north side of a roughly rectangular cloister, with a chapter house for meetings of the monks on the second side, a kitchen and a refectory on the third, and probably storehouses and dormitory above on the fourth. Only small parts of the cloister survive, as it was turned into a barracks by the Elizabethans in 1592, and again by the Cromwellians who besieged it in 1645.
This, along with possible later stone quarrying, resulted in little of the cloister-garth surviving. Despite this, the ruins are impressive, dominated by a squat square tower that was added above the crossing sometime in the thirteenth century. The church adheres to the Cistercian canon in having a nave with side aisles, a transept to the north and south of the crossing, each with a pair of chapels in the east wall, and a chancel, whose original windows were replaced in the thirteenth century. The design was influenced by styles from Burgundy, from whence the Cistercians came to Ireland, but much of the detailing of the nave and particularly the cylindrical piers of the south arcade has strong echoes of the West of England. The decorated corbels and capitals belonging to them were probably carved by local masons, some of them members of the so-called ‘School of the West’, creating some of the most inventive architectural sculpture of the early thirteenth century in the West of Ireland.
The Abbey is now a national monument in state care. Admission is inexpensive, with a family pass costing only 16 euro. It is located in Boyle, County Roscommon.
A small piece of stone from the Abbey was carried to the other side of the world and placed on the monumental headstone of an Irishman Bartholomew Higgins in the Rookwood Necropolis in Sydney, Australia.