Abbeys, priories and friaries of Ireland

In 1140 St Malachy, archbishop of Armagh, visited Bernard at Clairvaux, left four companions there to train, and came home to bring the Cistercians to Ireland. Mellifont, in County Louth, was founded in 1142, the first house of the order in Ireland; its daughters included Bective, Baltinglass, Monasteranenagh, Kilbeggan and Boyle. After the Anglo-Norman invasion more followed, Dunbrody, Inch, Grey Abbey and Duiske among them, until there were 31 Cistercian houses. (Wikipedia, "Cistercians" ↗; "Mellifont Abbey" ↗)

The Augustinian canons came with the same 12th-century reform. Malachy was a prime mover there too: there were 41 Augustinian houses by his death in 1148, and 116 in all, which made the canons the largest single order in Ireland. Unlike the Cistercians they worked among the people, in parishes, hospitals and schools. (Wikipedia, "Canon regular" ↗)

The friars came in the 13th century. The Augustinian friars founded their first Irish house in Dublin around 1280, and for a long time their Irish members were all English. By the 15th century the friaries were flourishing, with popular support, new endowments and ambitious building, while many monasteries had dwindled to a handful of monks. Friaries made up about half of the roughly 400 religious houses in Ireland in 1530. (Wikipedia, "Order of Saint Augustine" ↗; "Dissolution of the monasteries" ↗)

Henry VIII brought legislation to close the monasteries before the Irish Parliament in 1537. It met strong opposition and only sixteen houses were suppressed; a 1539 bill to close nine named houses was the only royal bill that year not to pass. His direct authority reached little beyond the Pale, so after 1541 dissolution went ahead mostly through deals with local lords, who got monastic land in return for allegiance. Henry gained little, if anything, from the wealth of the Irish houses.

By his death in 1547 about half the Irish houses had been suppressed. Others held on until Elizabeth's reign, which brought closures in Gaelic Ireland beyond the Pale. Some popular houses were saved by local people, and some in the west stayed active into the early 17th century. In 1649 Cromwell's army sought out and destroyed former monastic houses; afterwards sympathetic landowners kept monks or friars near several ruins, a hidden life that went on through the 17th and 18th centuries. (Wikipedia, "Dissolution of the monasteries", Ireland ↗)

Accounts differ in the detail. The Augustinian friars' history, for instance, says their houses at Ardnaree, Ballinrobe, Ballyhaunis, Banada and Murrisk kept going until 1610, and Dunmore, County Galway, after that (Wikipedia ↗).

Religious house records in the Republic, by the order the record gives. Records are sites, not foundations: a house that moved, or a grange or cell, can have a record of its own, and some houses are known only from documents. So these counts do not match the historians' figures (31 Cistercian houses, 116 Augustinian, against 37 and 78 records here).

• Augustinian canons: most in Meath (8), Galway (7), Kilkenny (5)
• Franciscan friars: most in Cork (7), Galway (7), Tipperary (7)
• Dominican friars: most in Galway (6), Mayo (4), Cork (3)
• Cistercian monks: most in Cork (5), Dublin (4), Tipperary (4)

Religious house records in the Republic, by county. Northern Ireland: about 64 NISMR records matched by keyword, shown under their counties below.

Open a county for every record: townland, a line quoted from the survey's own description where it has one, the SMR number (linked to the Historic Environment Viewer) and a map link where the record has a position.

• A record is a survey entry, not a promise that something is there. The Sites and Monuments Record lists sites that are known, reported or marked on old maps, including some that have been destroyed, moved, or were never found when inspected. Each record's own description says what the surveyors saw; read it before you set out.
• Some records have no description uploaded yet, and a few have no usable position; they are marked as such.
• Most sites are on private land. Ask before you cross a field, and leave things as you find them: monuments in the Record of Monuments and Places are protected under section 12 of the National Monuments (Amendment) Act 1994 ↗.
• The Sites and Monuments Record covers the Republic only. Northern Ireland's record (the NISMR) is counted here by county from its open data, by matching the record descriptions; it is not listed site by site and its counts are not directly comparable.
• A place called "Abbey" is not always an abbey: the name is used loosely for friaries too (the record describes a Franciscan foundation at Lavagh, County Sligo, "known locally as 'Court Abbey'"). The order shown here is the one the record gives.
• "Order not known" (95 records) and "nunnery, order not known" (7) are the record's own classes for houses whose order has not been established. Some are known only from a name, a tradition or a single document.
• The record has no usable position for 64 of the 497; they are listed with no map link.
• Northern Ireland: the NISMR has no class for religious houses, so these 64 are a keyword count. A record is counted when its type names an order (Cistercian, Augustinian, Franciscan, Dominican, Benedictine, Premonstratensian, Carmelite, the Knights of St John or the Templars), or when it is called an abbey, priory, friary, nunnery or preceptory and is not described as an early or pre-Norman monastery. By the order word in the record type (the labels are approximate: "Cistercian" there can include a nunnery), all six counties: order not known 18, Franciscan friars 15, Augustinian (branch not stated) 13, Cistercian monks 8, Dominican friars 4, Benedictine monks 3, Premonstratensian canons 2, Knights Hospitallers 1. It will miss some houses and catch the odd later building on an abbey site.
• Early Irish monasteries (Glendalough, Clonmacnoise and the like) are a different thing, mostly classed in the record as ecclesiastical sites, and are not counted here.

Source: National Monuments Service, Archaeological Survey of Ireland, Sites and Monuments Record, open data via data.gov.ie ↗ (CC BY 4.0); every record links to the Historic Environment Viewer ↗. Northern Ireland: Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Record (Department for Communities, Historic Environment Division), OpenDataNI ↗.