GPS: 52.938196 -6.306103
The site is near the Glen of Imail – 4 kms west of Rathdrum off Riverside Road. There are no remains.
In the 15th century the Holy See had revived the ancient Diocese of Glendalough. When Henry VIII suppressed the religious houses, the Franciscans from Wicklow Abbey, according to tradition, took up their abode in Glenmalure, on the site of St. Kevin’s Monastery, at Ballinabarney and called it St. Mary’s Abbey. From May 1597, with the death of Feach Mac Hugh O’Byrne, and the burning of the abbey by soldiers from Rathdrum under Captain Thomas Lee, this house ended. For more than a century the district had to depend, so far as that was possible, on Irish priests from the Continent.
There was a friar here for a number of years in the 1640’s.
