Walk the outside of Quin Abbey and you are really circling a castle. The Franciscan friary was raised in the 1430s straight onto the foundations of an Anglo-Norman fortress, and three of the castle’s round corner towers still stand, folded into the friary walls. It is one of the most complete medieval friaries left in Ireland, and it costs nothing to walk in.
The castle underneath
The stone here started as a de Clare castle. Thomas de Clare, an Anglo-Norman lord granted the lordship of Thomond, began a fortress at Quin around 1278 and finished it about 1281 – a square castle with a round tower at each corner and a curtain wall. It did not last. The Gaelic Irish, the MacNamaras among them, took and burned it, and de Clare power in Thomond collapsed for good after the Battle of Dysert O’Dea in 1318.
More than a century later the MacNamaras put the site to a different use. Síoda Cam MacNamara founded a Franciscan friary here around 1433, and the builders did not clear the old fortress away. They set the church and cloister inside the castle’s footprint and reused its south wall. Three of the four corner towers survive at the angles of the friary, their curved masonry easy to pick out against the straight friary lines once you know to look.
What survives
Quin is unusually intact for an Irish friary. The cloister – the covered walkway around a central garth – is one of the best preserved in the country, its arcade of arches still standing on all four sides. The church, the transept chapel, the domestic buildings and a slender central tower all remain, mostly roofless but complete enough to trace how the friars lived: the nave, the chancel, the refectory, the dormitory above. Narrow spiral stairs still climb inside the walls.
Take the cloister first if you are short on time. It is the part that photographs, and the part that explains the building.
The friars and the graveyard
The friary was suppressed in 1541 under Henry VIII, but the friars did not simply leave. They came and went through the raids of the 16th and 17th centuries, took Cromwellian damage around 1650, and a small community clung on well into the 1700s. Father John Hogan, remembered as the last of the Quin friars, lived on at nearby Drim and was buried in the friary when he died in 1820.
The graveyard is still in use. You will find modern headstones set among the medieval stonework, which is worth keeping in mind – this is a working burial ground as much as a monument, so tread respectfully.
Getting there
Quin village sits about 10km east of Ennis, off the R469. The friary is right by the road at the edge of the village, a short walk from the pubs and shop. It is a national monument in the care of the OPW and free to enter. The OPW lists it as open daily, roughly 9.30am to 5pm; in practice it is an open roadside ruin you can usually walk straight into, and it is floodlit after dark.
Facilities are minimal. This is an unguided site, so bring what you need and mind your footing on the worn steps and uneven ground. If the church is locked out of season, you can still see a great deal from the graveyard and the outside walls.
Make a day of it
Clare is thick with medieval stone within a short drive. Ennis Friary, another Franciscan house in the middle of Ennis, keeps its own fine carvings and is the obvious pairing. Clare Abbey, an Augustinian ruin on the river just south of the town, makes an easy third stop. For something with a roof and a full day in it, Bunratty castle and folk park is about 15km south.
Final tip: come in the low sun of early morning or late evening. Raking light throws the round Norman towers into relief against the friary walls, and that is the one thing here you will not see at any other friary in Ireland.