It's always fun for us when we have to go to a new area, by that I mean one who's roads we have not travelled before. Today was no exception, we had to drive out of our area to pick up a Light Sussex cockerel for our two L.S girls, this took us to pastures new.
A great thing about Ireland is the names of places, if a place has the prefix Abbey or Temple you will almost certainly come across an old Abbey or a Knights Templar site, it's also quite likely that you will also stumble upon a castle ruin on route. In fact in Co. Galway it would be hard not to see a castle ruin, it boasts ninety two castles, some just a couple of walls remain, but many are restored and some are lived in. Our discovery's today were a castle ruin dating back to the 13 century at Moylough, an example of a Hall House, confiscated by Cromwell, a small portion was restored in 1676 but now just two walls remain, it must have been quite a beautiful place at one time covering three floors and built to a hight of 45ft. This ruin we just stumbled on.
The second discovery was an old Abbey. On route to our destination I had noticed a sign to a place with Abbey as the prefix, so on our way back home we took a detour. The Abbey is a beautiful example perpendicular architecture, consecrated in 1180 this was a Cistercian monastery, it has the remains of medieval wall paintings decorating the presbytery. Unfortunately we could not find out when it fell into disuse, although a Abbot was accused of trying to burn it down in 1483. This building is being maintained and the presbytery has been re-roofed to protect the wall paintings.
