Founded sometime after 1537 by Manus O’Donnell for the Franciscan Third Order Regular, this friary emerged during a particularly turbulent period when Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries was reshaping Ireland’s religious landscape. The timing of its foundation, coming after many older religious houses had already been suppressed, speaks to the O’Donnells’ determination to maintain Catholic religious life in their territory despite English pressure.

Today, only fragments of the original rectangular church survive; a structure that once measured 25.3 metres by 6.1 metres internally, with nave and chancel flowing together without any structural division between them. The most substantial remnant is the eastern half of the south wall, still standing 4 to 5 metres high and attached to a section of the east gable. Built from roughly coursed rubble with some quarried blocks and thin horizontal pinnings, the walls show evidence of more refined construction in their bond holes, which indicate the corners were once finished with carefully dressed ashlar stonework. A small wall press remains at the eastern end of the south wall, whilst ragged gaps mark where windows once brought light into the sacred space.

The friary’s story of decline is recorded in historical accounts that chart its gradual dismantling. When antiquarian Patrick Fagan visited in 1846, he found walls still standing up to 25 feet high, with large windows visible in each gable and two in the south wall, along with a doorway at the western end; though all were already ruined and stripped of their cut stone. Even earlier, in 1837, some dressed stonework had still been in place, but by Fagan’s time, the friary had become a quarry for local building projects. Its finely worked stones, including doorways, windows and a carved mitred head, were incorporated into the old Protestant church nearby, and fragments can still be spotted today in the exterior fabric of the current Church of Ireland parish church, silent witnesses to the friary’s former grandeur.