The Office of Public Works has commenced a restoration programme for the ruined Franciscan friary at Rosserk, Co Mayo. The friary, which has a picturesque location on the estuary of the river Moy river near Killala dates from the fifteenth century.
While it is a popular tourist attraction – and visitor numbers have risen in the last year because of the restoration of an adjacent holy well – the friary ruins are suffering from severe weathering and neglect.
The restoration programme involves the re-pointing of stonework on the abbey’s bell tower and the erection of a lightning conductor which the OPW says is needed because the building is the highest in the area.
A spokesman for the OPW said his office had to bring in scaffolding to access and repair damaged stonework but pledged the friary would not be a building site for more than a couple of months.
The restoration was warmly welcomed by Mayo County Council member Jarlath Munnelly, who said he hoped the work would maintain the ruins for years to come.
“It's great that the OPW has a vision for sites like Rosserk, which we hope to make much more accessible,” he said.
Such sites, he said, were “valuable tourism assets” and it was “fitting that we do all we can to preserve them for this generation and the ones to come", Mr Munnelly remarked.
The friary is believed to have been built around 1460 for a group of Third Order Franciscans, who, being unable to be monks and nuns because they were married, still wanted to live in a monastic community.
Its location in a sheltered estuary surrounded by fertile land enabled its inhabitants to be self-sufficient from fishing and farming.
But the friary had a relatively short life as a working monastery because it was burned down by the Governor of Connaught, Richard Bingham, around 1590.
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