⭐︎Roughly a 2hr drive from Belfast, apx. 95 miles away.

⭐︎Free to access 24/7 all year around, but the car park is very small.

⭐︎Second Cistercian Abbey founded in Ireland in 1147 by the King of Meath at the time, Murchad O'Maeil-Sheaclainn, as a daughter house of Mellifont Abbey in Co. Louth.

⭐︎Dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

⭐︎In 1380, King Richard II ordered that no Irishman or enemy of the king was to be admitted as a monk to the abbey.

⭐︎Most of the current ruins date back to the 15th century.

⭐︎In the cloisters, there is a carving believed to be of Saint Bernard, the founder of the Cistercian Order.

⭐︎The abbey and its lands were confiscated during the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII in the 1530s.

⭐︎Today it is classed as a National Monument of Ireland, and has been used as a film location for Captain Lightfoot (1955), Braveheart (1995), and The Last Duel (2020).