Thomas Johnson Westropp was one of the most respected of antiquarians to have passed through Quin. Here he challenges the accepted wisdom that the abbey was built in 1402. 1433 is the year in which Pope Eugenius IV grants a licence or official recognition to this Franciscan Friary. This is also often used as the date that construction began. He relies here on the report from another visitor, Thomas Deane in 1884. Both assert that the abbey is much older but that construction of the Transept (on your right after you enter the abbey) began after this date.
Father Luke Wadding, a senior member of the Franciscan Order, based in Rome in the sixteenth century, puts the date of re-construction by the McNamara’s at 1350 (or older).
The Annals of the Four Masters were begun nearly a century after Luke Wadding, a Waterford friar. These annals were compiled in a Franciscan house by four ‘masters’, one of whom was a Franciscan. Who to believe? is it possible that Síoda McNamara, not then compelled to abide by Roman protocol, started to convert the castle ruins soon after dislodging the Normans and sought the popes blessing later on?
“Popular guide-books always follow the ‘Four Masters’ in attributing the Franciscan convent of Quin to Sioda MacNamara in 1402. It was certainly largely rebuilt and ornamented at that time, but the many earlier features show that Wadding is right in placing its foundation before 1350. The fact that it was built on and out of the ruins of a great castle was noted by Sir Thomas Deane in 1884.
I first identified the castle,—which he attributed to Brian Boru, but which is an unmistakably Norman court, with great circular turrets at three angles,—with the ‘round-towery, strong castle’ built by Thomas de Clare in 1280 at Cuinche. It is likely that the MacNamaras, after the fall of Bunratty in 1334 and before 1350, gave its site, as a thanks offering for their victory, to God and the monks of St. Francis, so I shall place the legends of the ‘Abbey’ in this period.
Tradition near Tulla points to some enclosures, a little over a mile from the village and in low ground at the foot of ‘Abbey Hill,’ as the place where ‘the MacNamaras began to build Quin Abbey.’ The quarry from which its stones were drawn is shown on the hillside. At Quin it is said to have been built by the Gobán Saor, the famous legendary Master Builder, to whom so many Round Towers, churches, castles, and abbeys of the ninth to the fifteenth centuries are attributed. He twisted the spiral pillars in its beautiful cloister with his own hands. One of the builders fell from the roof and was killed, where an ancient tombstone, with an axe incised on it, marks the place of his burial. “
County Clare Folk-Tales and Myths, Thomas J Westropp
When was the castle built?
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Queen [sic, Quin] Castle. Drawing of the Franciscan Friary which was founded in 1433 using part of the walls of an older Norman castle built in 1280, Quin. National Library of Ireland.
The annals (AFM), referred to by Westropp, faced a chronological conundrum, as did some later historians, in trying to resolve the short time spent in Quin by Thomas De Clare with the construction of a substantial castle. The annals resolve this by stating that the whole enterprise was completed in 10 months. Thomas Newenham Deane ( in his report to the Royal Irish Academy, see reference at end of this post) explained it by asserting it to have been built by Brian Boru.
The castle comprises 10ft wide walls with moat & bailey (as discovered by the TVAS excavation) and would have required a lot of skilled man-power and materials to be transported to site. Its hard to believe that all of this took place right in the middle of Uí Caisin – McNamara territory and two miles from the inauguration place of the Dalcassian kings!
N.C. MacNamara (antiquarian, surgeon 1833 – 1918) in his ‘History of an Irish Sept’, suggests that Robert De Musgroe, who was granted ownership of Thomond by Henry III before Thomas De Clare, may have built some type of fort, possibly timber, in Quin before De Clare arrived. He suggests that the Normans and McNamara’s may have lived side by side on opposite banks of the river in Quin. Is it possible that the native Irish lived peacefully alongside the Normans, in a mutually beneficial arrangement, until De Clare went too far in trying to control territory? Successful trade arrangements often led to transferance of skills and even integration through marriage.
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* The question is, who built the fortress? It cannot have been built subsequently to 1278 or 1433. The Norman invasion (Henry II.) was in 1171. Can it be possible that so formidable a building, surrounded by a moat, earth works, etc., could have been built and also razed within a century, without a note of its existence being extant ? Discarding this idea as most improbable, we must look backwards to the time of Brian Boru, 1002, and come to the conclusion that the fortress of which we now find the remains in connexion with Quin Abbey was erected prior to the Norman Invasion, thus indicating a period of civilization anterior to 1711, in which military requirements were well known.
Thomas Newenham Deane Source: Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Polite Literature and Antiquities, Vol. 2 (1879 – 1888), pp. 201-204
