Qualla: Ballybeg Priory

Ballybeg Priory: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carogonmu, CC BY-SA 4.0. Three hundred and fifty-two nesting holes. Eleven tiers of square stone compartments, thirty-two niches in each tier, rising fifteen feet up the inside of a circular tower. The architectural historian Frank Keohane calls it, without hedging, 'arguably the finest medieval dovecot surviving in Ireland.' The priory it served has been quarried, scavenged, and ruined - the bell tower was once turned into a cow byre - but the columbarium at Ballybeg, on a field just outside Buttevant in north County Cork, is almost perfectly preserved. Built to produce the most valuable agricultural fertilizer of medieval Europe, it tells you almost everything about the priory it belonged to.

Read more: Ballybeg Priory on Qualla

Image: Carogonmu | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ballybeg Priory: Founded for the Murdered Archbishop

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0. The priory was founded in 1229, dedicated to Saint Thomas Becket - the archbishop of Canterbury murdered in his own cathedral by knights of Henry II in 1170, sixty-odd years before the foundation stone went down at Ballybeg. The founder was either Philip de Barry or his son Willi...

Read more: Ballybeg Priory on Qualla

Image: Andreas F. Borchert | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ballybeg Priory: The Math of a Dovecot

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0. The reason for the dovecot was money. Pigeon manure - guano - was worth more by weight than the equivalent from cattle, sheep, or pigs, because it was the best fertilizer available for herb gardens, kitchen plots, and any high-value crop. Dovecots were a privilege reserved to lan...

Read more: Ballybeg Priory on Qualla

Image: Andreas F. Borchert | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ballybeg Priory: Becket's Canons Get Their Lands Back, And Then Lose Them

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0. A residential tower was added in the mid-15th century, the medieval equivalent of upgrading the office space. Then came Henry VIII. The priory was dissolved in 1541. The endowments at the moment of suppression amounted to about 60 acres of arable demesne, 40 of pasture, the build...

Read more: Ballybeg Priory on Qualla

Image: Andreas F. Borchert | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ballybeg Priory: Oxen Under the Arch

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joebater (talk) (Uploads), CC BY-SA 3.0. After the Jephsons took possession, much of the priory was quarried for stone to build other things. The bell tower was repurposed as a cow byre. In 1837, Samuel Lewis recorded that a stone coffin had at some point been excavated from the ruins - inside it, a skeleton adorned wit...

Read more: Ballybeg Priory on Qualla

Image: Joebater (talk) (Uploads) | CC BY-SA 3.0