The Franciscan Friary at Bunnacurry on Achill Island, built in 1852, points to a larger story in the history of Achill Island of which it was an integral part of. To fully understand the reasons for the establishing of the Franciscan Monastery one must be made aware of the evangelical Church of Ireland minister Edward Nangle. Nangle first visited Achill in 1831 and saw an island where famine and cholera had left deep scars. Nangle wrote, “The deep silence of desolation was unbroken”, his solution was that the people of the island needed spiritual support and conversion from Catholicism and with that decided to established the Achill Mission Colony. Over the next three years Nangle bought some land and negotiated a thirty-one-year lease with the landlord of the Burrishoole estate, a Sir Richard O’Donnell, meaning that most of Achill fell under the watchful eye of Nangle. By the advent of the famine the colony became home to fifty-six families, the colony included a hospital, post office, dispensary, corn mill, orphanage, printing press, many two storey houses and farm buildings. It is quite telling that only eleven of the fifty-six families had originally been Protestant the rest were formerly Catholic, whom for whatever reason, be that need or want had converted, that debate is for another day!

Nangle’s chief opponent came in the form of Archbishop John McHale from Tuam, in 1835 when Nangle opened four mission schools on the island, the local priest with the support of McHale opened three competing Protestant schools. For the next 20 years there was a series of attacks and reprisals between both hierarchies, becoming violent at times, even leading to the death of a coastguard, Francis Reynolds. In 1851 Archbishop McHale bought 1,200 acres of land from Richard O’Donnell and set about establishing the Franciscan Friary, though even in the building of this there were reports of stones being stolen from Nangle’s land! Interestingly the site of the monastery was on the road leading to the Protestant Colony at Dugort. Nangle himself left the island in 1852 just as work on the monastery began. The work was completed in 1855 and is a detached five-bay two-storey monastery built on a U-shaped plan, with an attractive tower. Interestingly from an architectural perspective is that the openings on each floor get smaller as you look at each floor giving a tiered visual aspect which in effect makes the tower look taller than it is. The monastery was always home to only a small number Franciscan monks and the last of them left in the 1960s. The building was then sold to an agricultural cooperative but it appears little happened with it and it fell into a state of disrepair. It should be noted that the structure is quite dangerous and in a severe state of dilapidation if one chooses to visit.

GPS: 53.96998, -9.97896