Ballinadoon Priory

After my Sunday afternoon walk, I left the grey skies over Culleenamore beach and headed off in the car to find Ballinadoon Priory where there is a stone marker for the “Councilor” Terence Mac Donagh.

St Mary’s Priory, Ballinadoon was founded in 1507 under the patronage of the MacDonagh’s. Although the lands were confiscated after Henry VIII’s suppression of the monasteries, the friars continued to live nearby until the late 18th century.

Terence MacDonagh (1640 – 1713) was one of the prominent legal advocates of his day. Through the influence of Lord Taffee, he had the distinction of being the only catholic counsel admitted to the Irish bar after the Battle of Limerick, and thus was the only Irish spokesperson during the initial onslaught of the Penal laws. He was instrumental in rescuing and restoring confiscated estates for the O Connor family of Sligo. The blind harpist Turlough O Carolan was a regular visitor to MacDonagh’s home at Creevagh. On the death of MacDonagh in 1713, the harpist O Carolan composed an elegy “Lament for Terence MacDonagh”.