Ballintober Abbey

Ballintober Abbey (alias Ballintubber is one the wonders of County Mayo, in the west of Ireland, and probably the best known abbey in Ireland. It was founded in 1216 by Cathal Crobhdearg O'Connor, king of Connacht, for Canons Regular of St. Augustine, beside the site of a monastery established in the fifth century. Next year, Ballintober Abbey celebrates the octo-centenary of its foundation, the only church in Ireland where Mass has been offered without break over 800 years. Despite fire damage to the nave in 1265, being suppressed and deprived of its lands and possessions by King Henry VIII in 1524, being wrecked by Cromwellian soldiers in 1653, and enduring the effects of the Penal Laws in the eighteenth century, the abbey has served as a place of worship almost uninterrupted from its inception to the present day, a unique record. It has been correctly called 'the abbey that refused to die'.

Some refurbishment work took place on the abbey in 1846, but had to be abandoned because of the Great Famine, and other restoration work in 1889. A big restoration programme was carried out from 1962 under the leadership of the then parish priest Father Thomas Egan (1909-1979), with Percy Le Clerc as architect, and finished in time for the 750th anniversary of its foundation in 1966. It is planned to have the east wing refurbished for next year’s celebrations. The church is cruciform in design with nave, transepts and choir. There are four round-headed Hiberno-Romanque windows in the east. The elaborate altar-tomb of Tiobóid na Long (Theobald of the Ships) Burke, son of Grace O'Malley, who was created Viscount Mayo in 1627, can be seen in the sacristy. The excavations which preceded the 1966 restoration unearthed a portion of the cloister arcade, some domestic buildings, a hospice for pilgrims on the way to Croagh Patrick and a portion of the pilgrimage causeway known as Tóchar Phádraig (Patrick's Causeway), which linked Cruachán in Roscommon, once the residence of the kings of Connacht, with Croagh Patrick. The abbey is open all year.

Bernard O'Hara's latest book entitled Killasser: Heritage of a Mayo Parish is now on sale in the USA and UK as a paperback book at amazon.com, amazon.co.uk or Barnes and Noble

It is also available as an eBook from the Apple iBookstore (for reading on iPad and iPhone), from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk (Kindle & Kindle Fire) and from Barnesandnoble.com (Nook tablet and eReader).

An earlier publication, a concise biography of Michael Davitt, entitled Davitt by Bernard O’Hara published in 2006 by Mayo County Council , is now available as Davitt: Irish Patriot and Father of the Land League by Bernard O’Hara, which was published in the USA by Tudor Gate Press (www.tudorgatepress.com) and is available from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. It can be obtained as an eBook from the Apple iBookstore (for reading on iPad and iPhone), from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk (Kindle & Kindle Fire) and from Barnesandnoble.com (Nook tablet and eReader).