Ireland’s earliest Gothic arch & Game of Thrones location

Inch Abbey was established as a Cistercian house by John de Courcy and his wife Affreca in 1180 as an act of repentance for the destruction of Erinagh Abbey three years earlier. There had been an earlier monastery established here which was originally on an island, however, its wooden buildings were burned down and plundered by Vikings during the 800s. Inch Abbey was populated by monks from the Abbeys of Lancashire and Erinagh and the buildings would have comprised of a church, cloisters, lavabos, refectories, an infirmary, and a bakehouse with two ovens which by medieval standards was regarded as wealthy. It was one of the first buildings in Ireland to use Gothic architecture with its pointed windows as opposed to the rounded Romanesque style that was the norm at the time. By 1380 the abbey was seen as having such an English influence that the Irish were debarred from it but this didn’t stop them from burning the place 24 years later! Monastic life continued here right up until 1541. It was finally dissolved during the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII and granted with its 850 acres to The Earl of Kildare. Recently this abbey was used as a film location in the Game of Thrones.