Killagha Abbey

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Killagha Abbey, also known as Kilcolman Abbey, is the ruins of an Augustinian monastery and a former manor house in County Kerry, Ireland. It sits about 1 kilometer northwest of Milltown, near the River Maine. The abbey was founded around 1216 by Geoffrey de Marisco on the site of an earlier monastery built by Saint Colman. It was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and occupied by Canons Regular of the Order of St Augustine until it was closed in 1576 during the Reformation. The place was wealthy, owning a lot of land in Munster, and the Prior of Killagha even sat in the Irish House of Lords. In 1302 it paid the third-highest tax in the Diocese of Ardfert and it had a leper house and a hospital. A large east window was added in the 15th century, and Killagha became a popular destination for pilgrims because of its beautiful setting, earning the nickname Bello Loco, “beautiful place.”

The abbey’s location near the fortress at Castlemaine drew the attention of the Crown during the Desmond Rebellions. After it was seized, the lands were leased to Thomas Clinton, then briefly to Sir William Stanley in 1583. On 12 December 1588 the Crown transferred the abbey to Captain Thomas Spring of Castlemaine, with a special clause requiring the domestic buildings to be rebuilt in a castle-like style so they could serve as a defensive house. Thomas Spring’s son, Walter Spring, became High Sheriff of Kerry in 1609. His grandson, also named Walter Spring, was raised Catholic and fought in the Irish Rebellion of 1641, and the abbey was attacked by a Cromwellian army, which damaged the church and demolished the fortified domestic buildings.

After the rebellion, most of Walter Spring’s lands were taken by Oliver Cromwell, and he was nicknamed “The Unfortunate.” The abbey and its lands were granted to Major John Godfrey, a Cromwellian soldier. The Act of Settlement in 1662 confirmed the grant, but the abbey was no longer used as a home. In 1772 the Godfrey family built a new country house nearby on the Milltown estate, called Kilcolman Abbey or Bushfield House. That house was abandoned and demolished in 1977, and some materials were used for nearby buildings. For centuries the land around the church was used as a cemetery. Today the ruins are protected as Kilcolman Burial Ground.