25/08/2026
✨This year, we are Exploring the Extraordinary beyond the Friary walls, uncovering the buildings, monuments and laneways of Ennis and their deep connections with Ennis Friary Heritage Site✨
⛪Today we are looking at Lysaght’s Lane and Bow Lane⛪
From the arrival of the first household of Franciscan Friars in the 1240s until the present day, the Franciscan order has been interwoven into the history of Ennis. Very little has occurred within the town without the involvement or backing of the Friars in one capacity or another. In return, Ennis and its people has sheltered, protected and supported the Franciscans in their mission to Minister.
The majority of friars lived and worked in Chapel Lane, Lysaght’s lane and Bow lane from the 1500s onwards to the 1800s. The penal laws in Ireland were a series of laws and legal restrictions, passed after the English Reformation, targeting practicing Catholics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Roman Catholics were penalised for practicing their faith, with fines and imprisonment being imposed for any part of participation in Catholic worship. Laws were also passed which allowed for Catholic priests who practiced their ministry in Ireland to be put to death. Despite being expelled from their Friary on Abbey Street in the 1570s, the Franciscans always remained in or around Ennis to Minister to their congregation.
Lysaght’s lane is one of the first places in Ennis where the friars sought refuge and were able to practice after their expulsion from the Old Friary. A plaque on the wall of one of the two-storey buildings, written as Gaeilge translates; “Pray for the Souls of the poor Brothers who carried out their Sacred Ministry here, where they received shelter in the time of the Penal Laws”. The plaque commemorates the Franciscan Friars who served and ministered to the Catholic poor between 1692 and 1829. Records suggest that by 1760 two or more Friars were secretly preaching and saying Mass in one of the small houses in Lysaght’s Lane. Lysaght’s Lane is one of the last places that the Friars sheltered before they were permitted to open their Friary in Bow Lane. It is suggested in an article from the Clare Champion from May 10th, 1924, that a relic was taken from one of the old chapels, either from Lysaght’s Lane or Chapel Lane and brought to the new Friary on Bow Lane. The relic from the old church, believed to be an Archbishop’s cross cut into stone, is the only known relic from this period. Unfortunately the relic’s current location is unknown.
The Friary at Bow Lane opened on December 12th 1830 on the site which is now occupied by the Allied Irish Bank (AIB). The move from Lysaght’s Lane to Bow Lane is thought to be on the insistence of Clare-born friar, Fr Cahill. After Fr Cahill had completed his clerical studies in Spain and returned to Ireland, he ministered to the people in Ennis and surrounding parishes alongside other priests. Fr Cahill insisted that the old hideaway in Lysaght’s Lane be abandoned completely for a new place of refuge in Bow Lane, where he had obtained a lease on a three-story house. The top floor was kept for Fr Cahill to use as a kitchen and bedroom; the middle story was structurally altered and became a “rickety gallery” to observe mass from above, and the ground floor was the chapel which enabled the congregation to observe and participate mass. In the “tottering, three-storied apartment” on Bow Street, Fr Cahill said mass every day until his death in 1832. The usual community of Friars in Bow Lane seem to have consisted of two priests. Bow Lane was abandoned in 1856 after the new Friary opened on Francis Street.
OPW - Office of Public Works Heritage Ireland National Monuments Service - Archaeology Visit Clare Clare County Council Shannon Archaeological & Historical Society Quin Heritage Group Clare Association Dublin Ennis Parish Franciscan Vocations Ofm Ireland Ennis Tidy Towns
