Name:
TRACTON Location: Tracton Abbey parish County:
Cork Foundation: 1225 Mother house:
Whitland, Wales Relocation: None Founder: Odo
de Barry Dissolution: + 1541 Prominent members:
Access: No remains
Tracton was founded in 1225 and was colonised with monks from Whitland,
in Wales. The Cistercian General
Chapter approved Odo’s
petition to found an abbey in 1222 and again in 1223. Although
the tabula lists
Maurice MacCarthy as founder, it is generally accepted that Odo
de Barry was responsible. The abbey was situated on the coast
of County Cork beside a small river, which flows into Ringabella
Bay. The Latin name of the abbey was Albus Tractus ('the
white coast') which was a variant of the name for Whitland, Alba
Landa. The monks of Tracton were known as the 'Monks of
the White Tract Vale'.
During his visitation of 1228, Stephen
of Lexington
criticised the monks at Tracton for speaking Welsh and ordered
that the Rule was to be expounded in French so that ‘the
disorderly cannot hide themselves when visitors come . . . but
all will understand
and will be understood by all . . . otherwise visitors will waste
their time building a tower of Babel in the confusion of languages’.
In 1301 the abbot was indicted and fined £40 for receiving
and protecting his nephew, Maurice Russell, who had raped an
English
woman. From 1483 onwards the abbacy was exclusively held by members
of the Barry family, who were descendents of the original founder.
In 1463 the income of the abbey was said to have been much diminished
and by the time of Dissolution most of Tracton’s lands had
been laid to waste by war and rebellion. In 1540-1 the abbey
could
only collect a mere fraction of its potential income; just £5
per annum, as opposed to a peace time revenue of £71. In
1541 the royal commissioners reported that the abbey church had
been
used as the parish church for some time prior to the Dissolution
and all other buildings were needed by the farmer. The monks
seem to disappear from the records c. 1542. In 1568 the property
was granted to Henry Gylford and by the early seventeenth century
it had been acquired by Thomas Daunt of Gloucestershire, who was
thought to have lived in the abbey. The Daunts later built a
new
house and from approximately 1639 the abbey fell into decay. A
Protestant church was built on the site of the abbey, c. 1817,
by which time
the buildings had probably been destroyed. There are no surviving
remains, although the old graveyard near the Protestant church
marks
the site of the abbey.