Exterior

These ruins in Court Street are all that now remain of an important Dominican Priory, founded in 1244 by the Anglo-Norman Savage family.  The Savages were followers of John de Courcy who brought the Dominicans from Dublin and Drogheda.  The church, which is all that now survives of the Priory, would have originally measured 96 feet in length x 24 feet wide but there were various additions over the years.

This was a place of great wealth until the dissolution of the monasteries in the mid-16th Century.

The structure lay in ruins until the Scottish Laird, Sir Hugh Montgomery brought hundreds of settlers to this area in the early 1600’s.  Sir Hugh used the priory as the basis of his main residence in Ulster, called ‘Newton House’ and set about developing Newtown as a Jacobean market town.  He built his fortified house and bawn in the grounds of the old Priory, rebuilt the north aisle and added a high, square tower and steeple to form the official church of the new community.