Imirce - Migration and Ireland through time
NATIONAL MONUMENTS SERVICE
6th ANNUAL ARCHAEOLOGY CONFERENCE
This paper will consider the fate of a French monastic community in the Boyne Valley in the thirteenth/fourteenth century. Beaubec was established to supply income and goods to De Bello Becco Abbey in Normandy. During the Anglo-French Wars it became an alienated property and found itself in foreign territory. Using evidence from archaeological excavation and historical documentation, this paper will trace the rise and fall of this medieval monastic community. It will look at aspects of their monastic life and culture, and their relationship with the Irish church, neighbouring religious orders and overseas. By the fourteenth century they were isolated, too weak to defend themselves and prohibited from exporting goods abroad. Their lands were transferred to an English Cistercian house of Furness and got caught up in years of litigation with the Crown. By the mid-fourteenth century the site had been abandoned.
Dr Geraldine Stout, a retired archaeologist in the National Monuments Service, Dublin, is the foremost authority on the archaeology of the Boyne Valley. Her publications include Newgrange and the Bend of the Boyne (2002) and The Bective Abbey project, Co. Meath (2016, with Matthew Stout).