NEWRY CO DOWNS FIRST EVER NORMAN CASTLE. NEWRYABBEY

Believe it or not, this map above shows you precisley what Newry towns church looked like as a whole in 1144-1456. The building's along castle street are still 224 feet to the inch. In 1456 the gothic finery of old was lost for ever in a great fire that came about because the abbey came under attack by English forces. Not long after, It was restored again and extended across the bog (hill street etc & over as far as the English town Ballybot ) This Abbey was the starting point of the reformation in Ireland EVEN THOUGH IT TOOK LONGER THAN MOST TO REFORM. it suffered the consequences later & like many others it was deformed and battered & It still gets this treatment today & sadly from it's own.

Immediately below, is the stair case tower,recorded as being blown up, this Abbey recored happening, was used by Newry & Mourne In their castle build up. They simply changed the word abbey to castle.The memoirs they revised & infact distorted are still the same however.

Please remember I have been fighting this cause for 11 years, any similar views you may read else where came from my hard work, you heard it here first. Newry's many Pro Bagenal web sites have been seen to change their tunes in the past couple of years because of my endurance and research. Thanks for your visit. This web site is copyright, all is the property of Oliver Curran.(C) The site is being up dated month to month, 25TH_ aug o8

Newry Castle ( Ledlies Newry mart 1900. !! stood beside Converys shoe shop at the top of Magills entry, the Castle was built 1195 by De Courcey.
Nicholas Bagenal is recorded as destroying the same & rebuilding it. Here it is below 200 yrs or so after he had died.

St Patricks,The second Protestant Church In Ireland. Was deemed first Protestant church In Ireland for many years, but because it was destroyed at one stage & rebuilt, it lost this claim. When Nicholas Bagenal restored this, the oldest church & Abbey site In Newry (head of the Strand), the lower walls & 1/3 rd of the origonal ancient tower were used to rebuild it. This being the foundation of St Patrick. The Agustininan's In 1142-44, found this abbey like the books say, basically wasted in much the same as they found Bangor. Malachy rebuilt St Patricks tower & the old church, & built his 2nd convent In Ireland on the slopes of Newry's rocks, remnants of this old convent still stand today. After the reformation the first nuns to rehabit the convent came at the beginning of the 19th cent when many of the older building were up dated and restored to the building we see today.

The map below shows the ancient town of Newry In 1590-1690, apparently !! all the building's you see belonged to the Abbeytown In my view 1400, according to the man who drew this (english ) its a view of the abbey when Arthur Bagenal Died , load of crap in my mind, the Abbey was collissal at this date, the Corrys are recorded as having to pull it away, any way the story goes if you believe the english version it remained the same till after the last of the Bagenals died OUT in 1712. Apart from a few more houses outside the parrrimiter on the Ballybot English side, or so we are told

The two building that stand at Lidls entrance today, The left one is the 1456 rebuilt chapel of the Abbot,It had 9 alter's, as said on the right is the very important monks Choir of the chapel of the Virgin Mary & this was Mc Canns 2nd Newry bakery 1897. These 2 building are AS SAID like those at St Pats Island ,they form the top of the great church of Newry, the cross members, The Abbey memorials..1935

Note the Cross over the Abbey buildings Directly below it, the largest to the left is the Newry Virgin Mary Church, (OUR NEW MUSEUM) & the choir, (supposed castle) to its right. Futher along the masters house today ,then the nave of the Cistercian Abbey.

The Abbots house was the 1st Mc Canns bakery in 1853, this at the top of Hyde market. Newry & Mourne kept this fact secret. This is a very important point in this whole issue. Local rumour had it , that Bagenal lived here, a Newry town guide written in England published this theory. This mention & nothing more, was used to authenticate the supposed Castle In 1996, when the history of Newry was redifined. Newry & Mourne have really infact moved the Abbots house Mc Canns first bakery 1836 across the street & Into the second Bakery of Mc Canns 1896, , before this date the so called castle was a flower merchants. Newry's real history was being redifined for the second time in 450 years. . Enter the dragon Oliver Curran

Out Line Cistercian plan of NewryAbbey Church of the Virgin Mary 1157 is below. To the extreme right is lidl's gate way. Left & immediately below is Abbey yard. The Abbots main chapel (museum) building is seen as the Supposed Castle to your right. This whole building below from the corner of the Abbey yard, to Lidl's gateway is precisley the same length today, as when the Cistercians built it 1157. 235 yards long, coincidence ? ha some chance.. Sadly the facial details of this building have changed a lot & a couple of pieces are missing. But below it are the undercrofts and the tombs of the many Bagenmal victims, monks like Abbot Sheil (Kilkeel), and Abbot Creily (Newry) Newry & Mourne have a glass floor over the entrance to these tombs, this floor can be seen the so called Castle,once again to remind you, the so called Castle is the (actually the choir of the chapel )

Abbots house,cole hole,st colemans hall & believed Castle,according to newry mourne, who knocked it down in 1973. This according to Needham his family Castle, a castle in words only !! an english mans castle was his home, the last castle built in uk was in 1501 Scotland !!!.