Comber Abbey

Comber Abbey was a Cistercian monastery in the town of Comber, County Down, Northern Ireland. It stood about fifteen kilometres east-southeast of Belfast, on the site later occupied by the 19th-century Church of Ireland building. The monks called the place Comerium, while today it is known by its Irish name, Mainistir an Chomair. The abbey was founded in 1200, probably by Brian Catha Dúin, as a daughter house of Whitland Abbey in Wales. It belonged to the filiation of Clairvaux, the great Burgundian abbey. In 1543 the monastery was dissolved and its last abbot, John O’Mullegan, left. Twelve years later the buildings were deliberately burned down. No visible remains of the abbey survive today. When the new parish church was built in 1840, archaeologists judged further investigation unlikely to uncover anything significant. The site is now covered by the nave and aisles of St Mary’s Church.