Mayo Abbey LiDAR Survey Presentation: 18 August 2023

Mayo Abbey Community Centre

For National Heritage Week

Mayo Parish Heritage Committee will host a National Heritage Week Event in Mayo Abbey Community Centre (F12 X8P5) on Friday, August 18th, commencing at 8pm sharp at which the results of the recent LiDAR survey of the Early Christian Monastic site at Mayo Abbey and surrounding environs will be presented.

Mayo Abbey village today gives little indication of it’s proud heritage and its importance as a major centre in the Celtic-Anglo Saxon Christian world in the 7th and 8th century. A monastery was founded in Maigh Eó (The Plain of the Yew Trees), c. 670AD for a group of Saxon monks by St. Colman, Bishop of Lindisfarne.

The monastery became known as ‘Mayo of the Saxons’ and for more than a thousand years it remained the most important centre in the region becoming in turn a university, a diocese, a Norman town and it gave it’s name to County Mayo, the third largest county in Ireland.
The 2023 LiDAR survey, which is being supported by The Heritage Council under the Community Heritage Grant Scheme 2023 together with a number of community outreach initiatives.

Dr Paul Naessens, Western Aerial Survey and Photographic Services, Galway, carried out the survey in recent weeks. He, together with consultant archaeologist, Mr Paddy Walsh, will present and interpret the exciting results of the survey. The event, which is open to Mayo Abbey Parishioners and anybody with an interest in Mayo History and Heritage, is free of charge.

Further information is available from heritage@mayoabbey.ie

Mayo Parish Heritage Committee gratefully acknowledges the support of the Heritage Council under the Community Heritage Grant Scheme 2023.