ABSTRACT
The Reformation and Dissolution in Ireland were complex movements, varying regionally in their impact and ultimately achieving limited success. Brendan Bradshaw has pointed out that more was accomplished in the seven years from 1535 to 1542 in England than in the 70 years from 1536 to 1606 in Ireland. An act in the Irish parliament in 1536 provided for the surrender of thirteen houses in the Pale and the area to the south. Conventual buildings were sometimes reworked as houses, as at Newtownards and Dungiven. Newtownards priory was later used as a court. Many buildings were quarried for stone, and some were used as landscape features. Devenish is an important ecclesiastical site, originating in the 6th century, on an island in Lower Lough Erne in Fermanagh, far away from the 16th-century reformers in Dublin. Newtownards Dominican friary lies at the south-east edge of the town, at the head of Strangford Lough in County Down.
