land which would have been insufficient to justify maintenance of a dovecot of such large dimensions. In its original charter, Bridgetown Abbey, another house of the Augustinian Canons, founded by Alexander Fitz Hugh de Roche ante 1216, on the other hand, was allotted 13 carucates or one thousand five hundred and , fish ponds, a third of the founder's mill, and the ecclesiastical benefices of his demesne. It does not appear to have had a dovecot or at least nothing has survived to indicate that it did. Clapper Bridge The remains of a medieval clapper bridge, constructed by the monks in the 13th century, crosses the Awbeg in Springfield, relatively close to the monastery. In 1906 Walter Jones, writing for the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society described it as the finest example of a clapper bridge in Ireland. In 1910 however, the Awbeg river was dredged and its course was altered. As part of these works half of the site was removed, and the bridge now runs over dry land. The bridge is composed of limestone slabs that are roughly ten feet long and quite thick, each weighing over an imperial tonne. A sarcophagus, supposedly containing the remains of one of the friars, was found in a tomb near the bridge in 1898. Significance By comparing the Ballybeg dovecot with other surviving examples in Ireland, it is possible to gauge the importance of the priory in relation to other contemporary religious houses: the dovecot attached to the Trinitarian priory in Adare, County Limerick, for example, is much smaller, indicating a religious house of proportions a good deal more modest than those of Ballybeg. In France, the medieval ordinances concerning dovecots were only abolished in 1789. Another indication of the priory's importance is the remains of a fish pond. As with dovecots, fish ponds were reserved to landowners. The typical fresh-water fish-pond in Norman Ireland would have been stocked with European perch, roach, bream, tench, and pike (regarded as great delicacy), and later with carp. An excellent example of a monastic fishpond, in use since medieval times, is that of the Benedictine Abbey of Kremsmünster in Upper Austria. Unlike other manors, however, the priory of Ballybeg does not appear to have had an enclosure for deer. Like its Bridgetown counterpart, Ballybeg, in which the de Roches also had a part in its foundation and endowment, was probably held