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In the twelfth century the Christian Church experienced a revolution in its religious organisation and many new monastic Orders were founded. The Cistercian Order spread rapidly throughout Europe and when they arrived in Ireland they brought a new style of monasticism, land management and architecture. The Cistercian abbey had an ordered layout arranged around a cloister and their order and commonality was in sharp contrast to the informal arrangement of the earlier Irish monasteries. The Cistercian Order expected that each abbey must be self-sufficient and, wherever possible, be geographically remote. Their self-sufficiency depended on their land-holdings being divided into monastic farms, known as granges, which were managed by Cisterci and worked by agricultural labourers. This scheme of land management had been pioneered on the Continent but it was new to Ireland and the socio-economic impact on medieval Ireland was significant. Today the surviving Cistercian abbeys are attractive ruins but beyond the abbey complex and within the wider environment they are nearly invisible. Medieval monastic archaeolog