[4] According to Samuel Lewis, writing in 1837, a stone coffin had at some previous time been excavated from the ruins of the abbey, inside of which was a skeleton adorned with a cross and golden chains.

[14] The tiers begin above ground level so as to allow for the collection of droppings and end well below the flight hole in the roof since doves will not perch near busily frequented exits.

Pigeon fertiliser (guano) was essential for herb gardens and economically more highly valued than equivalents produced by cattle, sheep or pigs.

[citation needed] Since pigeons could themselves be regarded as vermin and capable of wreaking damage on grain crops, columbaria were strictly controlled by medieval law.

While tenants and others were permitted to keep a few pairs of doves in their roof-attics, a dovecot, such as that at Ballybeg, was the exclusive prerogative of the landowner who, in turn, was restricted to one nest per arpent, a medieval French measure of land equal to roughly an acre and a quarter.

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 60 acres (240,000 m2), fish ponds, a third of the founder's mill, and the ecclesiastical benefices of his demesne.

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.

[19] 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.

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.

Alexander fitz Hugh de la Roche enfeoffed his nephew Maurice le Fleming with the western part of Fermoy.

This Maurice le Fleming gave two carucates of land for the foundation of Bridgetown Abbey, while his grandson William Fitz Richard de Barry, granted the church of Cahirduggan to the Priory of Ballybeg by charter perfected on 28 September 1273.

All of these, with the exception of Drusmallyny (the modern Crossmolina in County Mayo) were to be found in the territories of Olethan and Muscrydonegan, the ancient cantreds conquered by the Barrys.