Their initial success was phenomenal, as Mellifont sent out its monks to found one daughter house after another within a decade of its foundation. For some as yet unexplained reason, the Cistercians found it difficult to find a permanent home for themselves in Connacht, making three false starts before they finally settled at Boyle in 1161 beside a small river that flows into Lough Key. Their patrons there are likely to have been the local MacDermott lords of Moylurg but, perhaps because money was short, building progress was slow, and the church must have taken about sixty years to complete, going from east to west until the final portion was completed around 1220. The monastery was laid out according to the usual Cistercian plan, a church on the north side of a roughly rectangular cloist