 The design was influenced by styles from Burgundy, from whence the Cistercians came to Ireland, but much of the detailing of the nave and particularly the cylindrical piers of the south arcade has strong echoes of the West of England.The decorated corbels and capitals belonging to them were probably carved by local masons, some of them members of the so-called ‘School of the West’, creating some of the most inventive architectural sculpture of the early thirteenth century in the West of Ireland.The Abbey is now a national monument in state care.