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Scanning the Down & Conor Historical Society Journal of 1938 recently I found the following entry which I now include as it opens a few new pieces of information (well, new to me!). The transcription below is not exact.
‘The Abbey at Newry (de viridi lingo) was founded in 1153 and endowed by Donat O Kearwell, prince of Oriel. (three years later in 1156 the grant of lands was confirmed and extended by Murtagh McLoughlin in his short reign as High King).
On the intercession of Sir Arthur Magennis it was spared total dissolution under King Henry VIII and was converted to a collegiate college by John Prowte the abbot as warden and his monks as vicars choral. The estates were put under a yearly tribute to the Crown of four marks.
Just four years later the warden was pensioned off with £15 per annum and the three vicars with £2 per annum. The estate was granted to Nicholas Bagenal.
The Cistercians remained about Newry for a further century. In 1642 the last of these, a Father Malachy Sheil – along with a secular priest – was hanged in the town.
No trace of the Abbey buildings now remains. The site is thought to have been on or around the present Abbey Yard.’
Please read this in conjunction with Story277 – Charter of Newry: The Context.
Anything I’ve ever read located the ancient Abbey in this vicinity – and not halfway up Castle Street to the 16th century fortified town house occasionally occupied by Bagenal (his first and preferred residence, we are told, was Greencastle Castle).
Does anybody know more of the 1642 hanging of Father Shiel? Was he and the other(s) seen as ‘of the planter or occupying’ class, for I believe the town had been taken by the insurrectionists?
Is any more known of Donat O Kearwell, prince of Oriel? Irish or Norman or the former turned the latter?
Was there evidence of corruption in the sixteenth century Abbey?
Is John Prowte, the warden named, a precursor of the Pruntys whose name, I was once told, was slightly altered when some migrated to England to become Brontë (yes, the famous novelist sisters)?
(My friend Paul McConville believes their surname derived from the Irish surname Brunty).
More questions than answers. But that’s the nature of learning!
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History 
