That detail alone sets this ruin apart from the roofless shells that characterise most medieval remains in the west of Ireland. Set in pasture near the shores of Lough Carra in County Mayo, the complex preserves not just the outline of a Carmelite friary but a layered accumulation of architectural detail: ogee-headed windows, a sedilia with carved stone capitals that once terminated in human heads (both now broken), corbels that once supported upper floors, a garderobe accessible by steps, and patches of original plaster still clinging to the north wall of the church.

The house was founded in 1298, probably by Adam de Staunton, as a community of Carmelite Friars. The Carmelites, a mendicant order with roots in the Holy Land, had been establishing houses across Ireland since the mid-thirteenth century. Burriscarra, however, did not flourish for long under their care; the community had abandoned the site sometime before 1383, and by 1413 the buildings were already ruinous enough that they were handed over to the Augustinian friars of Ballinrobe. Much of what survives today, including the present windows and several of the domestic buildings arranged around the cloister garth, dates from the fifteenth century, when the Augustinians apparently undertook a substantial programme of rebuilding. The property was later granted to Sir Henry Lynch, and his family retained it until relatively recently. The Office of Public Works carried out conservation works in 1962, and the site is now a National Monument in State care.

The main church runs some thirty-one metres east to west, with a triple-light east window whose switchline tracery only partly survives. To the south, two large arches open into a side aisle, and the south wall retains a piscina, a feature used in medieval liturgy for draining water used to rinse sacred vessels, as well as the arched sedilia where clergy sat during parts of the Mass. The cloister, reached through a doorway in the north wall, is flanked on its east side by four separate domestic buildings, one of which retains that intact vaulted ceiling. The west range includes a later building with a fireplace and a first-floor garderobe, a medieval latrine typically corbelled out from the wall or, as here, reached by internal steps.