Nunsacre, in County Galway, carries within it the memory of a religious community of women, the word "acre" here likely pointing to land once set apart for ecclesiastical use. That a place should preserve the outline of a vanished nunnery in its very name, long after any physical trace has faded from view, is one of the quieter ways the Irish landscape holds onto its past.

Beyond the toponym, the documentary record for this particular site is thin. What can be said with reasonable confidence is that the location was recognised as the site of a nunnery, and that the surrounding land took its name from that association. Female religious houses in medieval Ireland were far fewer in number than their male counterparts, and many were affiliated with larger orders such as the Augustinians or Cistercians. They were also, as a rule, less well resourced, and their physical remains have often disappeared more completely than those of monasteries. In some cases a field name or townland designation is the only surviving evidence that such a community ever existed at a given spot.