Fewer pay much attention to the ground beneath their feet as they approach it. Running southward from the friary, a raised causeway stretches roughly 400 metres across what was once open bogland, and partway along it stands a gateway that would have controlled entry to the entire complex. The causeway is not incidental to the friary; it was the friary's threshold, the point at which the world of the bog gave way to the world of the cloister.

The causeway was constructed around 1572, according to Gwynn and Hadcock, a date that places it in a particularly turbulent period for Irish Franciscan communities. A raised causeway of this kind was a practical engineering solution to a very specific problem: bogland, waterlogged and unstable, made direct approach to a building almost impossible without a prepared surface built up above the wet ground. The fact that someone invested in constructing 400 metres of raised approach at this moment, and added a formal gateway to straddle it, suggests the friary's community was still functioning and still concerned with both access and boundaries, physical and symbolic alike. The gateway, which survives alongside the causeway, would have marked the transition from the ordinary landscape into a space governed by monastic rule.