Murrisk Abbey, founded circa 1456 by the Augustinian Friars because the local inhabitants had not yet been instructed in their faith, soon became the preferred starting point for pilgrimages up Croagh Patrick instead of the earlier approach from AnTóchar Phádraig in Aughagower. Its ruins form an L-shaped building that includes a long narrow church, sacristy, and chapter room with an overhead dormitory, with a carved east window, unusual battlements on the south wall, trefoil and ogee-headed windows, and the remains of a later belfry tower at the west end surviving only as a ribbed vault. Nearby, the National Famine Monument, unveiled in July 1997 by President Mary Robinson and created in bronze by John Behan, depicts the coffin ships, with skeleton-shaped sails representing the misery of the journey to the New World for millions, and in 2001 a sister monument was unveiled outside the United Nations building in New York with two gangplanks showing survivors emerging onto land after crossing the Atlantic Ocean. The Statue of St Patrick at the start of the traditional pilgrim route up Croagh Patrick was erected in 1928 by Father Patrick Patterson and, although it is not one of the traditional stations along the route, serves for most people as the starting and finishing point for the journey up the mountain.