This chapter examines the restoration of medieval buildings in Ireland by professional architects in the nineteenth century, looking in detail at the case of Richard Rolt Brash at Buttevant Franciscan friary, in Co. Cork and the work of the Irish Ecclesiastical Commissioners at the parish church of St. Multose, Kinsale. It situates the approaches to these buildings within the political and social contexts of the period, and examines the idea of a contested heritage and the shifting and unstable meanings of medieval buildings during this turbulent time.