The ruins of Muckross Abbey are located on the eastern shore of Lough Leane in Killarney National Park. The Franciscan friary was founded by the Gaelic lord, Donal ‘an Diamh’ MacCarthy around 1440. It was suppressed in 1541 as part of King Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries and later destroyed by Cromwellian forces in 1652.

The yew tree growing in the space between the cloister arcades is thought to have been planted when the cloister was originally built or could have even been built around it.