Wakeman painted this beautiful illustration of the choir in Sligo Friary on the spot in July 1882. Little has changed between when Wakeman drew it and how it appears today, apart from the removal of the graves and of soil that covered the steps up to the altar. His painting shows the east window, made up of four lights, or openings. Below the east window is the only surviving sculptured high altar in any Irish monastic church.

The front of the altar is divided into nine panels, with a gothic style of decoration. On one panel is a carved rose and on another there is a bunch of grapes. Both the window and the altar date to the 15th century and were probably constructed under to orders of the head friar Bryan MacDonagh, who rebuilt much of the friary following an accidental fire that burnt most of the friary and Sligo town in 1414. It probably replaced lancet shaped windows similar to those on south wall, on the right of the painting. These lancets belong to a part of the friary that is the oldest, dating to the 13th century.

Five of the present eight lancet windows are visible in Wakeman's drawing, with one being blocked off by the insertion of the O'Connor-Sligo memorial, visible in the corner of the south wall, to the right of the east window. This memorial dates to 1624 and is of Renaissance style, which is surprisingly early for this period in Sligo. The main part of this wall-monument depicts kneeling figures of Sir Donogh O'Conor and his wife Lady Elinor Butler.

Like many Norman towns in Ireland Sligo had its castle and its monastery. The castle is now gone, but may have been on the site of the present City Hall, while the friary is now the only upstanding medieval building in SligoCity. Maurice Fitzgerald, the 2nd Baron of Offaly, whose grandfather landed with the Anglo-Normans in 1169, founded the Dominican Friary of Sligo, popularly but incorrectly called Sligo Abbey, in 1252/3.

The friary has endured a turbulent past and survived the 1414 fire and damage during a siege of SligoCastle in 1595. However, the Friary was sacked, the friars massacred and the building left as a ruin following an attack on Sligo by Sir Frederick Hamilton in 1641. Parts of the structure were added to and rebuilt during its history, but most parts are either 13th century (south wall of church, sacristy and chapter house) or 15th century in date (cloisters and most of the remaining building).

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