monastic sites galway

Inchcleraun is situated on Lough Rea, which is associated with Queen Maeve. Legend telss that she was killed while bathing on the island, by an Ulsterman who shot a stone at her from the mainland, in revenge for the Ulster Cattle Raid. The monastery itself, was built in the 6th century, which is credited to St. Diarmuid.

There are the ruins of four churches there. The first - Teampul Mor, was built in the 13th century, probably by the Augustinians. The Women's Church is believed to have...

A twelfth-century cathedral (St. Brendan's) with thirteenth-century extensions. Despoiled in the sixteenth century, it was clumsily restored at various times afterwards and now serves as the Protestant parish church of Clonfert. The carved decoration, inside and out, is of exceptional quality, and the great west doorway ranks as the masterwork of Irish Romanesque art. Built in warm-toned sandstone, it is composed of six orders (the seventh, innermost order in limestone is a fifteenth-century...

The ruins of Kilmacduagh Monastic Settlement lie close to the border of counties Galway and Clare, on the eastern fringes of the Burren. because it is somewhat off the beaten track, it tends to be rather unjustly overlooked as one of the most interesting examples of early monastic architecture in the west of Ireland.

The monastery's most notable feature is the 11th/12th century Round Tower measuring 111ft to the tip of its cap. The tower is unusual in that it tilts, like its more famou...

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