A monastery you can’t reach
Bishops Island is a flat-topped sea stack about two miles south-west of Kilkee, and on its summit sit the ruins of a monastery that no one has lived in for a very long time. Within the last thousand years the sea cut the stack off from the mainland, leaving the buildings marooned 40 m above the water on sheer cliffs. You can’t land without ropes and a flat calm, which is precisely why the ruins are still there. What you can do is look, from the roadside on Dunlicky Road, at one of the strangest early-Christian sites on the Clare coast.
The ruins
The monastery is linked by tradition to followers of St Senan, who founded the big house on Scattery Island across the estuary. The main survivor is a dry-stone church of the Gallarus type, all of 9 square metres, built like an upturned boat from cut stone laid without mortar. Beside it stand a clochaun (beehive hut) and the low footings of three or four other buildings, with a few uninscribed pillar stones marking the edge of the site.
The 19th-century antiquarian William Wakeman recorded a couple of oddities here: an east window that splays outward, which he thought was probably unique in Ireland, and a doorway set unusually on the south side near the west wall, in walls about two and a half feet thick. Whether they’re quite as singular as he claimed, they show how much care went into a chapel on a rock most people would never reach.
The hungry bishop
The Irish name, Oileán an Easpoig Gortaigh, means ‘island of the hungry bishop’. The story goes that a bishop fleeing a famine had himself put out on the stack for safety, bringing food with him – but the seas rose, no boat could take him off, and he starved there in sight of the shore. It’s a bleak little legend, and it suits the place.
Geology
The stack is young as landforms go. Less than a thousand years back it was part of the headland; the Atlantic worked the cracks in the rock until the link collapsed, leaving a free-standing column roughly 180 m by 90 m at the base. The vertical faces that isolate the ruins are the same ones that have preserved them.
What to see and do
This is a look-and-photograph stop, not a walk-on-it one.
- Photography: The stack changes with the light; low morning or evening sun throws the church and hut into relief against the grey rock.
- Birdwatching: Gulls, kittiwakes and razorbills nest in the crevices, with the odd puffin about in season.
- The cliff walk: The Kilkee Cliff Walk passes close by. Its longer loop runs about 12 km out and back (roughly three hours), taking in Bishops Island and the ruins of Dunlicky Castle – the best way to see the stack from more than one angle.
Practical information
- Access: Roadside viewpoint on Dunlicky Road, between Cross and Kilkee.
- Parking: A small layby with room for about eight cars. It fills fast in summer, and there’s little overflow.
- Toilets: None here; nearest are in Kilkee.
- Accessibility: A short walk from the road to the viewpoint, with no accessible routes or facilities. The island itself is off-limits.
- Cost: Free, and nothing stops you looking at any hour.
Nearby
- Georges Head – a headland with wide views back across the bay to the stack and the Loop Head peninsula.
- Pollock Holes – natural rock pools below the Kilkee cliffs, good for a swim on a calm day.
- Loop Head – the long peninsula with its lighthouse and coast walks.