Clare Island – Grace O'Malley's island

Overview

If you only do one thing on Clare Island, stand in the abbey and look up. The painted ceiling above the chancel is the most complete cycle of medieval wall paintings surviving in any Irish church – dragons, a cattle raid, stags, a harper, a cockerel guarding a window – and there is nothing else quite like it in the country.

The island (Irish: Oileán Chliara) sits at the mouth of Clew Bay, four miles off the west Mayo coast, its skyline dominated by the 462m hump of Knockmore. It runs to 4,053 acres. In 1841 it held 1,615 people; the Famine cut that to 845 within a decade, and the 2022 census counted 138. That long emptying is written all over the landscape – abandoned field walls, cooking pits, a court tomb – alongside 6,000 years of older history and the still-vivid legacy of the 16th-century pirate queen Grace O’Malley (Granuaile), whose clan ruled these waters.

Getting there

The ferry sails year-round from Roonagh Pier, near Louisburgh. Two operators work the route – the Clare Island Ferry and O’Malley Ferries – and the crossing runs anywhere from 9 to 20 minutes depending on the boat.

• Fares: O’Malley Ferries charge €17 return for adults, €12 for students and 13–18s, €8 for children 5–12, with under-5s and OAP pass-holders free.
• Parking: Roonagh Pier has a free, CCTV-monitored car park. It does fill in high summer – a recent visitor reported it full and paying €5 to park in an overflow field, so arrive early or be ready for that.
• Booking: Book ahead for July and August, and check the return times before you sail; getting stuck on the wrong side of the last crossing is the classic island mistake.

Clare Island Abbey and its wall paintings

The Abbey of St Brigid is the reason most people come. It was founded in the 12th century and rebuilt around 1460 as a Cistercian house, and it holds Ireland’s most intact suite of late-medieval wall and ceiling paintings. Look for the dragon over the nave, the cockerel by the window, the cattle-raid scene, and the harper among the stags. Tradition holds that Grace O’Malley was baptised, married and buried here; her canopied stone tomb stands in the nave under a plaque bearing the O’Malley motto, Terra Marique Potens – ‘powerful by land and sea’.

The abbey is managed by the Office of Public Works and is free. Staff are on site in summer (roughly May–September); in winter, access is arranged through the island shop. Photography without flash is fine, but the paint is fragile – don’t touch the walls.

Granuaile’s castle and the older island

Above the harbour stands Granuaile’s Castle, a 16th-century O’Malley tower house that guarded the anchorage. Push further back and the island gets older fast: a waymarked archaeological trail links Bronze-Age burial mounds, fulachta fiadh (ancient cooking pits), a 5,500-year-old megalithic court tomb and the remains of a Neolithic settlement. A Napoleonic signal tower, put up in 1804 on the western point, adds the most recent military layer.

The island also earned a footnote in science. The Clare Island Survey (1909–1911) produced a landmark biological record of the island’s plants and animals that researchers still return to when measuring a century of change.

The lighthouse

On the northern tip stands Clare Island Lighthouse, the only two-towered lighthouse in Ireland. It was first commissioned in 1806, damaged by fire in 1813, recommissioned in 1818, and decommissioned in 1965. Since 2008 it has been a boutique guesthouse: six rooms in the old keeper’s house, with cast-iron beds, flagstone floors, wood-burning stoves, under-floor heating and no televisions, so guests are left to the sea views toward Achill Island and the Mayo coast. Tower access for non-guests is by request only, so don’t count on it as a day-trip stop.

Walking, cycling and the water

Two waymarked loops start and finish at the harbour: the Fawnglass Loop (3 km, about an hour) and the longer Knocknaveen Loop (7 km, roughly 2.5 hours). The terrain is uneven and the Atlantic weather turns fast, so sturdy boots and a waterproof are not optional. E-bikes and ordinary bicycles can be hired on the island if you would rather cover ground on wheels.

For the coast itself, boat trips run out around the island’s sea cliffs and seabird colonies, with a fair chance of basking sharks, dolphins and whales in season. On shore, Macalla Farm runs yoga and meditation retreats and vegetarian cookery courses on a smallholding where 6,000 trees have been planted, and the island now runs whiskey heritage tours – meeting the 10:35 ferry, about two hours, island history and the O’Malley story with an optional taste of whiskey aged at sea.

Practical information

Cash is the one thing people forget – there is no ATM on the island, and you will want it for the shop, the bar and the ferry. Sort that on the mainland, catch an early boat, and give the abbey ceiling the ten unhurried minutes it deserves.