Islands in County Clare

The islands here split between two waters. In the Shannon estuary, Scattery Island lies off Kilrush, uninhabited since 1969, holding Saint Senán’s 6th-century monastery, a 26m round tower with a rare ground-level door, medieval churches and a Napoleonic battery. Deer Island sits up the Fergus, the largest island in that estuary and empty since its last resident died in 2004. Two miles south-west of Kilkee, Bishops Island is a 40m sea stack that broke from the mainland within the last thousand years, carrying a dry-stone church and a beehive hut with it.

East Clare holds the rest. Holy Island (Inis Cealtra) lies a short crossing from Mountshannon on Lough Derg, with ruined stone churches, a roofless round tower, high crosses, a holy well and a graveyard still in use. Inchicronan is inland, a lough north of Ennis at Crusheen wrapped around a small island with the ruins of an Augustinian priory founded in 1190 and a later tower house.

Only two of them take a scheduled boat. The Kilrush ferry to Scattery runs about twenty minutes, and the Mountshannon boat to Holy Island runs seasonally, April to October. Deer Island means arranging a boat from Ballynacally and timing it to the tide. Bishops Island and Inchicronan are looked at rather than landed on, the first from Dunlicky Road, the second from the Crusheen shore.