Chair, penitential station in County Clare

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On a S-facing slope to the N of the public road from Killinaboy to Leamaneh and to the N of an overgrown stile in the wall. Named ‘Chair’ on the 1840 OS 6-inch map and named ‘Seehaun Inneenboy’ on the 1916 ed. Listed as 'Potential site - name’ in the RMP (1996). Described by Westropp (1900, 407) as ‘the seat of Inghean Baoith, the patroness of Kilnaboy parish, a sure cure for lumbago and rheumatism, but requiring three pilgrimages to obtain relief’. Described by MacNamara (1900, 28-9) as a ‘rude chair’ which appears ‘to have been interfered with at one time by quarry-men or road-makers’. MacNamara (1900, 29) repeats the tradition that ‘Inniwee was in the habit of using it as a chair, on which she used to sit and pray’ and that ‘Inniwee's seat has still a certain reputation among the peasantry as an infallible cure for the backache’. He also notes (ibid.) that the chair is difficult to find due to its similarity to the other parts of limestone outcrop which surround it and in order to make it visible he ‘marked the stone with a small cross’ which is at ‘at the sitter's right hand’. On inspection in 1998 outcropping rock c. 10m inside a style N of the wall and at the foot of the crag was noted with a number of pools dug in it. This may be the stone described by MacNamara although no cross was noted. ‘Clogh-an-Airgid’, a possible penitential station (CL016-056----), is named close by on the OS maps but its location is uncertain.

From the National Monuments Service (Archaeological Survey of Ireland) record CL016-059

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Night of the Big Wind, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0 nl
Maker not stated on source page, commons.wikimedia.org
Maker not stated on source page, en.wikipedia.org
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Martin Kerans, Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
Colin Park, Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
N Chadwick, Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
Andreas F. Borchert, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
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