What is recorded here

Garra Deaneen hides in a shallow sight hollow on Clare Island, misplaced on official maps yet plainly known to local people. Small hillocks flank the depression like quiet guards, while old cultivation ridges still trace the shape of hands that worked the soil above buried bodies. Mary-Anne Salmon remembered a wooden cross standing there, suggesting Christians once marked death in this remote glen before monuments vanished. The graveyard resists documentation, preserving life and loss through oral memory rather than stone.

Situated in enclosed farmland, in the upper (western) part of the valley that opens out at the harbour. The location of this graveyard is misplaced on Ordnance Survey maps (MA085-020----) the actual site, which was pointed out by local people, lies c. 170m to SW of the old ‘Presbytery’. It is situated in a sight hollow flanked to N and S by small hillocks. The hollow is delimited on W by a modern field wall and on S by an old wall now surmounted by a wire fence. According to a number of local people (John and Mary-Anne Salmon, pers. obs.; Chris O’Leary, pers. obs.; Michael-Bob O’Malley, pers. obs.), this is the site of the graveyard marked on Ordnance Survey maps further to NE (MA075-004----). No visible surface traces of any graves survive, but there are traces of old cultivation ridges. Mary- Anne Salmon remembered seeing a wooden cross at this spot, and Michael-Bob O’Malley recalled that it was named ‘Garra Deaneen’. Westropp (1911a, 2) mentions it in passing as ‘a graveyard believed to be Christian, but without monuments’. The above description is derived from: New Survey of Clare Island. Volume 5: Archaeology. Edited by Paul Gosling, Conleth Manning and John Waddell. (Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. 2007). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated. Date of upload: 4 December 2018

The monument record does not grant public access. Check the route and ask the landowner before entering private land.