Take my own town
I'm from Carndonagh in Inishowen. Everyone knows the Carndonagh cross. It's on the postcards, and it's well over a thousand years old, some say close to 1,500.
But almost nobody puts it together with what's around it. I didn't either.
The cross has moved
The cross used to stand on the other side of the road. It was moved to where it is now, right beside an old church.
That church today is a Church of Ireland church. But before it there was an older church on the same spot, and pieces of the original were built into the new one: the carved stone over the door, the old arch.
The cross nobody looks at
Outside the church there's another one just as old that hardly anyone notices, because everyone is looking at the famous cross: the Marigold Stone, a carved cross-slab.
It's covered in crosses, figures, knots and a seven-rayed marigold. Most people walk straight past it.
Forty yards away: St Patrick's Bed
About forty yards from the church is a spot called St Patrick's Bed, Leaba Phádraig. The story is that this is where Patrick slept when he came up to Carndonagh to build the church.
And here's the thing: the official record lists Leaba Phádraig as a megalithic tomb. So the place is older again than Patrick. Somebody was buried there long before he arrived.
I had never heard of St Patrick's Bed until two weeks ago. And I'm from Carn.
Put it together
A tomb thousands of years old. A saint who, the story goes, slept beside it. A church built there. A cross raised beside the church. The church rebuilt with the old stones. The cross moved across the road.
Stand at one of those and you get a postcard. See them all together and you get the story of the place.
It's like this everywhere
Every town and townland has a cluster like this: a well, a fort, a church, a stone, a road name, all part of the same story, and nobody tells you they belong together.
A sign at one spot gives you the shallowest version there is. That's why I built a map that puts everything around you on one screen. Open it where you are and look at what's within a few hundred yards. The story starts to show.
