Qualla: Illaunloughan

Illaunloughan: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ingo Mehling, CC BY-SA 3.0. Three-tenths of an acre. That is the entire territory of Illaunloughan, a sliver of rock and grass in the Portmagee Channel between Valentia Island and the Iveragh mainland. You could walk around it in a few minutes. And yet someone in the late 7th century looked at this miniature island and saw a place to found a Christian monastery, with dry-stone oratories, altars, and a shrine where the relics of its saints would be set into quartz and scallop shells. The community here lived by fish and seabirds, by sheep brought in by boat, and by the rhythm of pilgrims passing south toward a much more famous rock on the horizon.

Read more: Illaunloughan on Qualla

Image: Ingo Mehling | CC BY-SA 3.0

Illaunloughan: The Saint Whose Name Is Seaweed

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger W Haworth, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Martyrology of Tallaght, an early Irish list of saints compiled around AD 800, names two figures called Lochan. One of them may have been the founder of this monastery, though the connection cannot be proved. The matter is complicated by a quiet pun: in Irish, lochan can mean...

Read more: Illaunloughan on Qualla

Image: Roger W Haworth | CC BY-SA 2.0

Illaunloughan: On the Way to Skellig Michael

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Malcolm Neal, CC BY-SA 2.0. Look southwest from Illaunloughan and the silhouette is unmistakable, even at nine nautical miles. The twin peaks of Skellig Michael rise in stark profile from the Atlantic, the most famously austere monastic site in Ireland. Illaunloughan was likely a way-station for pilgrims tr...

Read more: Illaunloughan on Qualla

Image: Malcolm Neal | CC BY-SA 2.0

Illaunloughan: Quartz, Shells, and the Camino Connection

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aidannnuigalway, CC BY-SA 4.0. The most striking thing the excavators found was a gable shrine built to hold the relics of the community's saints. The structure was decorated with quartz and scallop shells, two materials that travel together far beyond Kerry. The scallop, in particular, was the badge of pilgri...

Read more: Illaunloughan on Qualla

Image: Aidannnuigalway | CC BY-SA 4.0

Illaunloughan: The Saddest Use

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit N Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0. The monastery had largely ceased to exist by the 9th century, but Illaunloughan was not abandoned. Up to the 20th century, the island was used as a cillin, a burial place for unbaptised infants, and as a general graveyard for local people. In Catholic Ireland, infants who died be...

Read more: Illaunloughan on Qualla

Image: N Chadwick | CC BY-SA 2.0