Qualla: Illauntannig Monastic Site

Illauntannig Monastic Site: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Podstawko, CC BY 4.0. Saint Seanach chose this island the way his brother Senan chose Inis Cathaigh in the Shannon estuary - because it was as far from the world as he could reasonably get without leaving Ireland. Illauntannig - Oilean tSeanaigh, the island of Seanach - is the largest of the Magharee Islands, a low limestone outcrop about a kilometre off the tip of the Maharees peninsula in County Kerry. In the fifth, sixth, or seventh century, the exact date contested by scholars, a community of monks built here a small enclosed settlement: two oratories, three beehive huts, a souterrain, three stone altars, a burial ground, and a high cross. The community is gone. The stones are not. Most of what Seanach built is still standing.

Image: Podstawko | CC BY 4.0

Illauntannig Monastic Site: The Island and the Saint

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Podstawko, CC BY 4.0. Saint Seanach was the brother of Senan mac Geirrcinn, one of the better-known figures in the early Irish church, who founded the monastery on Inis Cathaigh - Scattery Island - at the mouth of the Shannon. The two brothers founded paired island monasteries at the western edge of t...

Image: Podstawko | CC BY 4.0

Illauntannig Monastic Site: What Stands

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Podstawko, CC BY 4.0. The site that the Office of Public Works oversees today consists of two small oratories - one of them boat-shaped, an unusual form found at only a few early Irish sites - three clochan, the beehive-shaped drystone huts that monks used as cells, a souterrain with a wall-chamber, t...

Image: Podstawko | CC BY 4.0

Illauntannig Monastic Site: Before the Monks

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Podstawko, CC BY 4.0. The monks were not the first people on Illauntannig. A shell midden - a refuse heap of empty mussel, periwinkle, and limpet shells, the accumulated kitchen waste of generations - has been found inside the monastic enclosure. Radiocarbon dating places the midden in the late Neolit...

Image: Podstawko | CC BY 4.0

Illauntannig Monastic Site: A Bell, a Hammer, and Continuity

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Podstawko, CC BY 4.0. Among the artefacts recovered from Illauntannig is a hand-bell of the type used to call monks to prayer, dated to between 600 and 900 AD, and an iron hammer. Both are now in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin. One of the oratories has architectural features - in its altar a...

Image: Podstawko | CC BY 4.0

Illauntannig Monastic Site: Reaching the Island

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Podstawko, CC BY 4.0. Illauntannig is not easily reached. The Magharee Sound separates the Seven Hogs from the mainland; even on calm days the channel can be uncomfortable. Boats run from Scraggane Pier at the tip of the Maharees in summer, weather permitting, ferrying small groups of pilgrims, archae...

Image: Podstawko | CC BY 4.0