Qualla: Inis Oirr

Inis Oirr: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hinnerk Rümenapf (Hinnerk R), CC BY-SA 4.0. If you have ever watched the title sequence of Father Ted, you have seen Inis Oirr. The camera pans across a rusted ship listing against grey rocks, and that ship is the Plassy - a 1940 Royal Navy minesweeper that was driven aground here in a March 1960 storm, dragged ashore by a second storm a few weeks later, and has been weathering on the eastern beach of this small Aran island ever since. Storms in 2014 shifted it again. The wreck has outlived the show that immortalised it.

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Image: Hinnerk Rümenapf (Hinnerk R) | CC BY-SA 4.0

Inis Oirr: Tail-End Island

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Simon Jerram, CC BY 3.0. The name is probably a clerical error. The traditional Irish name was Inis Thiar, which can mean west island but here meant something closer to tail-end island - last of the chain. Nineteenth-century cartographers wrote it Inis Oirthir, east island, which morphed over decades int...

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Image: Simon Jerram | CC BY 3.0

Inis Oirr: O'Brien's Castle

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was Cro-Magnon at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 3.0. On the highest point of the island stands Caislean Ui Bhriain - O'Brien's Castle, sometimes called Furmina Castle. The tower house was built by the O'Brien clan in the fifteenth century, captured from them by the O'Flahertys around 1582, and demolished by Cromwell's forces in 165...

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Image: The original uploader was Cro-Magnon at English Wikipedia. | CC BY-SA 3.0

Inis Oirr: Saints, Sand, and a Buried Church

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hinnerk Rümenapf (Hinnerk R), CC BY-SA 4.0. Teampall Caomhan, the Church of St Cavan, sits below the airfield with an entrance that opens below ground level. Wind-blown sand had buried the tenth-century church almost to its roofline by the nineteenth century. The ruin has been roofed in modern times to prevent it filling u...

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Image: Hinnerk Rümenapf (Hinnerk R) | CC BY-SA 4.0

Inis Oirr: Currachs, Bodhrans, and the Bengal Connection

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hinnerk Rümenapf (Hinnerk R), CC BY-SA 4.0. The Limerick Steamship Company bought the Plassy ship in 1951 and renamed it after the Plassey district of Limerick city. That district is named after Lord Clive, Baron Plassey, who took his title from the 1757 Battle of Plassey on the Hooghly River above Calcutta - and the villa...

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Image: Hinnerk Rümenapf (Hinnerk R) | CC BY-SA 4.0