Qualla: Tully Cross

Tully Cross: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lindy Buckley from Nanjing, China, CC BY 2.0. Step inside the Church of Christ the King at Tully Cross and look up. Three dark leaded windows glow above the altar, throwing pools of cobalt and ruby across the floor. They are the work of Harry Clarke, signed and dated 1927, and they belong to one of the strangest, most exquisite bodies of stained glass produced anywhere in the twentieth century. Clarke made them for a small parish on the Renvyle Peninsula in north-west Connemara, a village so small it occupies the townland of Gorteenclough and answers to the name of the cross on the hill.

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Image: Lindy Buckley from Nanjing, China | CC BY 2.0

Tully Cross: The Cross on the Hill

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0. Tully Cross sits a short walk from the Atlantic, on a stretch of County Galway's coastline where the Wild Atlantic Way bends north toward Killary Harbour. From here, the land tilts down through stone-walled fields toward Tully Bay; on a clear evening, the light off the sea turns ...

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Image: Andreas F. Borchert | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tully Cross: Harry Clarke's Windows

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Textman at Dutch Wikipedia (Original text: Textman), CC BY-SA 2.5. Harry Clarke died young, in his early forties, but in the time he had he transformed Irish stained glass into something otherworldly - faces ringed with halos of indigo and emerald, draperies stitched in detail so fine the eye keeps finding new patterns. The windows he made for T...

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Image: Textman at Dutch Wikipedia (Original text: Textman) | CC BY-SA 2.5

Tully Cross: The Mussel Festival

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lisa Harbin, CC BY-SA 2.0. Every May Bank Holiday weekend, the village fills up for the Connemara Mussel Festival - bands in the pubs, cooking demonstrations in the hall, mussels by the bucketful pulled from the cold bays of the peninsula. It is the kind of event that explains how a village this small keep...

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Image: Lisa Harbin | CC BY-SA 2.0

Tully Cross: Renvyle and the Atlantic Edge

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alvesgaspar, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Renvyle Peninsula reaches west into the Atlantic between Killary Harbour and Cleggan, an arm of land sheltered on one side by the Twelve Bens and exposed on the other to whatever the ocean sends. Boats from Cleggan still ferry visitors to Inishbofin; on clear days the islands...

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Image: Alvesgaspar | CC BY-SA 4.0