A couple of technical points first.Inishmicatreer is no longer an island, since there is a narrow road built on a stone causeway that joins the island to the shore. Secondly, the island is a part of Galway since the county boundary between Galway and Mayo runs between the island and the shore - however, you can only access the island from Mayo, unless you arrive by boat.
I had set off to visit this place a couple of times before, but had got sidetracked. At the end of February 2004, with snow covering the nearby Partry mountains, and the occasional snowman still visible in front gardens, I drove out to the island. It's not very big - 15 to 20 fields and a few houses jutting into lough Corrib. The view from the island is spectacular - from north to south, the Partry mountains, the Maumturks and Glann mountain form an almost unbroken mountainous barrier to the west. On this day, they were all edged with snow.
I had no particular reason to visit the island, except that (a) I hadn't been there before, and so far, I've always discovered something interesting along the lake shore and (b) according to the Ordnance survey map (38), there was an old abbey and holy well on the island. The further I travelled along the island road, the narrower it became, until the road disappeared completely, the only remaining trail a muddy boreen leading into a field. And no sign of any abbey. I was standing on the road, pondering my next move when a tractor dawdled up the road to where I was parked. As it turned out, the farmer owned the land on which the abbey was sited, and he gave me both directions and some historical background. We must have chatted for three quarters of an hour before I set off for the site - there's nothing better than meeting someone with stories to tell, and time to tell them.
According to Spellissy,Inishmicatreer (son of the three persons) is the site of an early church (referred to an an Abbey) or monastery, though no date is given. The local folklore, according to the farmer, was that a Bishop was buried there, but the name was unknown. All the old church records for the island were stored in anearby parish, and were destroyed some years ago in a fire. So much of what is known is the folklore that lives on in the stories of the local people.
These photographs were taken on the afternoon of February 28, 2004 with a Canon G3 digital camera. Some of the photographs were taken using an Infra-red filter (Hoya R72). Very little other post-processing was done, other than to convert the IR photos to monochrome.
