We were blessed with good dry weather for our holiday back home in Ireland this Easter, and we decided to take full advantage by visiting as many interesting places as possible. I had visited Clonmacnoise, on the banks of the Shannon river, some twenty years earlier, to take photos for a display at Longford Camera Club, which I started with my good friend Tiernan Dolan. Some of the pictures here are my own and others are from various sources. The Visitor Centre now houses the High Crosses which, for security reasons, have been brought in from the site and displayed there.
Replicas now stand in the original positions on the site.
The centre also has on display numerous Grave Slabs which are housed indoors for similar reasons. There are also exhibits of what life was like many hundreds of years ago at Clonmacnoise. The church at Clonmacnoise was founded by Saint Ciar n in the middle of the 6th century. He was not of noble birth like many other Irish saints, but was the son of a craftsman, and before settling in Clonmacnoise he had founded a religious community further north on the River Shannon. Having set up his church, Saint Ciar n did not live to see its popularity grow, as records tell us that he died less than a year after its foundation.