The Islands of Ireland: Currents Skeam against island life
A narrow reef runs to the west of East Skeam in Roaringwaterbay in West Cork as another runs from the east of West Skeam. The rocks fail to meet and ultimately are separated by a very strong current.
The islands are just out of reach of each other. Tantalisingly close. However, the islands being only a few hundred metres apart still had huge interaction with people constantly back and forth between the two when they were both populated in the decades around the turn of the previous century. One of the main reasons for the trip was to get fresh drinking water as the western island, though with an abundance of pasture, had a dearth of drinking water. The human needs of sustenance and society provided the reason for other mutual co-operation West Skeam is nestled in a cluster of several islands with the nearest of the three Calves about 2km distant. Cape Clear is a giant neighbour about 10km away.
The lighthouse on the Fastnet Rock will continue to provide an essential safety service for mariners as well as being visible along the Cork shoreline from Mizen Head to Castletownshend.
The Skeams are supposedly named after St Céim (Keam), though no such person is recorded in the Calendar of Irish Saints, writes Eugene Daly in his outstanding history of Heir and its adjacent islands of the Skeams, Heir Island: It’s History and People. The ruins of a fifth century church can be seen near the shore. Deceased people were brought over from the mainland to be buried in the grounds of the church and an archaeological excavation in 1990 revealed the remains of 62 people interred over hundreds of years, he writes.
While a few monks lived on the the island for a period from the fifth century it was unpopulated again till the mid-19th century when two families of O’Regan’s lived there. An Eliza O’Regan was born to Timothy O’Regan and Mary Horgan in 1825. Western Skeam has been unpopulated since the 1930s while the last person to leave the East were the Barrys in 1958.
Paddy McCarthy of nearby Rosbrin was born on Horse Island but had very close connections to the Skeams.
“My mother was born and reared on West Skeam, that was the family of Ricky O’Regan and Ellen, my mother was part of that family. There were 10 of them altogether,” says Paddy.
He didn’t visit West Skeam much as a boy. “They used to ferry them across with the Desmonds and the Barrys to Heir Island, that’s the way my mother used to go to school from the Western Skeames.
Retired schoolteacher Cliffy Minihane from nearby Cunnamore can remember cattle being brought over from the Skeams and then walked into the mart in Skibbereen about 12km distant. Post was delivered twice a week to the two Skeams.
Mary Dwyer, now living near Cunnamore, says Western Skeam was abandoned in 1937/38, not least due to the problems of pulling boats ashore. “There is a very bad landing. There is a a severe tideway and the current tears in,” she says.
Skibbereen estate agent Charlie McCarthy says he has sold the island four times so there is obviously an immense attraction to the place, but one that may prove hard to sustain.
The older dwellings were modernised and incorporated into a courtyard. Among the sales was renowned lateral thinker Edward de Bono who sold it in 2002. Before the Maltese, it was owned by US artist James Turrell, who built a landing strip of sorts there.
The island is again for sale with its two islets of Leighillaun and Illaunatrumpaum with a price tag of €1.5m “Since we came out we were kept busy at other things, fishing and so on. You wouldn’t have time. You leave that world behind, you have to. You can’t reminisce all the time, but I like to sometimes and look at pictures,” says Paddy.
Serene but apart. Paradise. Lost.
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