Islands of Ireland: Beautiful Illauncreeveen is a magnet for photographers and swimmers
Illauncreeveen, Glengarriff Harbour, County Cork. Picture: Dan MacCarthy
Illauncreeveen, County Cork
It is instructive to read back on old accounts of Ireland from the 19th century. The language is often flowery, the tributes glowing and the ostentatious ideals sobering. One such missive, from the pen of English writer Samuel Smiles concerned the attractions of Glengarriff, County Cork.
“The view is one of surpassing grandeur, the very perfection of scenery, combining with the softest landscape the wildest and most romantic features of mountain and lake with woods in the foreground,” he wrote.
Many thousands came to see Glengarriff for themselves as the railway network expanded.
On the Iveragh Peninsula, Parknasilla was to prove very popular with the growing tourist industry. Newspaper adverts offered trips from Cork to Glengarriff for 27 shillings including ‘first-class rail [to Bantry], board, coach and accommodation at the world-famous Eccles Hotel'. Glengarriff itself had expanded by the ever-increasing trips by British Navy boats to the village to obtain supplies for its presence further out the peninsula at Castletownbere. The harbour offered benign shelter for ships to anchor and local produce or supplies from Cork City with which to stock up. Or in the words of Samuel Smiles: “Right before it lies the beautiful Glengarriff Bay. Its shores are varied by numerous creeks, each rock and jutting headland reflected in the still waters, and in front a noble background of mountains stretches away in find depths of shade and sunshine, and wild confusion but with the happiest variety of form and outline.”
Smiles of course was effusive with good reason and 150 years after he recorded this opinion the harbour still harks to its halcyon days. In among his ‘jutting headlands’ are around 20 small islands. Brandy Island appeared here recently as a possible smuggling location in the 19th century.
The small island of Illauncreeveen is in a strategically important location at the mouth of the harbour just near Gun Point and lying less than 100m from the shore. The four-acre island, like most of the other islands in the bay, is wooded, though less so than the others.
In the 19th century, the British Navy used the island as a semaphore base. The flag signalling system is still used by navies in emergency situations. “When the ships came up the bay, when they were calibrating the guns, they had men on the island sending signals to the ships where to go in the bay,” said a local historian.
In among the trees are the ruins of an old shack, barely habitable today, though it looks like someone might have once lived in it. And it is of a vintage that suggests a link to the construction of the other structure on the island. This is a 1.8m obelisk constructed by the British as part of a navigational aid for shipping.
Also erected were a 2.4m high white cairn on the mainland east of Illauncreeveen; and an iron perch, surmounted with a spherical iron cage on the Yellow Rocks; and another at Carrigskye rock.
The beacons and perches were complemented by a 2.7m white post with triangular top situated on the hill at Derrycreigh, to the east of the harbour.
Over the years the island was a natural magnet for swimmers with one Glengarriff local fondly recalling his memories: “We used to go out as kids from the Blue Pool and on low tide you could dive and pick scallops out of it at the sandy bottom. A beautiful spot.”
Some islands capture the imagination of the public. An Fear Marbh, Inishtooskert, is one of the Blasket Islands which continually draws photographers to interpret its plentiful photographic qualities. So too, Illauncreeveen, which has attracted several photographers to capture its alluring shores.
Even its rocks are colourful with geological surveys identifying slate of purple, green and greenish grey.
In Irish, it is Oileán Craoibhín, which refers to island of the twigs or shrubs. There is a possible interpretation however of sods built around a creel which in turn suggests the island may have been used by fishermen to store equipment.
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