Islands of Ireland: Reennafardarrig — seven acres with a beach decorated with wild flowers

This island may have been an outlier of a main monastery on a nearby island... as a retreat from human contact it is a little piece of heaven

Reenafardarrig Island, the Maharees, Co Kerry. Picture: Dan MacCarthy

The ruins of a monastery dominate the island of Illauntannig which is one of the Seven Hogs (na Seacht gCeanna) in the glorious Maharees on the Dingle Peninsula. That island has already appeared on these pages but it has a companion island which in all likelihood was connected to the monastery in the seventh century. Less than 100 metres separates the two islands and it is possible to walk between them at low tide. They, and the other Hogs, are part of the tombolo system which is an accretion of sand and soil forming an isthmus.

The archaeological record describes the “remains of an oval hut located at the centre and highest point of the island”. Where there was a dominant monastery on one island there was sometimes an associated island where monks went to pray or even live a solitary life for a period. Illauntannig’s monastery was founded by the industrious St Senan in the seventh century. He founded another monastery on Scattery Island, County Clare, and built churches in the Lee Valley, County Cork.