Cloghvanaha, Shrule, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Holy Sites & Wells
At the eastern edge of Shrule village in County Mayo, there is a place name on an old map that points to something which no longer exists, or at least can no longer be found.
The 1838 Ordnance Survey six-inch map marks a spot near the ruins of Shrule Abbey with the name 'Cloghvanaha', yet by the time later map editions were produced, the name had quietly vanished from the cartographic record along with any explanation of why.
The Ordnance Survey Name Books of 1838 offer the only real description that survives. They record the site as lying near the eastern corner of the abbey and identify the feature as "a large stone, Cruckvahina or the Blessed stone." The Irish place name itself carries that meaning forward, a sacred or venerated stone associated with the abbey grounds. Such stones were not unusual in medieval Irish religious contexts, where particular rocks might be connected with blessing, oath-taking, or the memory of a saint, but this one has left almost no trace beyond that single mid-nineteenth century notation. Today, the area is pasture land, and no physical trace of the stone remains visible.
What makes the site quietly strange is precisely that absence. The name was recorded with enough care in 1838 to suggest the stone was still known and present at that point, yet it disappears entirely from later documentation. Whether it was removed, buried, or simply forgotten is not recorded. The abbey ruins at Shrule still stand nearby, and the general location is identifiable, but the Blessed Stone itself exists now only as a few words in an old survey book and a name that did not survive into the modern map.