Aharla, Eoghanacht, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Holy Sites & Wells
On the Aran Islands, a small drystone enclosure sits on a low bluff to the south of Teampall BhreacƔin, and inside it, resting on a plinth, lie the broken fragments of a high cross known as the South Cross.
The enclosure is barely larger than a generous room, measuring roughly 4.8 metres by 4.55 metres, yet it carries considerable weight. It is one of five leabaĆ associated with the early ecclesiastical complex here, a leaba being a grave-plot or saint's bed, the kind of enclosed sacred space where proximity to a holy person's resting place was believed to carry spiritual significance.
The site appears on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps under the name Aharla, though the scholar Tim Robinson, writing in 1980, recorded the enclosure as Leaba BhreacÔin, linking it directly to Saint BreacÔn, the early medieval figure to whom Teampall BhreacÔin is dedicated. The cluster of five such leabaà around the two churches, Teampall BhreacÔin and Teampall an Phoill, points to a place that once drew considerable devotional attention. High crosses of the kind whose remains now lie here were typically large, elaborately carved stone monuments, and the fact that the South Cross has been reduced to fragments adds a quiet melancholy to what is already a contemplative space. Gosling documented the site in 1993, placing it within a broader survey of the region's early Christian monuments.