Building, Inis Oírr, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Utility Structures
On the north-eastern shore of Inis Oírr, the smallest of the Aran Islands, the sand occasionally gives something back.
A small arrangement of partially collapsed stone slabs, trapezoidal in shape and running roughly north to south, projects from the beach where shifting sands have exposed it. It measures around six metres in length and just over two metres in width, modest dimensions that have done little to settle the question of what it actually is.
The structure's orientation and its general form do not point convincingly toward a church, which makes the local tradition attached to it all the more intriguing. That tradition identifies the site as Reilig Póil, meaning the burial ground or cemetery of Paul, and holds it to be the remains of a church once dedicated to St Paul. The name and the association were noted by the antiquarian T. J. Westropp as far back as 1895, and the tradition was recorded again by researchers in the early twentieth century. The tension between what the physical evidence suggests and what local memory has preserved is precisely the kind of puzzle that makes coastal archaeology so difficult to resolve. Structures buried in beach sand are subject to constant movement and disturbance, and what survives above the surface at any given moment may be a fraction of what lies beneath, or a remnant so altered by time and tide that its original form is largely unreadable.
The slabs are visible only when the sand retreats far enough to expose them, which means the site can appear and disappear depending on seasonal conditions and storm activity. Visitors to the north-eastern shore should look for the low projection of stone among the beach sediments, though there is no guarantee of what will be visible on any particular day.
