Chapel, Eochaill, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Churches & Chapels
Eochaill, on the eastern end of Inis Mór, the largest of the Aran Islands, is a townland that carries one of the older place-names on an island already thick with early medieval and prehistoric remains.
Somewhere within it, a chapel once stood, or perhaps still does in some form, quiet enough to have attracted relatively little published attention compared to the more frequented monuments nearby.
The Aran Islands have been a focus of Christian settlement since at least the fifth or sixth century, associated in tradition with Saint Enda, whose monastery drew scholars and clergy from across Ireland and Britain. Eochaill, whose name is sometimes rendered as Onaght or parsed as relating to a yew wood, appears in early ecclesiastical contexts, and small chapels of this kind were frequently associated with early monastic enclosures, holy wells, or burial grounds. Many such structures across the islands are built in dry-stone or mortared rubble, with simple rectangular plans and modest proportions that make them easy to overlook against the limestone landscape.