Site of Abbey, Clashmore, Co. Waterford
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Churches & Chapels
A small sandstone block sitting in a graveyard beside the Greagagh River carries more history than its modest dimensions suggest. Roughly the size of a large cooking pot and worn smooth over centuries, it is a bullaun stone, a type of ritual or devotional object common to early Irish ecclesiastical sites, characterised by one or more cup-shaped depressions ground into the rock. This particular example, measuring about 58 centimetres by 50 centimetres and standing just under 30 centimetres high, has a single basin roughly 27 centimetres across. It is, along with a holy well about 300 metres to the west, just about all that physically survives to suggest this was once a significant place of early Christian worship.
The site sits on a south-facing slope above the north bank of the Greagagh River, near the point where the river changes course and bends westward toward the River Blackwater, which it meets roughly two and a half kilometres away. According to tradition, the abbey here was founded in the 7th century by St Cronin, also known as Mochua, a figure whose name is preserved in the nearby well dedicated to him. The attribution comes from what is known of early Irish monastic foundations in the region, but the archaeological record has so far declined to confirm it. Two separate programmes of excavation and ground testing carried out in the 2000s, one on a small area to the north of the graveyard and a larger investigation covering ground to its west, turned up no material connected to the early medieval period. The western area, spanning roughly 270 metres north to south and 125 metres east to west, produced only post-medieval features. Whatever the 7th-century community left behind, it has not yet been found, or may not survive.
The graveyard itself is rectangular in plan and contains a Church of Ireland parish church built in 1818, which has since been converted into a heritage centre. The well dedicated to St Mochua lies a short walk to the west. The bullaun stone remains on site, a quiet and easily overlooked object that asks more questions than the ground around it has so far been willing to answer.