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Burren National Park Day Tour
Connecting with the presence of place
Eagles Rock is a very special place in the eastern Burren landscape. It’s no small wonder that Colman found this magical place and decided to settle and build his hermitage here.
The place is known locally as St Colman’s Bed and well or Keelhilla/Kinallia. Even though it has an early Christian church there now, it has a timeless feel to it. In fact, Colman in his hermitage lived much like the Coptic monks of the Egyptian desert and quite a number of these ascetics came to live in the Aran islands and the Burren.
A hermitage in Irish is in fact a Diseart, which has its origins from the Desert fathers.
To get to this holy place, there is a pathway over limestone pavement for the first 15 minutes or so and then on to a sandy gravel path.
At the site I usually lead a meditation to link with the energies there and then give people a chance to explore in silence before giving some background history and folklore.
Much has been written about this place over the years and visitors have reacted variously to its remoteness with John O Donovan’s writing ‘what a dismal and gloomy spot and what an enthusiastic recluse St. Colman was to retire here to contemplate eternity! I will let you decide for yourself, but for me this is a magical place in the hazel thicket at the foot of Sliabh Carran, and as George Cunningham says ‘hopefully this venerable place will always remain remote, giving up its secrets only to the searching visitors’.
Once the site is reached you will find an early Christian church or oratory, cave and Tobermacduagh, the holy well dedicated to St Colman who was born around the middle of the 6th century. He is generally referred to as Colman Mac Duagh to distinguish him from the various other Colemans who had monastic settlements in various parts of the country.
