Gallarus Oratory (but not Castle)

The Gallarus Castle and Oratory together are another of the marvelous Heritage sites maintained by the good people of the OPW. Alas, the resources of the OPW being somewhat limited, these sites are not staffed around the clock and generally close at 6pm. We arrived at this site at about 5:45pm, giving us just long enough to take in the oratory, but not the walk to the castle.

The Gallarus Oratory is plenty interesting enough all by itself, or so I told myself as we drove away after closing time. The oratory is an early Christian Church, thought to have been built between the 6th and 9th century.


As we approached the oratory, a short walk away from the visitor's centre, I experienced an extraordinary moment of bonding with a number of non-English speaking tourists. Looking at this photograph the site looks deserted, even desolate. What you can't see here is the seemingly endless group of brightly dressed tourists who were wandering into, out of and generally around the structure. I paused at the gate to await a clear moment for a photograph. Slowly but surely, I was joined by a group of two, then two more, then two more, then another three tourists with cameras. We gathered patiently at the gate and waited.

After a while we started to make comments, each in our own languages. Somehow we were all rendered telepathic by the shared context and understood each other perfectly. So when the 6th person in a row emerged from the tiny building I got a big laugh when I said, "How many of them are in there?" When one of the men who emerged from inside started walking very slowly around the building, minutely inspecting the stones, I perfectly understood my neighbour's German sentence to mean "Keep going around the back there, buddy."

Finally, we had a clear shot. Six cameras went off in unison. We of the gathering at the gate all smiled and parted friends.



Observant readers will recognise the now familiar technique of corbelling seen on much earlier structures, even on Neolithic tombs. No mortar is used in the construction, but the stones are laid at an angle to encourage water to run off the outside of the building.

See this tiny window? There's a legend that if you climb out of the oratory via the window your soul will be cleansed. Considering that the window is less than 20 cm tall this seems like a fair bet. If you managed to get through the window you'd quite likely find yourself in purgatory immediately.