Forgotten Stones: Ancient Church Sites of the Burren and Environs by Averil Swinfen

This guide to the ‘forgotten stones’ of early ecclesiastical sites and buildings is a lovingly detailed record of 82 churches secreted in the hundred-odd square miles of the Burren, a primeval limestone region of north County Clare, one heavily populated, encapsulating Ireland’s Christian heritage. The physical remains and state or preservation of each church are carefully described, as are features of archaeological and historic interest – altars, bullauns, carvings, crosses, sheela-na-gigs, wells – and accretions of legend and tradition.

Over 120 photographs, a map and drawings, speak eloquently of the riches and reversals of a millennium of worship, remarkably concentrated in this luminous, compelling landscape.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Averil Swinfen is author of Donkeys Galore (1976), Kilfenora Cathedral: A Short History (1986) and Forgotten Stones: Ancient Church Sites of the Burren and Environs (1992). For twenty years she and her late husband ran the Donkey Stud Farm in County Clare.