County Kerry

Left The hermitage of St Colman Mac Duagh (AD 560 632) who spent two periods of his life as a religious recluse still survives in a forest glade with a spring at the foot of Slievecarran in the Burren National Park in County Clare. It serves as a type site for similar retreats, which typically consist of a cave and a chapel. Although located in an isolated setting, it was still within half a day’s walk of the royal court and port at Kinvara, and the monastic centre at Kilmacduagh.

Seeking seclusion: medieval hermitages in Britain and Ireland

Medieval monasteries and their communities have been (and continue to be) well studied, but not so the structures associated with those who chose a more solitary route to salvation: hermits and anchorites. Dr Simon Roffey’s new book, An Archaeological History of Hermitages and Eremitic Communities in Medieval Britain and Beyond, sets out to remedy that omission, as Chris Catling reports.

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Current Archaeology 398

• Skellig Michael: religious life at the edge of the world
• The Gloucester: a royal wreck
• King’s Lynn under siege: Civil War fortress engineering
• Reconstructing the shrine of Thomas Becket
• The Govan Stones: archaeology at the heart of a Glasgow community

Right The 1820s road and two lighthouses were the first structures to be built on the island since a permanent monastic presence ceased in the 13th century. The upper lighthouse (to the left) was decommissioned in 1870 and is now a ruin. It is linked by a meandering path to the lower lighthouse, which is now fully automated and requires only occasional maintenance visits. Both lighthouses and the adjacent accommodation for the keepers and their families were built from rock excavated to build the lighthouse road to the right of the picture.

At the edge of the world: exploring early medieval asceticism on the Skelligs

Skellig Michael – the larger of two rocky islets that lie 8 miles (13km) west of the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, Ireland – was the favoured retreat of early medieval monks seeking an escape from worldly temptations. Reading the newly published Book of the Skelligs, Chris Catling gains some insights into the conditions those hermits endured and the reasons why the islands were added to the list of World Heritage Sites in 1996.