Westminster Hall and the Royal Palace
The Cratloe oaks
The oak woods on these hills were prized for centuries. Local tradition says the timber was used in the hammer-beam roof of Westminster Hall in London — built for Richard II in 1393 — and in the Royal Palace on Dam Square in Amsterdam. The Westminster claim is repeated everywhere and proven nowhere; the Dutch one has more paper behind it. What is certain is that Cratloe oak was a known commodity in European shipbuilding and ecclesiastical construction, and that the hills were largely cleared by the eighteenth century to fill those orders. The forest you walk through now is mostly conifer plantation. The few mature oaks left are the survivors of a much older wood.
Why people drive up here
The view south
From the high ground at Ballycannan and Woodcockhill the whole lower Shannon opens out — the estuary widening toward Foynes, the Kerry mountains beyond, Limerick city on the near bank. It is one of the best free views in the mid-west, and locals know it. On summer evenings cars pull in along the lane verges and people sit on bonnets watching the light go. The OPW erected a viewing point at Woodcockhill, the next ridge over, but the unmarked pull-ins are quieter and the same view.
Where Ballycannan belongs
The parish of Cratloe
Ballycannan is one of the townlands that make up Cratloe parish, in the diocese of Killaloe. The parish sits on the Clare side of the Limerick boundary — close enough to the city that schoolchildren go in for secondary, far enough out that the postal address still reads Co. Clare and people will correct you on it. The parish church (St John's, Cratloe village) holds the registers; the GAA club (Cratloe GAA) holds the rest of community life and has the All-Ireland senior hurling medals on the wall to prove it. Cratloe won the All-Ireland Club Hurling title in 2014 — a small parish beating the country, which is a story Ballycannan will tell you whether you ask or not.