Doora-Barefield, senior hurling champions
The 1998 county
For most of the 20th century Doora-Barefield was a junior and intermediate club. Then in 1998 they won the Clare senior hurling championship — the Canon Hamilton Cup — beating Wolfe Tones in the county final. They went on to a Munster club final the following spring. The Tuohy and McMahon names were on team-sheets either side of that win. The pitch is a small one and the dressing rooms are smaller, but the parish has not forgotten what it did, and would tell you so given half a chance.
The older half of the parish
Doora
A kilometre east of Barefield, on a low rise above Ballyalla Lough, the ruined medieval church and graveyard at Doora mark a foundation older than the village. Local tradition gives it to a 7th-century saint; the surviving fabric is later, probably 13th or 14th century. The graveyard is still in use. There is no visitor centre, no signage, and no car park beyond a wide bit of verge — which, depending on who you ask, is either the problem or the point.
When the road stopped coming through
The bypass
The N18 used to run straight through Barefield on its way from Ennis to Gort and Galway. In the 2010s the M18 motorway opened a field to the east, and the through-traffic vanished overnight. The village lost a petrol station, a couple of small businesses and most of its noise. What it kept was the church, the school, the hall and the pitch — which, the older parishioners will tell you, was the whole village to begin with.