A Waterboys instrumental, 1:14
The Trip to Broadford
Mike Scott was living and writing in west Ireland through the late 80s, and Room to Roam (1990) was the album that came out of it — Sharon Shannon on accordion, Colin Blakey on flute, the band leaning hard into trad. Track 15 is 'The Trip to Broadford', a 74-second instrumental composed by the band's Kieran Donnellan. It is the village's most quoted line of cultural CV, and the village mostly does not mention it. You can drive the R466 in and out and never see a sign about it. That is the East Clare way of carrying a thing.
Bronze Age boats, found 1986
The Doon Lough canoes
Three logboats came out of the northern end of Doon Lough in 1986 — dugouts hewn from single oaks, dated to roughly 2,000–2,500 years old. They are the kind of find that recalibrates your sense of the place. People were paddling this lake when the Roman Republic was still standing. The lake is surrounded by remnant native woodland — oak, birch, alder — that has been growing here, in patches, for as long as the boats have been at the bottom.
Áth Leathan
Hurling, only
Broadford GAA is a hurling-only club, which in Clare is a statement of identity. Eight Clare Intermediate Championships since 1941, the most recent in 2019. Small village, deep bench, a long memory. The pitch is on the edge of the village. On a championship day, the road through is parked solid and the bar afterwards is the only show in the parish.
Kilseily and Killokennedy, joined
Three churches, one parish
Broadford parish was made by amalgamating the medieval parishes of Kilseily and Killokennedy. Three Catholic churches now serve the parish: St. Peter's (1836) on the rise above the village, St. Joseph's (1822) at Kilbane — the smallest church in the entire Diocese of Killaloe — and St. Mary's down in the Glenomra valley. Three small churches for one small parish is not over-provision; it is a record of three older communities that never quite gave up their corners.