Born here, 24 February 1841
John Philip Holland
Holland was the second of four sons born in a coastguard cottage in Liscannor — his father, John Snr, was a member of the Royal Irish Coastguard. He went to school in Ennistymon, joined the Christian Brothers in 1858, and taught at schools in Cork, Maryborough, Enniscorthy and Drogheda. Ill health released him from the Brothers in May 1873; weeks later he sailed for Boston. Over the next twenty-five years he designed and launched a series of submarines — funded sometimes by the Fenian Brotherhood, eventually by the US Navy — culminating in Holland VI, launched in May 1897 and commissioned by the Navy as the USS Holland in April 1900. He died in Newark, New Jersey, on 12 August 1914 and never returned to Liscannor. The plaque on the village is small. The submarine museum at the Naval Academy at Annapolis is large.
A pattern still kept
St Brigid's Well
On the road above Liscannor towards Lahinch sits St Brigid's Well — a covered spring, a grotto, walls hung with rosaries, photographs, baby clothes, school medals. A pattern is held there each year on the eve of her feast day (31 January) and again on her summer feast (1 February). Above it stands a 19th-century column raised in 1853 by his tenants in honour of Cornelius O'Brien, a local Catholic Emancipation MP — the only such monument in Ireland erected to a landlord by his tenants while he was still alive, and one of the very few not pulled down later. The well below the column is older than the column by centuries.
The fossil-marked slate that floors half of Munster
Liscannor flagstone
The dark grey-blue stone with the wavy ripple marks — fossilised burrows of a worm called Olivellites that lived 300 million years ago — was quarried at Liscannor and Doolin from the 1830s onwards. It floors farmhouse kitchens across Clare and Galway, paves the courtyards of Trinity College Dublin, and lines the platforms at Galway and Limerick stations. The big Moher Flagstone quarry above the village is mostly idle now, but you can still walk in and see the fossil patterns underfoot. Take none home — it's not yours and the fossils are the point.
8km of headland, no entry fee
The cliffs without the centre
The Cliffs of Moher visitor centre is at the centre of the cliff range. To the south of it the cliffs run down to Hag's Head — six kilometres of headland with a clifftop trail along it, no fee, no fence, fewer photographs. The Hag's Head end of that trail starts on the coast road above Liscannor at a small car park near Moher Tower. Walk it from this end and you'll see the visitor-centre crowds at the far end of your day, miniature against the railing. Then turn around and walk back into a quiet pier town for a pint.