Tenth century, struck by lightning, still standing
The round tower
The round tower beside the cathedral is about thirty metres high, built of dark purple sandstone sometime around the tenth or eleventh century as part of St Colman's monastic settlement. It is one of only two round towers surviving in County Cork - the other, at Kinneigh, is ruined. On the night of 10 January 1749 a violent thunderstorm destroyed the stone vault at the top; Bishop Berkeley wrote to a friend a few weeks later that "our Round Tower stands where it did but the little stone arched vault on top" was gone. A flat castellated parapet was added later in its place. The interior is not open - the stairs inside are too narrow - but you can walk around the base and look up at a thousand years of persistence.
The greatest hurler the game has produced
Christy Ring of Cloyne
Nicholas Christopher Michael Ring was born at Kilboy Cross, less than a mile from Cloyne, on 30 October 1920. Over twenty-four years in the Cork senior jersey, from 1939 to 1963, he won eight All-Ireland medals and eighteen Railway Cup titles with Munster, and to most who saw him or argue about him since he is simply the best hurler that ever lived. The bronze statue in the village, by Yann Goulet, was unveiled by Jack Lynch on 1 May 1983 on the site of the house Ring grew up in. He died in 1979. Cloyne GAA still plays in his red and black, and the village has produced more Cork hurlers since, including the goalkeeper Donal Og Cusack.
To be is to be perceived, worked out in East Cork
Berkeley's eighteen years
George Berkeley, born in Kilkenny in 1685, was Bishop of Cloyne from 1734 until 1752 and lived in the village through most of it. His philosophy - that material things exist only insofar as they are perceived, esse est percipi - was already written by the time he arrived, but he spent his Cloyne years on practical matters, tar-water cures and the welfare of a poor diocese, as much as metaphysics. He is remembered in a monument in St Colman's Cathedral. The city of Berkeley in California, and the university there, are named after him for a line he wrote about empire travelling westward. He left Cloyne for Oxford in 1752 and died there the following year.
John Brinkley, buried in the cathedral
The astronomer-bishop
Cloyne's other bishop worth knowing was John Brinkley, the first Royal Astronomer of Ireland, who held the see from 1826 until his death in 1835. Before Cloyne he ran Dunsink Observatory outside Dublin and pushed the measurement of stellar parallax further than anyone had managed. He is entombed in St Colman's Cathedral, a few feet from Berkeley's monument - two bishops of a small Cork village who between them argued about the nature of perception and measured the distance to the stars.