The saint in the leather boat
Brendan the Navigator
Born in this parish around 484. Educated at Ardfert, then at Clonfert, then at sea. The Navigatio Sancti Brendani — written down in the ninth century but older in the telling — has him sailing west with fourteen monks in a hide-covered boat for seven years and finding a Promised Land of the Saints somewhere across the Atlantic. People treated it as folklore for a thousand years. Then Tim Severin built a replica from oxhide and ash in 1976 and sailed it from Brandon Creek to Newfoundland in two summers. He didn't prove Brendan made the trip. He proved the boat could.
Twelfth-century stonework, still standing
The cathedral complex
Three churches in one walled enclosure. The cathedral itself, with a Romanesque west doorway dating from around 1200 and a row of nine lancet windows in the chancel. Temple na Hoe, smaller, finer, older in feel. Temple na Griffin, with a stone griffin carved into the wall that nobody has fully explained. The Office of Public Works has the site now. There is a small visitor centre, an entry fee that pays for the upkeep, and gravestones leaning into the grass between the buildings. An hour is enough. Two if you have the inclination.
Franciscan, 1253
The Friary
Thomas FitzMaurice, first Baron Kerry, founded the Franciscan friary in 1253, half a kilometre from the cathedral. The cloister arcade is still there, and so is the long nave. The friars were thrown out at the Reformation, came back when no one was looking, and were thrown out again. The ruin is open to the air and free to walk. Bring a coat — there is no roof.
Good Friday, 1916
Casement at Banna
Sir Roger Casement, former British consul turned Irish revolutionary, was put ashore from the German submarine U-19 on Banna Strand in the early hours of 21 April 1916. The arms ship Aud, carrying twenty thousand rifles for the Rising, was meant to land at Fenit the same week and was scuttled instead. Casement, exhausted and ill, was found by the RIC at McKenna's Fort the next morning. He was tried in London, stripped of his knighthood, and hanged at Pentonville on 3 August. There is a stone memorial on the dunes at Banna where he came ashore. People still leave flowers.
Brandon Creek to Newfoundland, 1976–77
Tim Severin's voyage
Severin was an explorer-historian who lived in west Cork. He read the Navigatio, looked at the boats still being built on the Aran Islands, and decided to test the story. He built a thirty-six-foot currach from forty-nine oxhides stretched over an ash frame, sealed with wool grease, and launched it from Brandon Creek on the Dingle Peninsula in May 1976. Two summers and four crew later, the Brendan landed at Peckford Island, Newfoundland. The book — The Brendan Voyage — became a bestseller. Shaun Davey wrote an orchestral suite about it. The boat is in Craggaunowen in Co. Clare.