Kilcommon - the church of Coman
St Coman's churchyard
Kilcommon parish takes its name from St Coman, who lived around the end of the sixth century and is said to be buried in the old churchyard at Pullathomas, near the entrance where the walls of the old church can still be traced. By the time O'Donovan's Ordnance Survey letters were written in 1838, only part of one gable remained, too little to say much about its style or age. The cemetery climbs the hillside in sections above Sruwaddacon Bay and is still in use. It is the oldest thread in the village and the one the landslide came closest to taking.
Dun Ceartain - Cartan's fort
The Dooncarton stone circle
Up on the ridge above the village stand the remains of the Dooncarton stone circle - seven stones left of what was once a fuller ring, the tallest about 1.2 m, set among ancient field walls with a long view over Broadhaven Bay to the cliffs at Rinroe Point. The name is taken from an Iron Age chieftain, Ciortan, who turns up in the Tain Bo Flidhais of the Ulster Cycle. In 1850 the writer Caesar Otway recorded how his companions tricked some locals into pulling up the stones in a hunt for buried silver coins; the stones were later reset. It is a short, steep walk up and one of the better-placed circles on this coast.
19 September 2003
The 2003 landslides
After a night of intense rain, the saturated blanket bog on Dooncarton Mountain let go. Around thirty separate peat slides came down the slope between Pullathomas and Glengad on 19 September 2003, tearing across roads, fields and houses on their way to the bay. A corner of the old graveyard was struck and a number of graves were swept into the sea. The damage ran to millions; the repair and clean-up went on for years. That nobody was killed is still spoken of locally as a kind of miracle. The hillside carries the marks of it.