Begnet's Island

Around  600 AD when St Marnock was rowing his ‘little boat’ (see earlier post) from Lambay Island to what is now Portmarnock, St Begnet on the other side of Dublin Bay was rowing her boat to and from Dalkey.  

She had a hermitage on the island and an outpost on the mainland. Traces of both remain.   

But who was she? Some accounts confuse her with St Bega who fled Ireland to escape marriage to the King of Norway and founded communities of dedicated women in Northumbria. There she is also known as St Bee.   

However Bega’s detailed biography, written in Britain, has no mention of Dalkey where Begnet left lasting memories.  

Having a hermitage on an island and an outpost on the mainland was not unusual at that time.   

The search of the ‘Desert Fathers and Mothers’ (of whom she was a follower) was easier to achieve alone on an island (the closest the Irish had to a desert)  while a hut on the mainland within rowing distance kept her involved in society (an Irish characteristic).  

Her unusual life style attracted the curious and the island soon became a popular place of pilgrimage.

First known as ‘St Begnet's Isle’ (and Dalkey as Kilbegnet or ‘Begnet’s Cell’), it appears as such on a map painted on the wall of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence around 1560. The earliest reference to ‘Dalkey Island’ as such is not till 1782.

Begnet’s mainland lodgings are easy to visit as they are in the middle of Dalkey Town, next to the Heritage Centre in a castle. The display has interesting details of Dalkey’s later history but little on Begnet or why she came there in the first place.

There are clues on the island but you need a boat to get there.  The distance seems short but the current is strong and dangerous.

This uninhabited and unsheltered oval island covers 25 rocky acres and its paths are seasonal. On the northern side you can find traces of a pre-historic promontory fort and to the south a Martello Tower and gun emplacements, defences again a possible French invasion in the early 19^th century.

It is easy to bypass the centrepiece, St Begnet’s church surrounded by thorny furze. It was built in stone in the 9^th century to replace an earlier timber structure. Nearby is an almost invisible Holy Well to which sailors went for a cure from scurvy.

Despite its nearness to the mainland you can be absorbed in the silence and scenery. It is easy to forget Begnet. Yet for centuries it was her island and pilgrims came from afar In her name.