Kincora-Killaloe

Unusual for an Irish town, Killaloe is not centred on a Norman castle or landlord’s demesne but a hub of pre-Norman Irish power.   

Once known as Kincora, under Brian ‘the Great’ Boru it was the capital of Ireland for a short period. Its name, ‘Head of the Weir’, indicates its importance for traffic on the Shannon.

As you approach Killaloe from the M 7,  an imposing building across the river catches the eye but it has nothing to do with Kincora. Brian’s capital was on the hill above, a more defensible position.  The venerable looking church building you see was built in 1225 and is now the COI Cathedral. Interesting, the Catholic cathedral of Killaloe is in Ennis, 50km away.  

To add further to the confusion,  although the town’s name means the Cell of Lua (Kil-Lua) that saint did not settle in Killaloe but on Friars’s island, a few miles upstream. It was only  when the modernising hydroelectric scheme started in 1929, and rising water began to submerge Friars Island, that the ancient church was removed from the island, stone by stone, and reassembled on the original site of Kincora (on Killaloe hill) where the local parish church now stands.

In fact the patron saint of both the COI cathedral and the Catholic parish is not Lua but Flananan. Maybe it is because the 6th century Lua, or Molua (Our Lua), did not stay on but move on while the 7th century Flannan was a local man who lived and was buried where the COI cathedral stands.

Molua was a much travelled man whose activities are described in an early and detailed ‘Life’.  He studied under Comghall in Bangor, founded a centre at Drumsnatt in Monaghan, then in Killaloe and later at Clonfermulloe, Laois, where he is said to be buried. (I first came across Lua’s name in the Slieve Bloom Mountains where there is a sign for his Holy Well.) 

Lua was a noted spiritual master, a friend of Gildas the Welsh scholar and monk, and mentioned admiringly by St Bernard of Clairvaux as a great founder of monasteries.  However back in Clare, and Killaloe,  he is very much in second place to the local man, Flannan.

Flannan had joined Lua’s monastery, (he is said to be a nephew, maybe to preserve a connection) and his time as Abbot became legendary because then ‘the fields waved with the richest crops, the sea poured almost on the shore an abundance of large whales and every kind of smaller fish, and the apple trees drooped under the weight of the fruit’.

Today the town of Killaloe is divided not over Lua v Flannan, but over what will become of its old bridge over the Shannon.  That bridge, first built around 1650 and rebuilt in its present 13-arch form in the 18th century, is clearly unsuited to a steady flow of modern traffic. Already a new bridge has been built downstream, linked with a road that will bypass the town.

There seems to be no problem with the bypass but what of the old bridge? There is a strong suggestion that it be pedestrianised, becoming a tourist attraction. But that would mean motor traffic would have no direct access to Ballina, the Tipperary town at the other side of the bridge. Up to now Ballina was like a suburb of Killaloe, with just a short drive over the old bridge between them.  Local traders are worried. 

Should the new bridge be named after Lua or Flannan? That is not on the Local Authorities’ list of urgent concerns.

Photos:  Brian of Kincora.