Was this battle outside Dublin in 1014 the most significant in Ireland’s history? Clontarf today is a suburb on the north side of Dublin City with pleasant views over Dublin Bay and the Wicklow Mountains. However Clontarf is best known as the site of one of the bloodiest battles in Irish history. This year marks […]
Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland is celebrated throughout the world on the 17th of March. But, just who was Saint Patrick? St Patrick, the patron St of Ireland was born in the 4th century, He was kidnapped and enslaved by Irish raiders when he was about 16. He was brought to Ireland where […]
On the north west coast of Ireland, in County Antrim, is one of the country’s most striking landforms and popular visitor destinations, the world renowned Giant’s Causeway. The Causeway is a rock made of flat-topped polygonal columns that form 40,000 steps. These geometrical shapes give the impression that the Causeway was not formed by natural […]
On the southern bank of the River Liffey at the corner of Parliament Street and Essex Quay is the Sunlight Chambers, one of Dublins many architectural treasures. The most distinctive feature of the romantic Italianate style building is two highly colourful terracotta friezes that extend across the length of the facade. The friezes depicts the […]
We take a look at the trends in Celtic jewelry from the traditional to the contemporary. There has been a steady rise in the popularity of vintage themed weddings in recent years. The proliferation of social media may have had a hand in this as people joined Pinterest and Facebook in their droves in trying […]
In 1868 in the town of Ardagh, County Limerick, two men were digging for potatoes in a ring fort, believed to protect the potatoes from the blight that brought the famine 30 years earlier. They came across something hard in the soil and when they cleared away the earth they found a chalice and other […]
The earliest form of the written Irish Language is Ogham, a prehistoric script dating back to around the 4th-7th century. This form of writing consisted of a series of notches carved on the corners of large standing perpendicular stones. The stone inscriptions were written vertically from bottom to top. An individual letter could contain between […]
Jewelry is a way of expressing yourself to the outside world. It can be an expression of love between two people and traditionally is used to signify landmark moments such as engagements or weddings in people’s lives. The selection and availability of jewelry for engagements and weddings alike has expanded vastly over the years as […]
In Ireland, we like to consider ourselves modern Europeans with liberal attitudes and a progressive society. However, although the Irish clergy has been rocked by scandal and church attendance has plummeted in recent years, we are still fundamentally a conservative Catholic county at heart. With one of the highest rates of matrimony in Europe, this […]
The story of the Children of Lir is a well known legend in Ireland. In our visit to the remote West Cork village of Allihies on the Bere Peninsula, we came across the graves site of the children. According to tradition, the children were the sons and daughters of Lir, and a member of the […]