Inisheer
The nearest Aran island to Clare is the smallest, five villages and 343 people on a slab of limestone with a castle on its hill and a rusting cargo ship on its shore. Irish is the daily language of about 260 of them. Inis Oírr means the eastern island, a name the Ordnance Survey settled on somewhere between the old Inis Oirthir and what islanders called it, Inis Thiar.
Checked against the source on 2026-09-19.
Jjm596, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
.jpg){kind=link}
Caisleán Uí Bhriain, Dún Aonghasa on the 3D model; tap a pin for its page and directions.
From 1500 BC to the O'Briens
Cnoc Raithní, a burial mound found in 1885, dates to 1500 BC and is the earliest sign of people here. The patron saint, Caomhán, is said in some traditions to have been the elder brother of Kevin of Glendalough; the ruins of his tenth-century church in the cemetery lie so far below the sand that they are dug out every year. The O'Briens of Thomond ruled the islands before the Anglo-Normans settled Connacht in the 1230s, and the Tribes of Galway paid them tribute. O'Brien's Castle, Creggankeel fort, the Grave of the Seven Daughters, St Gobnet's church and St Cavan's church are national monuments with the mound.
The Plassy
On 8 March 1960 the cargo ship Plassy, built in 1940 as the naval trawler HMS Juliet and renamed by the Limerick Steamship Company in 1951, was carrying whiskey, stained glass and yarn through Galway Bay when a storm put her on Finnis Rock. The Inisheer Rocket Crew took off the entire crew by breeches buoy, and a second storm weeks later lifted the ship off the rock and onto the shore, where she still lies. She appears in the opening credits of Father Ted as part of Craggy Island, and Storm Christine moved her in January 2014 for the first time since 1991.
Getting there and getting about
Ferries run from Rossaveal and Doolin, where a pier for commercial ferries opened in June 2015, and between the islands; Aer Arann Islands flies from Connemara Airport. Islanders drive or walk, and visitors take a horse and trap. Teenagers from the mainland come to Coláiste Laichtín in June, July and August. Inisheer is also the name of a slow air by Thomas Walsh, written after a visit in the 1970s, and the anthropologist John Cowan Messenger wrote about the island as Inis Beag. The Kilronan model on this page pins the Aran forts; Inisheer's own places are listed among Kilronan's.
Questions people ask
How do you get to Inisheer?
What is the shipwreck on Inisheer?
Do people speak Irish on Inisheer?
Written from Wikipedia, "Inisheer" (CC BY-SA 4.0), read on 2026-09-19, and from the OpenStreetMap places on the model. Nothing has been added from memory; follow the source for its footnotes.