Field Guide Design

Anthony Previté of Oldchapel Press approached me in early 2008 to lay out his first book which was to be a series of field guides on Western Ireland’s monastic heritage sites.

The first book entitled A Guide to Connemara’s Early Christian Sites was published on the 8th of August 2008 and the second book in this series entitled A Guide to Lough Corrib’s Early Monastic Sites was published in early 2010.

A Guide to Connemara’s Early Christian Sites

The islands and coastline of Connemara are alive with the constantly changing colours, clouds, sunlight, and rain, sometimes disappearing and reappearing from blankets of sea fog and squalls of rain. The winter storms then purge the landscapes before the arrival of spring. It was with such a kaleidoscope of seasons that the monks and eremites of these often isolated and precarious sites lived their lives on the edge of what was a maritime highway reaching from North Africa to Scandinavia. It was these who introduced the spiritual traditions into Gaelic society as founded by the ascetics of the 3rd and 4th centuries. A Guide to Connemara’s Early Christian Sites won a County Galway Heritage Award in 2009.

A Guide to Lough Corrib’s Early Monastic Sites

This is a high-quality publication with over 100 full-colour plates. It highlights 31 sites around Lough Corrib ranging from the magnificent and well-preserved remains of Cong, Ross Errilly, and Claregalway to the obscurest piles of stones at Kilian (Grange) Church and the island of Inchiquinn, where nothing remains except the memories of the most significant names and memories if its ancient hagiology.

A Guide to Lough Corrib’s Early Monastic Sites won the County Galway Heritage Award for Best Publication 2010.

Both of these books contain numerous hand-drawn sketches of sites now in ruin and supplementary photographs of each site’s current state. Both of these works are major contributions to the National Archive.