Little Skellig– the inaccessible sister crag to Skellig Michael - was long thought to have been inhabited only by gannets, fulmars and other seabirds.
However, as The Sunday Times reports today, archaeologist Michael Gibbons and a group of climbers have located the remains of an early Christian oratory on a narrow precipitous terrace overlooking the Atlantic.
“The ultimate monastic site” is how Gibbons describes the remains of the oratory, which he examined on an expedition to the isolated crag some 13 km (eight miles) west of the Iveragh peninsula.
Little Skellig is a protected bird colony, managed by Birdwatch Ireland, and with one of the largest populations of gannets among its seabird population.
The Connemara archaeologist, who was accompanied by several experienced climbers including Con Moriarty and Sean O’Farrell, visited outside the nesting season.
Kerry climber Con Moriarty on the slight terrace where the remains of an early Christian oratory have been found for the first time on Little Skellig, the highly inaccessible sister crag to Skellig Michael Photo: Michael Gibbons
He noted that the gannets had completely colonised the remains of the structure, using it as store for discarded nets and other fishing equipment used to build nests.
He estimates that the oratory dates to about the late 7th or early 8th century, when a monastery with its beehive huts, including a hermitage some 700 ft above the sea, had already been built on Skellig Michael.
Little Skellig the highly inaccessible sister crag to Skellig Michael
Read more in The Sunday Times here
