The Burren
The Burren (Boireann – “great rock” / “rocky place”; aka Boirinn – dative form), a weird and wonderful region extending across northwestern County Clare and a small part of County Galway, is one of the world’s finest examples of glacio-karst landscape, famous for its luminous scenery and sites of archaeological and historical interest.
Typical Burren vista (Photo – pacaguisa)
In addition to these pages, the edges of the Burren are explored by:
ByRoute 1, taking in Liscannor Bay, Lahinch, the Cliffs of Moher, Doolin, Black Head, Ballyvaughan and Kinvarra;
ByRoute 12 taking in Corrofin, Killinaboy, Leamaneh, Kilfenora and Lisdoonvarna.
The Cromwellian general Edmund Ludlow described the Burren as “a country where there is not enough water to drown a man, wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury him…… and yet their cattle are very fat; for the grass growing in turfs of earth, of two or three foot square, that lie between the rocks, which are of limestone, is very sweet and nourishing.”
Measuring roughly 250km2, the rocky windswept region is a rolling mosaic of limestone pavements, calcareous grassland, stunted Ash / hazel / yew woodland and scrub, fen, turloughs (disappearing winter ponds), petrifying springs, lakes, cliffs and scree. The limestone karsts are crisscrossed by deep grooves known as “grikes”, leaving isolated slabs called “clints”, in turn pitted with shallow indentations and runnels. The resulting moonlike landscape at first glance appears treeless, bleak and barren, but is streaked with hollows and valleys containing enough soil and rainwater to support a startling abundance of wildlife.
Flora & Fauna
Due to the unusual environment, arctic, alpine and Mediterranean plants thrive side by side; most flower in spring, attracting botanists from all over the world to see their unique juxtapositions. The flora ranges from algae, lichens, mosses, ferns, brambles, heather, ivy, saxifrage, wall lettuce, wood sage and dark red helleborine to creamy-white Burnet roses, magenta-coloured bloody cranesbill and no less than 23 varieties of orchid. Many species are rare in Ireland, and some are only found in this area.
The vivid blue flower of the alpine Spring Gentian is used by the tourist board as a symbol for the Burren. (Photo – Tigerente)
The Burren’s varied wildlife includes almost every mammal native to Ireland, from field mice, bank voles, pygmy shrews and pine martens to rabbits, hares, red squirrels, Irish stoats, foxes, badgers, otters, seals and seven types of bat, plus feral goats and mink (but, oddly, no hedgehogs).
Birds include Peregrine falcons, ravens, kestrels, merlin and hen harriers, smaller species such as warblers, tits etc., and waterfowl such as mute and whooper swans, curlews, lapwings, plovers etc.
Viviparous lizards sun themselves on hot rocks in summer, while common frogs and newts are both found in the wetland areas.
There is also a wide range of butterflies (including bright yellow Brimstones, Brown and Purple Hairstreaks and rare Pearl-bordered Fritillaries), moths (notably the endemic Burren Green, discovered in 1949) and other interesting insects, such as a water-beetle (Ochthebius nilssoni) otherwise found only in northern Sweden.
Visitors come from far and wide to tour the archaeological and historical sites, of which there are over 2500, including more than 90 megalithic tombs, 450 stone forts, 20 churches, some with Round Towers, and 20 castellated Tower Houses. Drivers, cyclists and especially walkers following the unpaved “green roads” enjoy the many imaginative placenames bequeathed by local folklore. The Burren’s limestone cliffs are popular with rock-climbers, while potholers / spelunkers admire the caves, tunnels and underground rivers speleologists have charted in the area.
Burren Pre-history & History
The limestone karst of the Burren was formed from organic sediment beneath a shallow tropical sea about 350,000,000 years ago, and was hurled into place by a massive geological cataclysm.
Palaeobotanical and palynological studies indicate that the Burren was once dominated by pine woodlands with an understory of hazel, ash, oak, yew and alder. The first Mesolithic settlers left little trace on the environment. Nevertheless, archaeologists have traced the development of an ancient agricultural society in the Burren over 6000 years, from its hunter-gatherer origins to the present day.
On the evidence of numerous burial sites, monuments, barrows, fulachta fiadha (cooking sites) and artefacts, the Neolithic period (c.3000 BC onward) saw a significant growth in the number of human inhabitants, who reached their zenith of prosperity during the Bronze Age. Trees were steadily cleared to make way for farmland until the “Iron Age lull“, while methods such as reverse transhumance (putting cattle, sheep and goats to graze on the lowlands in summer and on the hills in winter), continued in use for millenia and were essential to the development of the “ageless” landscape.
The Burren has the densest concentration of ecclesiastical sites in Ireland. Early and medieval Christian monks brought new tools, techniques and crop species to the area, gradually shifiting the main focus of agriculture from the hillslopes, where ringforts protected families and their valuable animals from marauding wolves and other predators, to the fertile lowlands, better suited for tillage and winter grazing of animals bred for dairy produce rather than meat.
The Burren formed part of the territory of Corco Modhruadh (“seed or people of Modhruadh”) coextensive with the diocese of Kilfenora. Around the 12th Century, the territory was divided into Corco Modhruadh Iartharach (“Western Corcomroe”) and Corco Modhruadh Oirthearach (“Eastern Corcomroe”), aka Boireann, which later became the baronies of Corcomroe and Burren respectively.
The Ó Lochlainn / O’Loughlin / O’Lachlen clan ruled Boireann down to the mid C17th from their chief residence at Gragans Castle. The chief of the family was known in later times as the ‘Prince of Burren’ and clan members were buried in the family tomb near the altar of Corcomroe Abbey. Their kinsmen the Ó Conchubhair / O’Connor clan ruled Corco Modhruadh Oirthearach from Dough Castle near Liscannor. Both clans fought frequently with the O’Briens.
The Annals of the Four Masters (1616) contain many references to the region, e.g. ‘Burren’s hilly grey expanse of jagged points and slippery steeps, nevertheless overflowing with milk and yielding luscious grass’, and include tales of daring raids: in 1055 AD a ‘predatory excursion’ produced many ‘spoils’; in 1314 marauding parties ‘gathered herds, flocks and all valuable gear of the Corcamachs’ from among ‘Burren’s uncouth ways, narrow gaps, crooked passes, rugged boulders and high sharp crests’; and as late as 1600, a raid by O’Donnell stripped the Burren of its ‘cattle, flocks and booty’, and with ‘enormous amount of cattle and plunder, they left the cleft stone passes of white Boireann behind’.
The main population centres within the medieval territory of Boireann were Lisdoonvarna, Ballyvaughan, New Quay / Burrin, Noughaval, Bealaclugga, Carron and Fanore / Craggagh.
The population remained substantial until the mid-C19th Great Famine, when the stone walls that are now such a feature of the area were built by locals employed by philanthropic famine relief schemes.
Until only a few decades ago the region’s name in English was just “Burren”, unadorned, like Connemara, by any article; the ”the” is a C20th addition.
Karst meadow. (Photo – Matthewobrien)
For a beautiful photo of a gryke accompanied by a moving poem, click here.
Burren National Park, extending over 1500ha in the southeastern corner of the Burren, is the smallest of the Republic of Ireland’s six National Parks. It contains examples of all the major habitats within the region.
