The Clare Island Symposium took place on the 15, 16, and 17 of September 2000.

Clare Island's Medieval Wall-paintings:

Charting the way forward

In 1910, as part of  the landmark Clare Island Survey, T.J. Westropp surveyed the wall-paintings in St. Brigid's Abbey on the island. Of the Cistercian abbey (actually a cell of Abbeyknockmoy in east Galway) and its contents, he wrote:

The Board of Public Works has done everything to preserve the ceiling, but in vain; the damage had too long set up from water soaking through the floor above for anything now to be effective.…the curate on the island informs me even in 1862 when the new chapel was commenced, the paintings were in good preservation. Unfortunately no one sketched them so far as is known. The present attempt has come nearly too late.

Nearly a century later, Westropp has been proved wrong. A ten year conservation programme, involving European and Irish wall-painting conservators, archaeologists, art historians and architects, with funding from Duchas, the Royal Irish Academy (for the New Survey of Clare Island) and the O'Malley Clan, is now coming to completion. The paintings can now confidently be said to have been made safe: highly skilled and painstaking efforts have been taken to combat the damaging effects of condensation, salt leeching, algae growth etc which the paintings have been subjected to since Westropp first saw them.

Considered to be among the most important medieval wall-paintings in Ireland, the Clare Island paintings are delightful: their design differs markedly from other Irish medieval church painting.  Wolves attacking stags, hares, griffins, dragons, musicians: organ, harp and lyre players, wrestlers, cattleraiders abound with only a few obvious Christian symbols. The conservators have uncovered considerably more images than Westropp had seen: some are merely the outlines made in the plaster when wet, others represent an earlier phase covered by a later layer of plaster.

But the conservation work is only part of the process. The question 'where do we go from here?' must now be asked.

The Clare Island Symposium takes as its starting point the successful conservation work. With the aid of  invited speakers as well as those attending the weekend, we hope to articulate the complexities which the conservators faced in dealing with such an exposed and unique site. In addition, the Symposium aims to serve as an active forum in which views, ideas, suggestions and speculations regarding a number of unresolved and important areas, such as the dating of the paintings, their iconography, and the future of the abbey and its paintings can be voiced and teased out. What type of management plan might satisfy both the technical demands of preserving the site as well as those of the islanders and visitors who wish to make the site accessible to the public as the heritage attraction of local and national importance that it is?

Friday, 15 September

8:00

Welcome and registration in Bay view Hotel dinner / music in community centre with island musicians

Saturday, 16 September (Clare Island Community Centre Hall)

9:30-10:00

10:00-10:30

10:30-11:00

Dr. Kieran O'Conor:NUIG Settlement  and society in Medieval Ireland

Karena Morton: Irish medieval wallpaintings

Prof. Roger Stalley, TCD: The Cistercians in Ireland

Coffee

2:00-4:30

5:00-5:30

5:30-6:00

8:00

Visit to the site

Coffee

Ann Buckley: Medieval musical instruments and their use in dating

Presentation of work by European Heritage Campus

Buffet Dinner, Bayview Hotel / music by island musicians

Sunday, 17 September (Clare Island Community Centre Hall)

10:30-11:00

11:00-1:30

Paul MacMahon, Senior Architect, DUCHAS

Coffee break

Discussion chaired by Willy Cumming, DUCHAS

Lunch, Community centre

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