This is Bishop's Island, and on it, clinging to the Atlantic-battered ground, are the remains of a structure whose age and purpose speak to a particular tradition of extreme religious isolation. Early Christian monks in Ireland occasionally sought out the most inhospitable places imaginable, places where the sea itself formed a kind of moat between the contemplative life and the world beyond, and Bishop's Island appears to be one such place.

The name alone raises questions. Islands bearing the title of bishop or saint along the west coast of Ireland frequently preserve a memory of early medieval ecclesiastical use, often predating the formal diocesan structures that emerged in the twelfth century. The structure on the island is understood to be the remnant of an early monastery or hermitage, a category of site found in similarly vertiginous locations along the Clare and Kerry coastlines. What survives is sparse, as one might expect from a site exposed to centuries of Atlantic weather, but the presence of any built remains on such a location is itself remarkable. The crossing to the island, dependent on tide and conditions, would have been a deliberate hardship rather than an inconvenience, very likely the point.