Description: We returned to the Reask Monastic site we’d passed on the way to the Gallarus Oratory. A short drive down a very residential dirt road led us to the site eventually, you have to be patient. The name Reask comes from the Irish, an Riasc which means The Marsh. It is believed to from about the 6th century. There is actually not much to see except the foundations, and ogham stones. It does give you a good feel of the layout of the site and how the community functioned. It is fairly well signed in the manner of most historic sites. There is no charge. The site was excavated in the ‘70s. There are no records existing of the site, so what is known is what is seen on the site.
There are the remains of several beehive huts and an oratory and a graveyard. The outer stone wall is around 6 feet thick in areas and traces the outline of the complex and provides some internal division as well. The wall encloses an area of about 100 feet in diameter. The ground around is more flat and would have made good farmland if any of that kind of activity took place.
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