Introduction to Clare
Clare is known as the 'Banner County'. Clare lies on Ireland's west coast and is a truly beautiful county. Clare can boast some of the best coast line in Ireland and a rich and varied landscape and history. County Clare is almost an island, with Galway Bay to the north, the Atlantic to the west and the Shannon Estuary and River, to the south and east.
A Brief History of Clare
Clare County's eastern townships were organized by Midland County in March, 1870, and the western townships by Mecosta County in 1871. Farwell was the host village of our original county seat. Speculators had purchased land in Clare County as early as 1854, but large scale lumbering did not begin until after the Civil War. Homesteaders began arriving just prior to the Flint & Pere Marquette Railroad (1870) and claimed the better agricultural acreages under the Homestead Act of 1862, or by exchanging Military Script for eighty acres or more.
The Flint & Pere Marquette railroad came to Clare in 1870 and was extended to Evart in 1871. Now that the means were available, immigrants, woodsmen, homesteaders, and drifters began to populate our county. The lumbermen made the quickest and heaviest impact upon our resources by felling most of our forests. Necessity, being the mother on invention, caused a revolution in the woods when Scott Gerrish needed an efficient method to get tens of thousands of remote logs into the Muskegon River. He built and operated a special logging railroad between land locked timber tracts near Lake George and Temple, on the Muskegon River. These logs were rolled in stupendous quantities to the railways. This innovative railroad extended the wealth of the County by 300%, but most of this new money went to Saginaw, Muskegon, and Chicago.
Clare County has had its troubles with lawless elements. Some of this conflict was generated by farmers in Grant and Sheridan Townships when Lumbermen took local government from their control. The Board of Supervisors retaliated by withholding funds for a new jail at Harrison and the sheriff was not compensated for transporting lawless men to jails in Midland or Osceola Counties. The County went feral following this interval.
After the timber was gone, our homesteader/farmers took over the pine barrens and began nurturing our soil back to productivity. During the 1930's large oil fields were discovered and developed with capital supplied by various sorts of businessmen.
Since the Spanish-American war, we have sent our young men to help defeat America's enemies. By the 1990's Clare County had invested large amounts of fiscal resources into its educational and cultural institutions.
Areas of Interest in Clare
Bunratty Castle & Folk Park
Bunratty Castle and Folk Park is "A Window on the Past" Bunratty Castle is the most complete and authentic medieval castle in Ireland. Built in 1425, and plundered on many occasions, it was authentically restored in 1954 to its former medieval splendour, with furnishings and tapestries capturing the mood and style of the times. Famous Medieval Banquets are held nightly. Within its grounds is Bunratty Folk Park, where Irish village life at the turn of the century is tellingly recreated. The Folk Park contains typical 19th century rural and urban dwellings. There are eight farmhouses, a watermill, a blacksmith's forge, a village street complete with pub, post office, school, doctor's house, hardware shop, printers, drapery shop, pawn shop and village hotel. In the park, you can see traditional crafts such as bread baking, knitting, weaving, pottery and photography in their natural setting. Refreshments: Tea room, where morning and afternoon teas, light refreshments and snacks are served. Mac's Pub in the village street serves soup and sandwiches, drinks and lunches. Mac's seafood dishes are a speciality. Bunratty By Night Mac's Pub is open by night, year round. Traditional Irish Music is featured on a regular basis. Admission is free after the Folk Park closes. The famous Medieval Castle Banquets and Traditional Irish Nights are held in Bunratty. Here, you can wine and dine, and enjoy the superb entertainment provided by the Bunratty entertainers, or Shannon Ceili team.
Dysert O'Dea Archaeology Centre
St Tola founded a monastery here in the seventh or eight century. The present church on the site is a late Medieval reconstruction of an earlier, Romanesque building whose magnificent west doorway is incorporated in the south wall. The finely carved motifs of the arch include geometric designs and unusual human masks. Close behind the north wall of the church is a shattered Round Tower built in the twelfth century. On rising ground not far to the east of the church is an interesting High Cross. It also dates from the twelfth century and comes right at the end of the Celtic High Cross series. It is of the ringless type found elsewhere in Co. Clare, and is elaborately decorated with interlace and geometric designs, as well as figurative panels in high relief. An inscription on the base records that it was repaired in 1683 by a member of the O'Dea family.
Ennis Friary
The Ennis Friary, is a Franciscan Friary founded by the O'Briens Kings of Thomond, in the 13th century. The site was originally on an island in the River Fergus aroudn which the modern town of Ennis has grown. Its monuments are famous, notably the McMahon tomb (15th century) with carvings of the Passion of Our Lord.
Poulnabrone
Rising like a bird about to take off from the karst limestone of the Burren, it attracts by its timeless simplicity, and consists of a very few upright stones (including, now, a necessary modern replacement) supporting a large flat capstone which rises from the back towards the front of the tomb. It is surrounded by a low mound, largely made up of stones, but it seems unlikely ever to have covered the whole monument. Disarticulated bones of 16 adults and children, equally divided between the sexes, were found inside-the remains of at least a part of the Late Stone Age farming community who erected this highly sculptural monument to themselves sometime in the 4th millennium B.C. An excavation in 1986 also unearthed a miniature polished axehead and a variety of flint implements.
Cliffs of Moher & O'Briens Tower
Just north of Lahinch, on the coast of West Clare, are the famous Cliffs of Moher, defiantly standing as giant natural ramparts against the agressive might of the Atlantic Ocean. The Cliffs of Moher the (Great Wall of Thomond) and O'Brien's Tower, which stands out on a headland shows, the extent of the O'Brien influence on the history of the Celtic Tribes. The Cliffs are 8km long and 214m high, it is there that one can most easily get a feel for the wildness of the terrain over which the Celts wandered, for although they built imposing fortress castle, very often they preferred the outdoor nomadic life and enjoyed the hunt. The tower was built in 1835 by Cornelius O'Brien a descendent of Brian Boru, the High King of Ireland, and the O'Briens of Bunratty Castle, Kings of Thomond, as an observation point for the hundreds of tourists who even then visited the Cliffs. Cornelius was a man ahead of his time, believing that the development of tourism would benefit the local economy and bring the people out of poverty. O'Brien's Tower was not his only project - in fact it was said of him that 'He built everything around here except the Cliffs'.
Dromoland Castle
Conor O'Brien, 18th Baron Inchiquin, is the O'Brien of Thomond, direct descendant of Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, who defeated the Vikings at the battle of Clontarf in 1014. He still lives amid the 1000-acre estate through which the river Rine meanders, and is the former owner of Dromoland Castle, though he has built himself a new, more modest mansion, and his erstwhile ancestral home is now a luxury hotel. The original entrance leads up into a small hall, furnished with a spreading many-armed brass candelabrum and ancestral portraits. Doors open into the former library, shelved floor to ceiling, which now contains the bar - it overlooks the lake - and a small sitting room, which has a view of the rose-garden. A wide gallery lined with antlered heads and containing groups of elegant settees ends in a straight wide flight of steps up to the main bedrooms. Viewed across the lake, Dromoland's wealth of crenelated battlements, towers, turrets, and flags rising from the smoothly mown green undulations of the 18-hole golf course appears almost unbelievably picturesque. This is a splendidly impressive hotel.
Traditional Music and Craic in Clare
Clare has a fine history of traditional music and has produced some of Ireland's finest traditional players and the world famous Kilfenora Ceili Band.