50 Fun Facts About The Burren

The Burren is a karst landscape centred in which part of Ireland?

Geologically the limestone runs on into south Galway, and the village of Kinvara there is often counted in.

What does the Irish name Boirinn, from which "Burren" comes, mean?

The Cistercians who built Corcomroe Abbey there called it St Mary of the Fertile Rock, which is not the same thing.

Roughly how large is the Burren, as measured within the circle made by Corofin, Gort, Kinvara and a fourth village?

Depending on the definition, estimates run from 250 square kilometres of bare pavement to 560 including the downland.

Which island group in Galway Bay is a geological extension of the Burren's limestone hills?

Ferries to the islands leave from Doolin on the Burren's western edge.

In which geological period did the Burren's limestone form as sediment in a tropical sea?

The rock is roughly 325 million years old and holds fossil corals, crinoids, sea urchins and ammonites.

What are the flat slabs of limestone pavement called, as opposed to the fissures between them?

The fissures are grikes; they hold moisture and shelter ferns, orchids and dwarf shrubs.

Roughly how many kilometres of cave passage have been mapped beneath the Burren?

There are very few permanent surface rivers; most of the water runs underground.

What is the highest point of the Burren uplands, a shale-capped hill rising to 345 metres?

Its shale cap survived the glaciers that stripped the shale off the limestone almost everywhere else.

Roughly how many closed depressions with no surface outlet, known as poljes, does the Burren have?

The largest, the Carran depression, is more than two miles long, up to a mile wide and over 200 feet deep.

Granite boulders on the northern Burren pavements were carried by ice from which region across Galway Bay?

The last ice sheet came from the northeast and left mostly limestone erratics instead.

Roughly what share of Ireland's flowering plant species are found in the Burren?

Arctic-alpine and Mediterranean plants grow side by side because of the unusual environment.

Which bright blue alpine flower is used by Fáilte Ireland as a symbol of the Burren?

Late May is peak season for it, though the orchids bloom later.

How many of Ireland's 28 orchid species grow in the Burren?

That includes unique forms such as O'Kelly's spotted orchid.

Which moth is found nowhere else in Ireland but this region?

Of Ireland's 30-plus butterfly and moth species, only two are missing from the region.

The Burren is one of Ireland's main breeding areas for which tree-climbing mammal?

All seven of Ireland's bat species live there too, along with herds of feral goats.

Burren farmers famously reverse the usual seasonal pattern: when are cattle moved up to the uplands?

The practice, called winterage, has been going on since prehistoric times and keeps the scrub down.

Which Cromwellian general said the Burren lacked water to drown a man, wood to hang one, or earth to bury him?

He added that the cattle were nonetheless very fat, because the grass between the rocks was so sweet.

Poulnabrone dolmen is what type of monument?

It dates from roughly 3800 to 3200 BC and is the best known of Ireland's approximately 172 dolmens.

Excavations at Poulnabrone in 1986 and 1988 found the remains of roughly how many people?

They had been buried intermittently over about 600 years, and one was a much later Bronze Age infant.

Which type of megalithic monument accounts for about 90% of the Burren's prehistoric burial structures?

Roughan Hill near Kilnaboy has several, including Parknabinnia and Creevagh.

A gold Bronze Age gorget, evidence of a rich local elite, was found in which Burren townland?

Around the same era the climate turned wetter and much of the uplands' soil washed away, leaving the bare pavement.

About how many stone ringforts, or cashels, have been identified in the Burren?

That is out of roughly 45,000 in the whole of Ireland.

Caherconnell, the stone fort a kilometre south of Poulnabrone, was mainly occupied in which centuries?

Excavators also found postholes of a far older Neolithic or Bronze Age timber structure beside it.

Corcomroe Abbey in the north Burren was founded around 1200 by which monastic order?

The abbey appears in W. B. Yeats' play The Dreaming of the Bones.

Which clan ruled the Burren from Gregans Castle until the mid-17th century, its chief styled "Prince of Burren"?

Clan members were buried in the family tomb near the altar of Corcomroe Abbey.

In 1318 local clans defeated a Norman army led by Richard de Clare at which battle on the Burren's edge?

The region kept its Gaelic character and Brehon law schools long after much of Ireland had been Normanised.

Where did Máire Rua ("Red Mary"), who married a Cromwellian officer to keep her lands, live?

Her son later moved the family seat to the much larger Dromoland Castle south of Ennis.

What is unique in Ireland about the shape of Newtown Castle in the north Burren?

Only about 30 of Ireland's roughly 3,000 tower houses are round, and none other has the pyramid base; it now belongs to the Burren College of Art.

Aillwee Cave was discovered in 1944 by a farmer who was doing what?

Jack McGann kept the find to himself for nearly 30 years before telling cavers in 1973.

The bones of which animal, more than 10,000 years old, were found in Aillwee Cave in 1976?

It has been called the last bear den in Ireland; at the time only about 1,000 people lived on the island.

Which Burren cave, at over 16 kilometres, is the longest in all of Ireland?

T. J. Westropp made the first known exploration in 1880, but serious surveying waited until the 20th century.

What is a turlough, a feature of the Burren's limestone country?

The word comes from the Irish for "dry" and "lake"; outside Ireland only one example is known, in Wales.

When Burren National Park opened in 1991, what set it apart among Irish national parks?

At about 1,500 hectares in the southeastern Burren it was the smallest park when it opened; a planned visitor centre was shelved after a long fight over Mullaghmore.

In which year did the Burren and Cliffs of Moher Geopark gain UNESCO recognition?

It is managed by Clare County Council and employs a full-time geologist.

How long is the Burren Way, the waymarked trail from Lahinch to Corofin?

Most walkers take five days over it.

Which Clare village near the Cliffs of Moher is the Burren's traditional music centre and Aran ferry port?

It was officially part of the West Clare Gaeltacht until the 1950s.

Which Burren-edge spa town has held a matchmaking festival every September since 1857?

Matchmaker Willie Daly, who ran it for decades, is the fourth generation of his family in the job.

Which Irish folk singer wrote a song celebrating the north Clare spa town's music festival of 1978-83?

The festival ended after its last edition was marred by a riot and the drowning of eight people.

Which Burren village, a medieval bishop's seat, is known as the "City of the Crosses"?

Tradition says seven high crosses; five survive, and the finest, the Doorty Cross, is now under glass in the cathedral transept.

Kilfenora's cathedral is dedicated to which saint, said to have founded a church there in the 6th century?

The present building dates from about 1189-1200 and is partly roofless.

The Father Ted parochial house stands on the road out of which Burren village?

The house is McCormack's at Glenquin, on the Boston road; the City of the Crosses hosts a Father Ted festival.

Michael Cusack, co-founder of the Gaelic Athletic Association, was born in which small Burren village?

The village had 106 inhabitants at the 2011 census and has a visitor centre in his name.

The Burren College of Art is based in which harbour village on Galway Bay?

Its Master of Fine Art is accredited by the University of Galway.

The Cliffs of Moher reach their maximum height of 214 metres just north of which landmark?

The tower was built in 1835 by Sir Cornelius O'Brien; the cliffs run for about 14 kilometres.

Roughly how many visits a year do the Cliffs of Moher receive?

In 2022, 41% of visitors came from the United States.

The Burren is particularly known for the West Clare style of playing which instrument?

Music festivals in Doolin and Corofin keep the tradition going.

In the Mesolithic period, around 8000 to 7000 BC, what did the Burren uplands mainly look like?

Pollen analysis shows the change; Neolithic settlers from about 4000 BC cleared the forest through grazing, burning and wall-building.

Remains of more than 300 of which Bronze Age structure survive in the Burren?

These ancient cooking sites are among the region's most numerous Bronze Age remains, though the uplands were largely depopulated by the end of that era.

Which author's detective novels feature a fictional Burren brehon judge of the early 1500s?

Real brehon law schools existed in the region, run by the O'Davorans at Cahermacnaghten and the MacClancys at Doolin.

Of Ireland's more than 30 butterfly and moth species, how many are absent from the Burren?

Notable residents include the pearl-bordered fritillary, brown hairstreak and marsh fritillary butterflies.