The Fahan

The district

Fahan is a district of Inishowen in the north of County Donegal, five kilometres south of Buncrana, on the eastern shore of Lough Swilly. In Irish it is named after its patron saint, Saint Mura, first abbot of Fahan, who founded an early Christian monastery here. The district is the kind of place that has a story older than the town that grew around it: the monastery, the cross-slab, the river and the forest all sit inside the same short drive, and the lough is at the end of it.

The cross-slab

The thing the district is best known for is the Fahan cross-slab, one of the most important surviving examples of early Irish ecclesiastical art, now in the National Museum of Ireland. It came from the old monastery, and the story of it — what it depicts, what it took to make it, and how it got from the village to the museum — is the longest thread in the district’s history. The village is where it was made, and that is enough of a reason to stop.

The river and the marina

The Fahan river runs from the hills down to the lough, and the district’s modern life sits at the junction of the two: the marina at the head of the lough, the forested valley of the river, and the beaches along the shore. It is the easy end of Inishowen — the lough on one side, the forest on the other, and the village in between — and the drive from Buncrana is ten minutes.

Practical

Allow a morning: the village, the river walk and the marina. Pair it with Buncrana and the lough for a full day from the same base.