St. Declan's Stretch
St. Declan's Oratory, Ardmore
This is a photo of where St. Declan is said to have been buried. It is located on the grounds of the cathedral in Ardmore.
St. Declan's Oratory, Ardmore
St. Declan's Oratory, Ardmore
This is a photo of where St. Declan is said to have been buried. It is located on the grounds of the cathedral in Ardmore.
Ardmore marks the beginning of the Highway of the Decies. A lot of the traffic in the early days of the Irish Church was between the different monasteries at Ardmore, Lismore and Cashel. For this reason, the ancient highway is called an 'ecclesiastical road' (the word 'ecclesiastical' means anything relating to the Church).
St Declan's road is the stretch of the Rian that leads from Ardmore to Lismore. The width of the road varies from around eleven to sixteen feet.
There are quite a lot of very old houses built on the roadside. This shows how important a road like this was to locals. People wanted to live near the ancient highway because it helped them to trade goods by allowing them to travel.
Lismore to Cashel
Sketch of Lismore Cathedral
The Lismore to Cashel stretch of the road is difficult to plot accurately because much of it has been built over. To plot this part of the track, Canon Power relied on a 'suggestive line of a still existing but very ancient road' on a map.
Another interesting fact about the Rian Bó Phádraig is that its track always follows the highest ground along the way. This was so that travellers would have less chance of being flooded and because wolves were less likely to prowl high ground.
The reason the road can still be traced today is because for centuries farmers were reluctant to disturb it. They did not want to dishonour St. Patrick.