Celtic Saints of Ireland experience

The Iosas Celtic Prayer Garden is Ireland's only such garden and is set in six acres of natural bog land, approximately 10 minutes out of the city centre of Derry in Donegal. Here we invite you to step back in time to an Ireland of saints and scholars, a people who had a very strong sense of creation, a robust attitude to religious practice and who believed in a close relationship with nature. Walk back in time to an era when holy men and women built their cell at, or close by to, places deemed sacred by the Celts; bogs, springs, and groves. Indeed the name Derry derives from the Irish - Doire Colmcille means St Columba's Oak-grove, a sacred place where he built his monastery. Visit our reconstructed Irish Celtic round tower where you experience the secure nature of these bell towers which were places of safety and security for our early ancestors and their valuable goods as well as delivering the call to prayer. Walk into and experience with me early Celtic monastic life, simple and solitary.