Downpatrick Head
— what the storm of 1393 left behind.
Not only on a wall.
“The headland sits on the north Mayo coast, just north of the village of Ballycastle, where the cliffs end above the Atlantic. Just offshore stands Dún Briste, the Broken Fort, a sea stack the storm of 1393 cut loose from the headland. The layers in its sandstone run in clear horizontal bands you can read from the path. A small church ruin, a holy well, and a stone cross mark the saint's name here. The blowhole below the cliff sounds when the swell is running. Most days the wind moves the grass faster than anything else.
Downpatrick Head, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Downpatrick Head sits on the north coast of County Mayo, roughly five kilometres north of the village of Ballycastle, on a sandstone headland that rises about forty metres above the Atlantic. The site is part of the Wild Atlantic Way, the 2,500-kilometre coastal route established by Fáilte Ireland in 2014. Just offshore stands Dún Briste, a sea stack about forty-five metres tall, separated from the mainland by an Atlantic storm in 1393 according to long tradition. The headland holds a small ruined church, a holy well known as Tobar Phádraig, a stone cross, and the outline of Éire 64, one of eighty-two coastal markers cut into the ground during the Second World War.
The stack and the headland are cut from Carboniferous sandstone laid down roughly 330 million years ago, when this part of Ireland sat under a shallow tropical sea. The horizontal banding visible in Dún Briste is the sequence of those marine deposits, identical to the layers in the cliff opposite. The stack stands a few metres higher than the headland it once belonged to, with erosion continuing along the same joints that produced the break in 1393. Earlier names for the stack survive in folklore; local tradition links the original break to a struggle between Saint Patrick and the pagan figure Crom Dubh, with the saint cracking the headland to leave the demon stranded on the rock.
Access is free and unrestricted, reached by a signposted road from Ballycastle and a short walk from the car park to the cliff edge. The site holds three small landmarks: the ruin of Cill Phádraig, the holy well Tobar Phádraig, and a stone cross marking the traditional foundation by Saint Patrick in the fifth century. On the last Sunday in July, Garland Sunday, known locally as Domhnach Chrom Dubh, draws a small pilgrimage in continuation of a pre-Christian harvest tradition. Wind is the main hazard; the cliff edge is unfenced. The blowhole at Poll na Seantine sounds when the swell is running.