Glencar Waterfall
— — the wandering water above the lake.
Not only on a wall.
“Glencar Waterfall drops about fifteen metres down a wooded cleft in the Dartry Mountains, into a mossy basin above Glencar Lough. After heavy rain the water doubles; in a dry week it thins to a thread. Yeats walked this valley as a boy and gave it to the world in The Stolen Child: the wandering water gushes from the hills above Glen-Car. The path in from the car park is short, a few minutes through oak and birch. Visitors hear the fall before they see it, and the path turns once and delivers it.
Glencar Waterfall, 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.
Glencar Waterfall sits in the Dartry Mountains of north-west Ireland, on the Leitrim side of the Sligo–Leitrim border, about 11 km east of Sligo town and a similar distance west of Manorhamilton. The fall is fed by streams running off Truskmore and the high plateau the locals call King's Mountain, and drops into the wooded valley that holds Glencar Lough, a glacial ribbon lake about five kilometres long. A short, level path leads from a roadside car park on the R286 to the viewing platform; the round trip takes under twenty minutes. The site is managed by Leitrim County Council and is open to visitors without charge.
The flow at Glencar swings hard with the weather. After a wet spell the fall is a heavy white plume; in a dry week it can dwindle to a few thin strands. The catchment is small: the streams above the cliff drain only the upper Dartry slopes, so storms register on the fall within hours rather than days. A kilometre west, the Devil's Chimney (Sruth in Aghaidh an Aird) sometimes blows its water uphill on a strong southerly. At roughly 150 metres it is among the tallest waterfalls in Ireland, but flows only when the wind isn't lifting it. The pair are sister falls of the same plateau.
Glencar Waterfall is open all year, free of charge, with no ticket office or staff. The car park sits on the R286 between Sligo and Manorhamilton; from there a short paved path runs through young woodland to the viewing platform under the fall, about a five-minute walk. Steps continue higher for a closer look, slippery after rain. The site holds a seasonal tea room, public toilets, and a small memorial that quotes Yeats's lines from The Stolen Child, the poem the falls helped inspire. Sligo Airport is about thirty minutes west by road; Dublin is roughly two and a half hours.