Free for everyone; an open-air monument with no staff, tickets or booking. No membership card is needed.
Arrive on foot, by bike or by public transport.
OPW names no car park; the monuments are in Clones town centre, with public car parks and street parking nearby (tariffs not checked).
Driving pin: the gate of St Tighernach's graveyard on Abbey Street, 56 m from the round tower; the Wee Abbey is about 80 m along the street and the high cross about 150 m up the hill in the Diamond.
The town of Clones grew from the monastery St Tighernach founded here in the sixth century; three of its monuments make a short town walk. In St Tighernach's graveyard off Abbey Street stands the four-storey sandstone round tower, 23 metres high with its cap missing, probably of the early tenth century; when its interior was cleared in the 1840s, burials older than the tower were found beneath the floor. Beside it is a house-shaped stone shrine carved with clerics, probably the oldest surviving feature of the monastery. A short way along the street, the 12th-century church known as the Wee Abbey was built for the Augustinian canons, who took over the monastery in the 1140s. Up the hill in the Diamond, the town square, stands a high cross assembled from the head and shaft of two different crosses, carved with Adam and Eve, Daniel in the lions' den and the Crucifixion. Reviewers enjoy wandering the small graveyard, though the tower cannot be entered.
An unguided open-air national monument in OPW's care with no staff and no facilities. OPW warns that care and caution should be kept throughout a visit to its unguided sites.
The round tower's doorway is about 1.5 m above the ground, so it cannot be entered. The graveyard slopes and its grass is uneven. The high cross stands in the Diamond with an information board nearby. No toilets at the monuments.
Photo: The ruined 12th-century church known as the Wee Abbey in Clones, its west gable and long south wall among old graves. Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Clones_%E2%80%9CWee_Abbey%E2%80%9D_Church_SW_2016_08_26.jpg. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0. Resized and cropped for display; derivatives retain the source licence.
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