Skellig Michael, a pinnacle of rock some twelve kilometres off the coast of Kerry, holds a monastery of drystone cells clinging to a terrace high above the sea, the most extreme surviving expression of early Irish ascetic monasticism.
The desert of the ocean
Early Irish monasticism prized withdrawal to the wilderness, and for its most severe practitioners the ocean served as the desert of the Egyptian hermits. Monks settled on Skellig Michael, probably from around the sixth to eighth centuries, building a cluster of corbelled beehive cells and two oratories of unmortared stone on a narrow terrace about two hundred metres above the water, reached by roughly six hundred hand-cut steps and nothing else. They lived by fishing, seabirds, rainwater and what little could be grown, in deliberate hardship as a discipline of prayer. The dedication to the archangel Michael, guardian of high places, fits the site.
Abandonment and endurance
The monastery was raided by Vikings and eventually abandoned as the community moved to the mainland in the later medieval period, but the drystone structures, protected by their isolation, have survived remarkably intact, a rare window onto how such monks actually lived. The island later served pilgrims who climbed to the summit oratory.
Restricted by the sea
Access to Skellig Michael is genuinely restricted and always has been: the season is short, landings depend entirely on the sea and are often abandoned at the last moment, only licensed boats may put people ashore, and the number permitted to land each day is capped to protect both the fragile drystone fabric and the safety of those climbing the unguarded steps. It is a World Heritage site, and its remoteness remains the whole point of it.