Groups audience:
The farm in Farrangarret is intrinsically linked with the monastery of Ardmore. The monastery of Ardmore was centred on the site of the famous Cathedral and Roundtower. Following in the footsteps of St. Declan the monastery was a spiritual centre for worship and pilgrimage. But it was also a working farm, probably at the centre of an estate of rich farmland which stretched across the landscape from Whiting Bay to Ballyquinn. When viewing the farm complex of Farrangarret we must see them as lying within at least two curvilinear enclosing ditches which defined the core farm and monastery. This core site enclosed the round tower and cathedral, Farrangarret farm complex, the rectory and the site of St Pauls, Church of Ireland. The best place to see one of these ditches is in the field just downhill from the rectory. That deep curving linear hollow is a medieval enclosing ditch; a further but apparently narrower ditch is found further outside this line to the west.
The holiday apartments in the farm complex occupy buildings which probably date to the late 18th century, also probably incorporating stone from earlier buildings. They were farm buildings when originally built and we have records of them being occupied by Thomas Gee and family in the 1870s (with an attached orchard) and 200 years before that the Gee family rented the lands from the Protestant Chantry which potentially supports the idea that the lands were attached to the monastery in medieval times.
