Overview
Glashedy Island is an uninhabited quartzite outcrop sitting about a mile off Pollan Strand, on the north-west coast of County Donegal, roughly 6 km south of Malin Head. It is a townland in its own right, within the civil parish of Clonmany, but nobody lives on it and nobody really lands: the sea around it is genuinely dangerous, with rocks and breakers running far out on every side. So this is a landmark to admire from the shore, not an island to visit. Seen from Ballyliffin it is unmistakable, a dark, near-treeless wedge rising out of the Atlantic.
An environmental assessment of nearby Trawbreaga Bay records the island’s use as a bird roost.
History and lore
It has not always been called Glashedy. The island was Seale Island until the early 17th century, appears as ‘Glasseve’ in the Civil Survey of 1654, and only takes its present name in Crow’s maps of the Donegal estates in the late 1760s.
Its exposed rocks have wrecked ships. On 24 November 1841 the schooner James Cook, running from Sligo to Glasgow with a cargo of oats, struck near Glashedy and broke up. The master and nine of the crew drowned. One man, James Fitzgerald, managed to scramble onto the island and clung on for two days before he was taken off by the coastguard from Rockstown, at Urris. Another vessel, the Harmony, was lost on the same rocks in January 1845.
The island also had a quieter, more profitable use. Through the 19th and early 20th centuries its caves served as a hide-out for poitín-making, and in August 1900 a combined RIC and Coast Guard party rowed out and found a cave fitted up as a still-house, with several hundred gallons of ‘wash’ (the fermented mash distilled into poitín), the distilling gear, and a store of fuel and provisions to keep the operation going.
Then there is the folklore. A local tale holds that a magic island appears between Glashedy and Pollan Strand once every seven years. If a mortal can throw a handful of clay and strike it, the island will stay above water for good and pass into their possession, but take your eyes off it while you stoop for the clay, and it vanishes again.
The island itself
Glashedy is all quartzite, treeless and battered, its cliffs dropping straight to reef-strewn water. The island has been grazed by sheep on occasion, and the waters around it were once worked for seals; otherwise it is left to the weather and the tide. That bareness is much of its appeal for photographers, since nothing on it competes with the sky, the sea and the changing light.
Where to see it from
Watch from public shore areas around Ballyliffin and Pollan Strand, where the island sits on the horizon. Give the birds space and keep off tidal rocks.
On landing: don’t. The reefs make the approach hazardous even for local boats, there is nothing on the island to reach, and leaving it undisturbed protects the birds that roost there.
Nearby
Malin Head and Five Finger Strand are within reach for a coastal walk, which makes for a full day tracing the top of Inishowen with Glashedy in view along the way.