Visits to Finnian’s Clonard have always left me disappointed. There is almost nothing to see. A lone signpost points to the original level site but you are not allowed to approach it. The second location has only a limited display board and an empty COI church. Yet this was once one of the most flourishing centres of education of Ireland.
After an early visit I posted on Facebook:
The oldest university in Ireland is not Trinity College Dublin, founded in 1592 to consolidate British rule, but Clonard in Meath, founded by Finnian in 520 as a centre of learning for the whole country and beyond.
In its early days it had 3,000 student and its graduates, such as the ‘Twelve Apostles of Ireland’, spread the monastic academy model across the country and, eventually, to Europe.
Yet if you go to Clonard today you will not be impressed. It is difficult to find the original site, the key area is overgrown and there is no memorial.
What clues exist are hard to unravel. The only visible remnant is the well mentioned in the old annals as dug by Finnian himself. Though some distance from where you might expect it, there is a signpost, a clear entrance path to follow and it is kept in very good condition.
It is probably not a bad symbol for a forgotten centre of learning: a well of knowledge. However the care still lavished on it indicates it is more than an abstract metaphor for some people today. For that growing, but not yet large, number of present day visitors it must have some revitalising capacity which responses to a need within them. For me it was a tangible connection with the individual who had such influence on his own generations and those after him.
However you look on it, Clonard’s role and achievements were such that any nation should be proud to commemorate them. In Ireland today its neglect reflects the widespread mentality that nothing good existed before the Normans and that what comes from abroad is better than our own.
I would give Clonard four out of ten for 'being forgotten' because it is not hard to find and eight out of ten for relevance because of what it reveals but does not say.
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