County: Offaly Site name: Clonmacnoise
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: E4044
Author: Emmet Stafford
Site type: Ecclesiastical
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 601357m, N 730384m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.323710, -7.979637
Since 2008, the Irish section of Youth 2000, an international Catholic Youth movement, have held a youth-focused religious gathering at Clonmacnoise, Co. Offaly. The event site is located approximately 150m east of the Zone of Archaeological Potential established around the monastic site of Clonmacnoise.
The monastic site of Clonmacnoise is a National Monument and the field in which the Youth 2000 gathering is held is included in the Register of Historic Monuments due to its location within an area of archaeological significance established around the surviving ecclesiastical centre. The site is further protected due to the National Monuments Preservation Order (No. 1 of 2009) placed on it in July 2009.
Over the weekend of 11 August 2012, Youth 2000 held their fifth youth festival at the Clonmacnoise site. In accordance with the conditions of the ministerial consent for the event, monitoring of the festival preparations and dismantling was undertaken on various dates between 30 July and 17 of August 2011.
The monitoring included being present for the transport of all heavy materials into and out of the site and being present for all heavy vehicular access past the gateways to the field in which the event was held. Monitoring also included being present for the erection and dismantling of all the heavily framed temporary structures required for the event and the insertion and removal of the vertically placed pins which held the structures in place. The preparations for the festival did not involve any groundworks or digging at the site and did not reveal any previously unknown archaeological features or deposits.
Stafford McLoughlin Archaeology, Coolballow, Drinagh, Wexford
