Welcome to Lough Derg

Lough Derg in County Donegal first emerges as a pilgrimage location in the period of the Celtic monastery on Saints Island (6th-11th Century), which claimed St. Davog as its founding abbot.  

The smaller Station Island seems to have served as a díseart or retreat for the monks. The practice of pilgrimage across Irish monastic houses is well attested across these centuries, not least in the texts known as penitentials.  

In the 12th century, along with Clones and Devenish, the monastery became a priory of Canons Regular of St Augustine. In 1120, we have the earliest mention of St. Patrick’s Purgatory, the cave on Station Island. This would become famous across Europe over the succeeding centuries, accessed via the Saints Island monastery.  

Some forty named pilgrims, from as far away as Hungary, Italy and Spain are recorded before Reformation times. A French pilgrim, Guillebert de Lannoy, who visited in 1430, left a detailed account of his route from Drogheda via Kells and Cavan to the Lough Erne corridor, then by boat via Enniskillen to Lough Derg: “Passed by several islands where we disembarked to dine and to sleep. For their poverty I will not mention them. Found ancient little churches and poor abbeys.”    

After the dissolution of the Saints Island monastery, pilgrims boated directly to Station Island. The appearance of the station prayer was a new feature, but the 24-hour vigil in the Purgatory Cave remained the core of the pilgrimage experience. Despite the Penal Laws and repeated attempts at suppression by the authorities, the pilgrimage continued uninterrupted under the direction of Franciscan Friars who were themselves on the run.  

Since 1780, St. Patrick’s Purgatory has been in the care of the Catholic Diocese of Clogher, drawing as many as 30,000 pilgrims annually in the famine years of the 1840s with a similar peak in numbers in the early 1950s. In 2019, the traditional Three-Day Pilgrimage, along with other pilgrimage programmes at Lough Derg, welcomed 11,000 pilgrims. 

The Visitor Centre and Museum and the Pilgrim Path on the lough shore can be accessed all year round. For details of pilgrimage programmes see www.loughderg.org