placenamesSpancel Hill
Cnoc Uarchoille
The fair at Spancilhill links horse trading with music, emigration and community organisation.
The name
These Irish name elements are associated with this record in the Logainm glossary.
An element’s translation is a clue, rather than a complete explanation of the name. Its form and meaning depend on local history and the full Irish name.
Recorded forms
- Cnoc Uarchoille · Irish · main form
- Spancel Hill · English · main form
Place & story
The fairgreen at Muckinish
The fair organisers trace its formal establishment to letters patent granted in 1621 to Valentine Blake. Their history identifies Muckinish as the designated fairground, north of the crossroads at Spancilhill. The fair developed as a major meeting place for horse buyers and sellers. Its commercial importance extended beyond Clare, with the organisers recording purchases of cavalry horses for European armies before the First World War. [2]
Returning the fair to Spancilhill
Competition from an Ennis horse show threatened the fair around the turn of the twentieth century. According to the organisers’ account, James Brohan bought the fairgreen and its rights in 1905, then pursued legal action to protect the event. A 1908 judgment favoured his claim, and the fair returned to its old ground in 1909. A voluntary fair association followed in 1989. [2]
Michael Considine’s song
Michael Considine emigrated from the district in 1870 and wrote the poem later known as Spancil Hill. RTÉ’s description of a 1981 television programme explains its dream of returning from America to the fair and its awakening in California. Singer Red Hurley visited the fair and performed the ballad for My Ireland, broadcast on 1 July 1981, bringing the emigrant’s remembered landscape to television. [3]
Photographing the gathering
Photographer Christy McNamara documented the fair over three decades. His project A Fair in the Air combined those photographs with a recorded soundscape in a thirty-minute film, announced for screening on 23 June 2021. Creative Ireland’s account presented it as a way for people separated during the pandemic to reconnect with the gathering, using accumulated images and sound to preserve its communal memory. [4]
Geographic information
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Spancel Hill. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- History of Spancilhill Fair · Spancilhill Fair Association
- In the Heartland of Clare, My Ireland, 1 July 1981 · RTÉ Archives
- A Fair in the Air: the Fair at Spancilhill, 2021 · Creative Ireland / local authority event record
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2020-07-22. How this page was prepared.