Cong has been home to some influential people, including the Guinness family, who owned Ashford Castle for a time. Originally a medieval castle, it is today one of the finest luxury hotels in Ireland and has played host to royals, celebrities and other notables, including: King George V; Princess Grace, whose ancestors hail from the nearby Mayo town of Newport; Beatles’ George Harrison and John Lennon (the latter briefly owned an island in Clew Bay) and Oscar Wilde, whose childhood was spent largely here, as his father owned the adjacent Moytura House. Nearby Lisloughrey Lodge’s award-winning restaurant is named Wilde’s in recognition of the family’s deep connections here.
A number of historical monuments populate the small village, including the ornate Market Cross on the main street, built to celebrate Cong Abbey’s completion. The Augustinian abbey was built in the 12th century on the site of an earlier monastery founded by St. Feichin in the 7th century and was partially rebuilt in the 13th century. The Last High King of Ireland was buried here bringing to an end one era of Irish history.
A stroll through its ruins and grounds reveal fine examples of gothic architecture in its church and cloisters. Ornate windows and doorways, perfectly formed arches and columns which have endured all weathers for centuries, but whose floral capitals invite timeless contemplation and appreciation.
The nearby ruin of the Monk’s Fishing House is a mysterious little stone structure in the middle of the Cong River. It is built on a platform with a hole in the floor through which the monks caught fish while keeping warm by an open fire and evokes the hardships of daily monastic life in the middle ages.
The nearby so-called dry canal is a failed famine-era project which was aimed at providing relief to the suffering community by creating a canal which connected the two lakes so steamers could navigate. But it failed spectacularly. Being built on limestone whose porous nature drained all the water away, it became a dry canal.
Because of the underwater rivers in Cong, there are a number of caves in the area. Many are inaccessible or require wet suits and other equipment, but Pigeon Hole Cave remains popular among walkers, especially because of its attendant legend of the grief-stricken lover who transformed into a White Trout, who swims eternally in the lake. The cave’s wide opening is overgrown but its interior can be gleaned and repays the trek down the steep limestone steps to get there.
Cong is famously the origin of one of Ireland’s greatest treasures, the Cross of Cong which was crafted in the early 12th century to be a shrine to display a fragment of the ‘True Cross’ upon which Christ was crucified. The fragment was lost in time, but the elaborately decorated cross remained at the abbey for centuries and now resides permanently in the National Museum of Ireland.
If you arrived without knowing, it would be impossible to leave Cong without having learned that John Ford’s 1952 Hollywood classic The Quiet Man was filmed here. A museum with a replica of a 1920s-style cottage replete with all the fixtures and fittings from the film brings to life Mary Kate’s attachment to her ‘things’. Even a short stint here might have one imagining John Wayne striding across the street or Maureen O’Hara’s hands on hips--if only in your mind’s eye. But at the very least the museum makes for an interesting glimpse of Irish history through the lens of a Hollywood camera.