Aillwee Cave, Ballyvaughan, Burren, Co. Clare: illustrated colour guide booklet to the show cave and the Burren landscape around it, c. 1980

Aillwee Cave, Ballyvaughan, Burren, Co. Clare – an illustrated colour guide booklet to the show cave in the Burren, from the years soon after the cave opened to visitors in 1976. The back cover gives the opening times (open year round: from Easter daily from 10 a.m.; winter: weekends and by appointment) and the old manual-exchange telephone numbers – Kilfenora 26 (information), Ballyvaughan 36 (cave) and Lahinch 150 (information and office) – which date it to around 1980. Design by Jim Conneely; printed by O'Gorman Ltd, Galway. The cover shows the cave's floodlit flowstone and stalactite formations with the walking brown-bear emblem, a nod to the bones of brown bears found in the cave, later dated to over 10,000 years old. Inside, 'The area around the cave' introduces the upland Burren: the limestone pavements directly above the cave, fissured by rainwater trickling down into the cave below; the famous Burren flowers and the ferns sheltering in the grikes; the lush summit meadows where cattle graze; the flat summit of Aillwee Mountain; an old lead and silver mine and an old mill, probably used for flax; the springs fed by water from the hill; and the evidence of 4,000–5,000 years of settlement – Neolithic graves, house sites and the walls of old field boundaries – along with the later abandonment of the hill farms. Aillwee was first entered in 1944 by a local farmer following his dog, explored by cavers from 1973 and opened as a show cave in 1976. Card covers, approx. 15 x 21.5 cm, black-and-white and colour photographs. THEMES: Burren, County Clare, caves and caving, karst limestone, speleology, Irish tourism history, Ballyvaughan, Irish natural history, souvenir guidebooks, 1970s–80s Ireland.

Author: Aillwee Cave, Jim Conneely (Designer)

Publisher: Aillwee Cave

Publication Date: 1980

Binding: Saddle Stitch

Condition: Used - Very Good