Getting To Iona

In 563 AD St Columba, or Colm Cille set off from the north coast of Ireland and settled just over the horizon on Iona, off the west coast of Scotland. There he and his fellows founded a monastery that became a centre of the Christian world for hundreds of years.

Today more than 130,000 pilgrims visit Iona every year in his memory.

In 1963 John Barry and a group of fellow pilgrims built a curragh and re-enacted that journey, publishing a book about it in 1964, calling it ‘Joyful Pilgrimage’.

Then in 2024 John Barry’s grandson, an actor and writer in London, staged this show about these two journeys and the very nature of pilgrimage in the modern world.

The 4 Corners Festival is delighted to bring this story “back home” to Ireland.