Walk through this peaceful garden, a sacred ‘thin’ place where the Celts believed that heaven and earth met.
Sanctuary Ireland is comprised of the following facilities and services: several conference venues, an organic farm shop uniquely supplied from our certified organic farm, a modern café, and The Celti
We invite you to visit our newly refurbished café. Here you can enjoy some delicious freshly made homemade breads, scones, buttery shortbread and delicious cakes and tray-bakes along with a selection
White Oaks Acorn Project is an Organically Certified 36 acre farm and organic produce scheme supplying general public, local restaurants and shops with fresh, chemical-free vegetables and herbs. Our n
The IOSAS Centre (Island of saints and scholars) and Celtic Prayer garden.
The Celtic Prayer Garden is Ireland’s only such garden and is set in six acres of natural bog land, approximately 10 minutes out of the city centre of Derry.
Here we invite you to step back in time to an Ireland of saints and scholars, a people who had a very strong sense of creation, a robust attitude to religious practice and who believed in a close relationship with nature.
Walk back in time to an era when holy men and women built their cell at, or close by to, places deemed sacred by the Celts; bogs, springs, and groves. Indeed the name Derry derives from the Irish - Doire Colmcille means St Columba’s Oak-grove, a sacred place where he built his monastery.
During your visit you can visit our reconstructed Irish Celtic round tower. You will walk into and experience early Celtic monastic life, simple and solitary, given to prayer and contemplation by visiting our reconstructed Celtic ‘bee-hive’ cell as well as an early monastic cave dwelling.
You will be overwhelmed with admiration for the picturesque and traditionally built Celtic church of St. Canice and shelter of St. Dympna, both of which boast Celtic thatched roofs utilising the plentiful, cheap materials like grasses and straw of the local area to reflect its surrounding by incorporating them into the fabric of their built dwellings which in turn seem not to be out of place with the natural surroundings.