MAYO.MElocal history
New research has made it possible to identify a number of unknown World War 2 victims buried in Mayo in 1941 when their bodies were washed ashore following the sinking of the Canadian troopship, S.S. Nerissa, off Donegal. Because of wartime secrecy, the Gardai did not have access to casualty lists from ships torpedoed off […]
Over the centuries the restless sea in its savage moods has cast many grim and sad tidal relics into the bays and onto the beaches that seam Mayo’s storm-battered Atlantic coast. But nothing to match the scale of human tragedy that came ashore from the Battle of the Atlantic during World War 2. Scores of […]
On a frosty, early February morning with snow in the mountains, I set out on my walk along the banks of the River Moy in Ballina from the Salmon Weir Bridge to the Quay, passing along my route reminders of an unfinished canal that Georgian-era visionaries dreamed would link the town to Lough Conn. It […]
This year marks 80 years since the Battle of Britain during World War 2 when the Royal Air Force (RAF) repelled large-scale attacks by Nazi Germany’s air force, the Luftwaffe, and took control of the skies over the English channel, preventing planned invasions of both Britain and Ireland by some of the Third Reich’s most […]
Only the lyrical words of a poet could give meaning to the sad origins of Bunlahinch Clapper Bridge by the coast near Killeen, south of Louisburgh, a unique relic among Irish bridges and a reminder of a sad episode in Mayo’s tragic past.
When James Henry Casserly who was the first Station Master in Killala Railway Station was leaving in 1894, the people of Killala and Ballycastle came together to present him with a pocket watch as a token of the high esteem in which the community held the Galway native.
As we approach the centenary Armistice Day commemoration here in Ballina, I am glad to report by the strangest of coincidences that we can shine some light on the fate of one of those young men whose name is inscribed on the Great War Remembrance Monument at Green Park, Ballina.
Ballycastle, the gateway village to the wild wilderness that is North Mayo, has one of the most scenic looped walks in Ireland.
The newly-opened Ballina and Killala sections of the Monasteries of the Moy Greenway, the 10km walking and cycling trail, partly follows the route of the old railway line that once linked the two north Mayo towns.
It’s great fun to create a looped walk from scratch. Spread the Ordnance Survey Map out on the kitchen table and, as the radio jingle used to say, “let your fingers do the walking” while you set about discovering somewhere new to explore.
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