Achill Island

About

Achill Island (; Irish: Acaill, Oileán Acla) is located off the west coast of Ireland in the historical barony of Burrishoole, County Mayo. It is the largest of the Irish isles and has an area of approximately 148 km2 (57 sq mi). Achill had a population of 2,345 in the 2022 census. The island, which has been connected to the mainland by a bridge since 1887, is served by Michael Davitt Bridge, between the villages of Achill Sound and Polranny. Other centres of population include the villages of Keel, Dooagh, Dooega, Dooniver, and Dugort. There are a number of peat bogs on the island. Roughly half of the island, including the villages of Achill Sound and Bun an Churraigh, are in the Gaeltacht (traditional Irish-speaking region) of Ireland, although the vast majority of the island's population speaks English as their daily language.

The island is within a civil parish, also called Achill, that includes Achillbeg, Inishbiggle and the Corraun Peninsula.

Archaeological evidence indicates that Achill Island was occupied from at least the Neolithic period. During the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, the island's climate was warmer and drier than today, dense woodland covered much of the landscape, and the extensive blanket bogs that now characterise Achill had not yet formed. Rather than being an isolated location, Achill may have occupied an important position on prehistoric maritime routes along Ireland's Atlantic coast. The remains of megalithic tombs and monuments suggest settlement by Neolithic people in the region of the 3rd or 4th millennium BC. It is believed that by the end of the Neolithic period, around 4000 BC, Achill had a population of 500 to 1,000 people, with the island mostly forested until Neolithic settlers began crop cultivation. The island preserves extensive evidence of this early landscape beneath its blanket bogs, including prehistoric field systems, preserved forests, shell middens and stone foundations on the slopes of Slievemore. Numerous pre-bog stone walls extend high up the mountainside, marking former agricultural land later engulfed by peat as the climate deteriorated during the Late Bronze Age. Achill contains six known megalithic tombs, including two court cairns and two portal tombs, though none has been excavated. Excavations on Slievemore have also revealed two large prehistoric roundhouses; the better studied of these, Roundhouse 1, has been radiocarbon dated to before 1411–1210 BC. Settlement increased during the Iron Age, and the dispersal of small promontory forts around the coast indicates the warlike nature of the period. Megalithic tombs and forts survive at Slievemore, along the Atlantic Drive and on Achillbeg.

The early medieval period, from around the 5th century AD, saw considerable expansion in agriculture, particularly with the introduction of iron implements such as the plough. Evidence of early medieval artefacts has been reported at Keem Bay, Slievemore, Kildavnet and Achillbeg. The arrival of Christianity in Ireland around this time is reflected in two sites on the island. Kildamhnait, on the south-east coast, is named after Saint Damhnait, who is said to have founded a church there in the 7th century, and a holy well survives just outside the graveyard. At Slievemore, an early ecclesiastical site within the graveyard, possibly founded in the 7th century by Saint Colman, includes a holy well dedicated to the saint, although there is no evidence a church ever stood within the adjacent settlement. The present church at Kildamhnait was built in the 1700s, and its graveyard contains memorials to victims of two of Achill's later tragedies, the Kirkintilloch fire of 1937 and the Clew Bay Drowning of 1894.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.