Achill Island (; ) 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 . 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.
History Prehistory 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.
Early medieval period 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.
Medieval overlordship Achill Island lies within the historical barony of Burrishoole, in the territory of ancient Umhall (Umhall Uachtarach and Umhall Íochtarach), which originally extended from the County Galway/Mayo border to Achill Head. The hereditary chieftains of Umhall were the O'Malleys, recorded in the area in AD 814 when they repelled a Viking incursion into Clew Bay. The Anglo-Norman invasion of Connacht in 1235 saw the territory taken over first by the Butlers and later by the de Burgos, and the Butler lordship of Burrishoole continued into the late 14th century, when Thomas Le Boteller was recorded as holding Akkyll and Owyll. The Kingdom of Umhall was, at various points, also ruled by the Burkes, the O'Connors and the O'Donnells. The name O'Malley remains common on the island, and the clan's links to the area date to at least the 12th century.
Grace O'Malley Carrickkildavnet Castle, a 15th-century tower house, is associated with the O'Malley clan, who were once a ruling family on Achill. Grace O'Malley, known as Granuaile, the most famous of the O'Malleys, was born on Clare Island around 1530, the daughter of the chieftain of the barony of Murrisk. Under her leadership, the O'Malleys controlled the waters of the western seaboard, imposing tolls on ships passing through their territory. The family traded widely, and Grace herself gained fame as a sea captain and pirate, reputedly meeting Queen Elizabeth I in 1593 before her death around 1603; she is buried in the O'Malley family tomb on Clare Island.
17th and 18th centuries Following the Cromwellian clearances of the 17th century, many native Irish families were dispersed from richer farmland in the north and east of Ireland into the remote west, and it is thought that several Ulster families sought refuge on Achill. The prevalence of Ulster surnames such as Gallagher, O'Donnell, Corrigan, Cafferkey and Mulloy on the island today supports this account. For a period, two distinct dialects of Irish were spoken on Achill, a situation reflected in several townlands being recorded under two different names in the 1824 Ordnance Survey. Achill Irish has been described as having an Ulster Irish superstratum layered over a northern Connacht Irish substratum.
By the 18th century, the Penal Laws, which barred Catholics from most areas of public life and from owning property, had produced widespread poverty and a reliance on the potato as the primary food crop. These conditions fostered a spirit of rebellion, and in 1798 an uprising led by Wolfe Tone saw around 1,100 French soldiers land in north Mayo in support of the insurgents, capturing towns including Newport and Castlebar. A priest with Achill connections, Fr Manus Sweeney, who had been educated in Paris, was seen speaking with a French officer, and after the rebellion was crushed he was imprisoned as a collaborator. He escaped custody and fled to Achill, but was captured after a manhunt and hanged on the main street in Newport; a memorial to him stands at the Dookinella end of Trawmore Strand on Achill.
19th century Achill Mission (1831–1880s)
The Achill Mission, also known as "the Colony," at Dugort, was founded in 1831 by the Anglican (Church of Ireland) minister Rev. Edward Nangle. Born in Dublin in 1800, Nangle was descended from the Nangle family, who had held the title of Barons of Navan for over 600 years, and was the first Protestant in his family line. He began his ministry as curate of Athboy, County Meath, before turning to missionary work, and sailed to Achill in 1831 aboard the relief ship Nottingham in response to famine conditions in the west of Ireland. Struck by the island's landscape and by what he perceived as the primitive condition of its people, Nangle resolved to found a Protestant colony there. The land, near Dugort at the base of Slievemore, was leased from the island's landlord, Sir Richard O'Donnell, and Nangle moved permanently to the completed colony in 1834 with his wife Eliza, his family and his most committed supporters. The mission included schools, cottages, an orphanage, an infirmary, a hotel and a printing press, and cultivated fields using contemporary agricultural methods. Notably, the mission preached to and taught islanders in Irish, and Nangle himself learned the language. Its principal publication, the Achill Missionary Herald and Western Witness, ran continuously from 1837 until 1868, when it merged with other missionary titles, and the colony's press also produced volumes on Protestant doctrine and an Irish-language dictionary. Relations between mission staff and islanders were initially cordial, but the arrival of the Catholic Archbishop of Tuam, John McHale, on the island in 1837 stirred opposition, and mission staff and supporters subsequently endured years of hostility, including beatings and intimidation, much of it recorded (with clear propaganda intent) in the Achill Herald. Despite this, the colony grew in prominence through the late 1830s and early 1840s, drawing visitors including the Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin and the travel writers Mr and Mrs S.C. Hall. Dr Neason Adams, a physician who gave up a lucrative Dublin practice to serve the island's poor without pay, was widely respected across religious divides for his humanitarian work.
Great Famine (1845-1849) The Great Famine of 1845 to 1849 struck Achill particularly hard given the poor quality of its soil and near-total dependence on the potato. Nangle interpreted the famine as divine judgement on Ireland's sins, and the Colony gave rise to mixed assessments during this period, particularly as charges of "souperism" (providing food in exchange for religious conversion) were levelled against him. The provision of food alongside "scriptural" religious instruction across the mission's schools was especially controversial. As conditions worsened, Nangle abandoned strict conditions on aid, distributing relief more freely, though he still required able-bodied recipients to work. By the spring of 1847, the mission employed over 2,000 labourers and fed 600 children daily in its schools, and in July of that year an estimated 5,000 of Achill's roughly 7,000 people were receiving daily relief from the mission. In November 1848, a ship carrying 220 tons of Indian meal arrived from Philadelphia at the mission's expense, sufficient to feed 2,000 people. In 1848, at the height of the famine, the Achill Mission published a prospectus seeking funds to acquire further lands from Sir Richard O'Donnell, outlining its activities over the preceding decade and a half, including considerable sectarian unrest. Although Achill experienced serious hardship, its demographic decline was less severe than the national average, with population falling from 4,901 in 1841 to 4,075 in 1851, a reduction of around 16 per cent compared with a national decline of between 20 and 25 per cent. In 1850, the mission purchased three-fifths of the island from the O'Donnell estate, becoming Achill's effective landlord. In response, Archbishop McHale purchased land at Bunnacurry in 1852, on which a Franciscan monastery was established, providing education for local children for many years. Construction of the monastery was marked by conflict between the mission's supporters and the workers building it, an episode remembered in island folklore as the "Battle of the Stones". Eliza Nangle died in 1852 and was buried, along with six of the Nangle children who had died in infancy or childhood, on the slopes of Slievemore.
Decline and closure of Nangle Colony