Qualla: Ballina

Ballina: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In April 2023, Joe Biden stood in front of St Muredach's Cathedral in Ballina and gave a speech to tens of thousands of people. The cathedral was begun in 1827, finished in 1892, with a spire raised in 1855 between famine and famine. Biden was there because his great-great-grandfather, Edward Blewitt, had emigrated from Ballina to America in 1851 during the worst years of the Great Famine. He came back as the 46th President of the United States. The crowd that filled the streets along the Moy that day was not just performing the usual Irish-American ritual: they were welcoming home a man whose ancestor had fled this very town to survive. Ballina specialises in stories like that, where the salmon, the river, and the people who left all eventually find their way back.

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Ballina: The Four Maols

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Just outside Ballina sits a small megalithic dolmen, three upright stones supporting a heavy capstone, with a fourth stone leaning nearby. The structure is about five feet high and roughly four thousand years old. Local tradition holds that this is the burial place of the Four Ma...

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Ballina: The Year of the French

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In August 1798, three French frigates landed about 1,100 soldiers at Killala, fifteen kilometres north of Ballina. The commander, General Jean Humbert, was answering an appeal from the United Irishmen for French military support of the Irish rebellion. Within days the French had ...

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Ballina: The Salmon Capital

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The River Moy flows through the centre of Ballina and out to Killala Bay, and it is, by most measures, the most prolific salmon river in Europe. The fish run upriver from the Atlantic from spring through autumn, and the Ridge Pool right in the middle of town is among the best-kno...

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Ballina: Mary Robinson

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Mary Bourke was born in Ballina in 1944, the daughter of two doctors. She went to Trinity College Dublin, studied at Harvard Law School, became a barrister and a Senator, and then in 1990 became the first woman ever elected President of Ireland. Her presidency, from 1990 to 1997,...

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Ballina: The Twentieth Century Comes Home

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Like much of rural Ireland, Ballina lost its Irish language during the early twentieth century. By the 1926 census, although many adults still spoke Irish as their first language, no children were learning it any more. Today the only Gaeltacht area left in County Mayo, Ceathrú Th...

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