Qualla: Ballycroy

Ballycroy: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karie Kuiper, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1982, RTÉ filmed William Trevor's story 'The Ballroom of Romance' at a crossroads called Doona Cross, west of Ballycroy village. The film, directed by Pat O'Connor, was a quietly devastating portrait of rural Irish loneliness, of a Saturday-night dance hall where unmarried men and aging women came once a week to grasp for the lives they had not managed to build. Forty-four years later, the ballroom is still there, derelict now, its corrugated roof rusting, its dance floor empty. So is Ballycroy, more or less, with a population that dropped from 663 in 2011 to 617 by 2022. But this is also where Ireland chose to put one of its six national parks, and where the darkness at night is so complete that an entire festival now celebrates it.

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Image: Karie Kuiper | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ballycroy: Town of the Stacks

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karie Kuiper, CC BY-SA 4.0. The name Ballycroy comes from Baile Chruaich, which means 'town of the stacks', either hay stacks or turf stacks depending on whom you ask. Both stacks have shaped this landscape for centuries. The two electoral divisions that make up greater Ballycroy cover about 51,943 acres ac...

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Image: Karie Kuiper | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ballycroy: The Fir Domnann

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karie Kuiper, CC BY-SA 4.0. According to tradition, the first settlers in Ballycroy were the Fir Domnann, a branch of the Belgic Damnonii tribe, the same people who eventually gave their name to Devon and Cornwall. They left behind a portal tomb near Claggan Hill and a court cairn in the townland of Drumgal...

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Image: Karie Kuiper | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ballycroy: Wild Nephin

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gordon Hatton, CC BY-SA 2.0. Ballycroy is the gateway to Wild Nephin National Park, formerly called Ballycroy National Park, the second largest of Ireland's six national parks. It covers about 150 square kilometres of blanket bog, mountain, and remote river valley. The park's visitor centre is in Ballycroy v...

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Image: Gordon Hatton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ballycroy: The Darkest Skies

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CeltBrowne, CC BY-SA 4.0. The flip side of having almost nobody live in a place is that nobody turns on the lights. Ballycroy, Mulranny and Newport collectively sit inside Mayo Dark Sky Park, designated by the International Dark-Sky Association in 2016 as one of only sixteen Gold Tier reserves on Earth at...

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Image: CeltBrowne | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ballycroy: What Remains After Romance

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karie Kuiper, CC BY-SA 4.0. The ballroom at Doona Cross was already an anachronism when Trevor wrote about it in the late 1970s, the kind of country dance hall that had been the centre of rural social life from the 1930s through the 1960s before television and improved roads emptied them out. The 1982 film ...

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Image: Karie Kuiper | CC BY-SA 4.0