Qualla: Bangor Erris

Bangor Erris: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oliver Dixon, CC BY-SA 2.0. In February 1934, workmen widening a road outside Bangor Erris struck something solid ten feet down. They dug it out: a wooden box twelve feet long, three feet wide, bound by six sturdy copper hoops. When they opened it, they found thirty-six pikes with their handles still intact, several pike heads without shafts, and seven rusted rifles of a type that looked French. The pikes dated to 1798. The rifles resembled the muskets the French had carried ashore at Killala that same year, when they marched east with Irish allies in a doomed attempt to overthrow British rule. Someone had buried the arms in the bog and never returned for them. The road crew returned them to daylight after 136 years.

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Image: Oliver Dixon | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bangor Erris: The Townagh Flood

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Comhar, Public domain. December 1818. Heavy rain pounded the hills above Bangor Erris for days, swelling four small lakes until their banks could hold no more. In the dark, the lakes burst together and sent a wall of water down the valley. Seventeen people drowned. Most of them belonged to a single fam...

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Image: Comhar | Public domain

Bangor Erris: The Crying Stone

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oliver Dixon, CC BY-SA 2.0. Just east of the village, beside the N59, stands a sculpture called the Crying Stone by Colm Brennan. It was commissioned for Mayo County Council's Millennium Initiative, and it commemorates the sorrow felt by the people of this area when their kinfolk sailed for America. Erris w...

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Image: Oliver Dixon | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bangor Erris: The Bangor Trail

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A McCarron, CC BY-SA 2.0. South of the town runs one of the oldest paths in Ireland. The Bangor Trail stretches roughly forty kilometres through the Nephin Beg mountains and Owenduff Bog to Newport, an ancient drover route believed to date back to the Iron Age and the principal way south from Erris since ...

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Image: A McCarron | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bangor Erris: The Bingham Lodge

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oliver Dixon, CC BY-SA 2.0. On the western edge of town stands Bingham Lodge, built in 1823 by Major Bingham, the same Bingham who introduced the Revenue Police to Erris to stamp out illicit poteen distillation - and, according to local tradition, to give himself personal protection. The lodge was attacked ...

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Image: Oliver Dixon | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bangor Erris: Eileen Lynn Kato

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kiran Madhusudhanan, CC BY-SA 4.0. Among the people born around Bangor Erris is Eileen Lynn Kato, an academic and translator who spent her career rendering classical Japanese poetry and Noh theatre into English. In 1991 she was appointed Gakari, or advisor, to the Japanese emperor - an extraordinary distinction fo...

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Image: Kiran Madhusudhanan | CC BY-SA 4.0