Qualla: Clifden

Clifden: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Climb the Sky Road west out of Clifden in late afternoon and the Atlantic spreads out below you for two hundred kilometers. To the north, Inishturk South and Turbot Island sit on a glittering sea. To the south, the Twelve Bens roll inland in waves of bare quartzite. Down in the triangle of streets that John D'Arcy planned in the 1810s, Clifden goes about its business - thirteen pubs, three supermarkets, a Garda barracks, tour buses queuing for Connemara National Park, schoolchildren walking home in the Atlantic light. For a town that exists at all because a single landlord decided in 1812 to build one on an empty headland, Clifden has accumulated more history than most cities ten times its size.

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Clifden: D'Arcy's Plan

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

John D'Arcy inherited the Clifden estate in 1804 - mostly fishermen and farmers scattered across rough land. By 1812 he had a plan: build a proper coastal town from nothing. Bad roads and lack of capital held the project back until the potato crop failed in 1821-22 and D'Arcy pet...

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Clifden: Marconi's Words

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1905 Guglielmo Marconi chose a site at Derrygimlagh Bog, four miles south of Clifden, for his first high-power transatlantic wireless telegraphy station. He needed the shortest possible distance to its sister station at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. The Clifden station opened for pu...

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Clifden: Alcock and Brown's Bog

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 15 June 1919, the first non-stop transatlantic flight in history ended in the Derrygimlagh bog right next to Marconi's station. Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown had taken off from St John's, Newfoundland the previous afternoon in a modified Vickers Vimy ...

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Clifden: Burned by the Tans

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On Bloody Sunday, 21 November 1920, IRA gunmen shot eleven British officers and civilians in Dublin in a coordinated morning attack. That afternoon, British Auxiliaries opened fire on a Gaelic football crowd at Croke Park, killing twelve. Thomas Whelan, born in Clifden in 1899, w...

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Clifden: The Mexican Flag and Other Inheritances

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 12 September each year, the Mexican flag flies in Clifden. The man it honors is John Patrick Riley, born here around 1817. He emigrated to the United States, enlisted in the U.S. Army, and during the Mexican-American War deserted - he said because of anti-Catholic persecution ...

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