Qualla: Inishturk South

Inishturk South: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

From the Sky Road outside Clifden the eye picks out three small islands strung along the horizon: Turbot to the south, Inishturk in the middle, Omey to the north. Inishturk is the quietest of them. Its single hill carries a slim radio-TV mast that catches the late-afternoon sun and gives the island a strange industrial silhouette out of all proportion to its tiny human history. Nobody lives here permanently. A few stone cottages built generations ago have been quietly repurposed as holiday lets. The Irish name is Inis Toirc - Wild Boar Island - and the southern qualifier (Inis Toirc Theas) exists only to distinguish it from the much larger Inishturk further north off County Mayo.

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Inishturk South: Why Two Inishturks

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Irish place names repeat themselves up and down the western coastline because the people who named them shared a common stock of words for common features. Inis (island) plus toirc (genitive of torc, wild boar) appears at least twice on the western seaboard - in Connemara and in ...

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Inishturk South: Geography of Abandonment

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Inishturk South lies in the channel between Turbot Island to the south and Omey Island to the north, just inshore of the open Atlantic. The easiest landing is on the southeast side; the western and northern coasts take the brunt of Atlantic swell and are mostly impassable. A smal...

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Inishturk South: Holiday Use and a Mast

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

At the end of the 20th century, some of the old stone cottages were quietly converted into holiday accommodation - simple structures with no mains electricity and visitor numbers small enough that the place remains essentially undisturbed. The radio-TV mast on the hill is functio...

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