Qualla: Inishturk

Inishturk: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Towel401, CC0. Inis Toirc means Wild Boar Island, though no boar has rooted here in living memory. What does live on Inishturk is a community of around fifty-six people, plus the children of the smallest primary school in Ireland - three pupils, on the year the Irish Times came to write about it. The island lies fifteen kilometres off the coast of County Mayo, halfway between Clare Island and the open Atlantic. There has been a permanent settlement here since at least 1700, and someone has been living on this rock, on and off, for six thousand years.

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Image: Towel401 | CC0

Inishturk: Two Villages on the Sheltered Side

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Towel401, CC BY-SA 4.0. Most of the island faces west and gets the weather full in the face: the highest point reaches 189 metres, and the cliffs along the western shore drop almost straight into deep water. The two surviving villages, Ballyheer and Garranty, are tucked on the more sheltered eastern end...

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Image: Towel401 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Inishturk: A Very Long Tenancy

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Towel401, CC BY-SA 4.0. Archaeological evidence puts people on Inishturk as far back as 4,000 BCE, though the population has waxed and waned with weather, war, and economics. Some of the island's current families descend from evacuees who came in from Inishark, the still-smaller island to the southwest,...

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Image: Towel401 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Inishturk: Community Centre, Library, Pub

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Towel401, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Inishturk Community Centre opened in 1993 and does the work of three buildings - library, meeting space, pub. The island's electricity has come from a diesel power station since the 1980s, upgraded in 2014 to three modern generators that keep the freezers running and the scho...

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Image: Towel401 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Inishturk: The Year America Noticed

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Towel401, CC BY-SA 4.0. In the spring of 2016, an Irish tourism push gained an unexpected second life on the international internet. Websites picked up a half-joking pitch that Inishturk would welcome any Americans who wanted to flee a Trump presidency, and within weeks the island was being written abou...

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Image: Towel401 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Inishturk: Walking the Island

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aiden Clarke, CC BY-SA 2.0. There are no cars to speak of, no traffic, and on a clear day you can walk the perimeter of Inishturk in a few hours. The light off the cliffs at the western end has the hard, scrubbed quality you only get this far out into the Atlantic. Caher Island sits low on the southern hori...

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Image: Aiden Clarke | CC BY-SA 2.0