Qualla: Kilcommon

Kilcommon: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Comhar, Public domain. Local folklore says the two peninsulas of Kilcommon parish were named for giant brothers, Caochain and Ciortain, each with his own promontory fort overlooking Sruwaddacon Bay. The brothers shared kitchen utensils. When one needed a pot, the other threw it across the bay, the great hound-shaped stretch of water that the Irish name calls Sruth Fhada Chonn, the Long Hound's Stream. The brothers are gone. The peninsulas still carry their names: Dun Chaochain and Dun Chiortain. So does the bay. Whether the giants ever existed matters less than the fact that the place is still mapped through them - that a stretch of north Mayo coastline takes its geography from the household economy of two brothers in a story.

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Image: Comhar | Public domain

Kilcommon: Two Billion Years of Stone

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arlette1, CC BY-SA 4.0. The bedrock of Kilcommon parish is among the oldest exposed rock in Ireland. Pink striped pre-Cambrian gneisses here are roughly two billion years old. Pale creamy psammite and dark schists make up much of the rest, with snow-white quartz boulders that intruded from below during ...

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Image: Arlette1 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kilcommon: The Red-Necked Phalarope

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kiran Madhusudhanan, CC BY-SA 4.0. The blanket bog of Kilcommon shifts through the year - fresh green in spring, purple and gold with bog cotton in summer, the rustic orange-red of bog species lighting the landscape in November. It supports a fauna unlike anywhere else in Ireland. The corncrake, vanished from most...

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Image: Kiran Madhusudhanan | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kilcommon: Saint Coman

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Precious, CC BY-SA 2.0. The parish takes its name from Saint Coman, who lived at the end of the sixth century and is said to be buried in the old churchyard at Pollatomais near the entrance, where part of one gable wall of the old church still stands. In 1838 the Ordnance Survey writer John O'Donovan vi...

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Image: David Precious | CC BY-SA 2.0

Kilcommon: Benwee Head

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Comhar, Public domain. Benwee Head, on the parish's north coast, rises 255 metres (837 feet) straight out of the Atlantic. The sea cliffs run along the coastline from Benwee to Glinsk Mountain, broken by inlets and small harbours, with the rocky islands called the Stags of Broadhaven offshore. There ar...

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Image: Comhar | Public domain

Kilcommon: The Corrib Pipeline

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Comhar, Public domain. Beginning in the early 2000s, Royal Dutch Shell proposed to run a high-pressure pipeline carrying raw unodourised gas from a field 85 kilometres offshore through Kilcommon parish to a refinery built ten kilometres inland. Local opposition was sustained and sometimes confrontation...

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Image: Comhar | Public domain