Qualla: Lahinch

Lahinch: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Björn Reusch, Public domain. Lahinch Golf Club was founded in 1892, and in 1894 the Scottish golfer Old Tom Morris was invited to design its first links course. Morris had already shaped the Old Course at St Andrews configuration and a dozen other classic links. The course he set down at Lahinch was modest in budget but ambitious in landscape. Thirty-three years later, in 1927, Alister MacKenzie - the man who would co-design Augusta National with Bobby Jones - was paid 2,000 pounds to redesign and extend the Lahinch links. The course MacKenzie left behind is what golfers still play today.

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Image: Björn Reusch | Public domain

Lahinch: The Half Island

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Bogman assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 2.5. The name in Irish, Leath Inse, means half island or peninsula - a description of the village's position between the Inagh River and the open Atlantic. The Annals of the Four Masters recorded the place as Leith Innse in the seventeenth century. Some modern road signs still use the...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Bogman assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 2.5

Lahinch: The Course at Lahinch

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Murphy, CC BY-SA 2.0. Lahinch Golf Club opened in 1892, on land that was reportedly being used for grazing sheep right up to the moment the founders set it out. In 1894 Old Tom Morris was brought in to design the course proper. By 1927 the membership wanted something more ambitious, and they hired Mac...

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Image: Tim Murphy | CC BY-SA 2.0

Lahinch: Surfers and Storms

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lukemcurley, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sometime in the 1990s, surfers discovered Lahinch. The beach faces the open Atlantic, the Liscannor Bay swells refract around Hag's Head and break in long peeling lines that on the right day rival anything in Europe. The town now has a surf school, surf shops, and the population ...

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Image: Lukemcurley | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lahinch: The Lehane House

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The Banner, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the night of 22 September 1920, four kilometers from Lahinch's main street, the Rineen ambush had just ended. In Cragg, on the outskirts of Lahinch, Dan Lehane was in his house. His two sons had been in the IRA ambush party that afternoon. A mixed force of police and soldiers ...

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Image: The Banner | CC BY-SA 3.0