Qualla: Letterfrack https://qualla.com/letterfrack en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:12 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Letterfrack https://qualla.com/letterfrack Letterfrack: Introduction https://qualla.com/letterfrack/ Pull off the N59 at Letterfrack and the village opens onto a stone-walled crossroads with Diamond Hill rising directly behind. To one side stands the visitor center for Connemara National Park - 2,000 hectares of bog, heath, and mountain protected since 1980. To the other, sandstone buildings of the Atlantic Technological University's Furniture College, where students bend wood into chairs and the smell of fresh oak comes through open workshop doors. The buildings are beautiful. Most visitors who admire them do not know that the same buildings were, for ninety years, St Joseph's Industrial School - a place that shadowed the childhoods of hundreds of Irish boys, and whose name appears among the gravest indictments in the 2009 Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse.

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/8/b/letterfrack-wp/gc8b-letterfrack-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Letterfrack: The Ellises of Bradford https://qualla.com/letterfrack/ Letterfrack was founded by people trying to do good in catastrophic times. James and Mary Ellis were Quakers from Bradford, England. During the Great Famine they came west to Connemara, and in 1849 - the year that killed more Irish people than any other - James became the residen...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/8/b/letterfrack-wp/gc8b-letterfrack-the-ellises-of-bradford.mp3 0:06 2 full Letterfrack: The False-Name Sale https://qualla.com/letterfrack/ Hall ran the property in support of the Irish Church Missions, an evangelical organization seeking to convert Irish Catholics to Protestantism. After twenty-five years of limited success, he put the property up for sale in 1882. The Catholic Archbishop of Tuam, John McEvilly, wan...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/8/b/letterfrack-wp/gc8b-letterfrack-the-false-name-sale.mp3 0:06 3 full Letterfrack: Honoring What Happened Here https://qualla.com/letterfrack/ Between 1885 and its closure in 1974, hundreds of boys passed through St Joseph's. The 2009 Ryan Report - the official Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse - devoted Chapter 8 to Letterfrack. It documented sustained physical, emotional, and sexual abuse over decades, conditions...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/8/b/letterfrack-wp/gc8b-letterfrack-honoring-what-happened-here.mp3 0:06 4 full Letterfrack: Marconi at the School https://qualla.com/letterfrack/ Letterfrack has a stranger chapter in its history too. When Marconi expanded his transatlantic wireless operations to add duplex service - simultaneous two-way communication - he chose St Joseph's Industrial School in Letterfrack as the receiver site, complementing the transmitte...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/8/b/letterfrack-wp/gc8b-letterfrack-marconi-at-the-school.mp3 0:06 5 full Letterfrack: What the Village Builds Now https://qualla.com/letterfrack/ The St Joseph's Industrial School closed in 1974. In 1987 the community organization Connemara West began running furniture courses in the buildings, which evolved into the Furniture College of what is now the Atlantic Technological University - a campus designed by William Hague...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/8/b/letterfrack-wp/gc8b-letterfrack-what-the-village-builds-now.mp3 0:06 6 full