Qualla: Milltown, County Galway

Milltown, County Galway: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 4.0. In August 1902, a farmer cutting a drainage channel through Lurgan Bog near Milltown struck wood. He kept digging. What he had hit, it turned out, was a fifty-foot logboat - a vessel hollowed out of a single enormous oak trunk - that had been lying in the peat for roughly four thousand years. Sir Thomas Esmonde of the Royal Irish Academy came to look, bought the boat for £25, had it loaded onto a wagon and taken to Milltown railway station, and from there shipped to the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin, where it still sits. The Lurgan Canoe is the oldest intact logboat ever found in Western Europe. The tree it was carved from no longer exists in Ireland.

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Image: CC BY-SA 4.0

Milltown, County Galway: Where the Two Mills Stood

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martin P. Whyte, CC BY-SA 4.0. The village takes its name from the two mills that once stood on the River Clare. Baile an Mhuilinn, the town of the mill. O'Grady's mill at Milltown itself was demolished in the 1950s during the Corrib River Drainage Scheme. The other - Birmingham's mill, a corn and tuck mill at...

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Image: Martin P. Whyte | CC BY-SA 4.0

Milltown, County Galway: The School at Kilclooney

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit dougf, CC BY-SA 2.0. On the edge of the parish stand the ruins of Kilclooney Castle, once home to the O hUigin family - one of the great bardic dynasties of Gaelic Ireland. Domhnall O hUiginn lived there in 1574. The 16th-century poet Tadhg Dall O hUiginn referred to a school of poetry at the site. T...

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Image: dougf | CC BY-SA 2.0

Milltown, County Galway: Two Ambushes and a Killing

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Darrin Antrobus, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Irish War of Independence left two ambush sites in Milltown's local memory. The Egg Shed Ambush, April 1921: ten to twelve volunteers attacked two RIC constables returning from patrolling the railway station, trying to take their rifles. Armed police and Black and Tans rushed...

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Image: Darrin Antrobus | CC BY-SA 2.0

Milltown, County Galway: Races, Showbands, and Handball

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mlhynes, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Milltown Races date to 1877. Earlier race meetings ran in the 1840s on St Patrick's Day, then moved to Easter Monday for better weather. The Tuam Herald once reported of the races that porter ran in rivers down countless throats and corked concoctions sold by the million. By ...

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Image: Mlhynes | CC BY-SA 4.0

Milltown, County Galway: The People

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:O'Dea, CC BY-SA 4.0. Milltown's roll of notable sons and daughters is long for a village of its size. John Birmingham (1816-1884), the astronomer who first detected the recurrent nova T Coronae Borealis in 1866. Patrick Duggan (1813-1896), Catholic bishop. Richard W. Dowling (1838-1867), the Confeder...

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Image: User:O'Dea | CC BY-SA 4.0