Qualla: Mullaghmore

Mullaghmore: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Superbass, CC BY-SA 4.0. On the morning of 27 August 1979, Louis Mountbatten took his family fishing in a small wooden boat called Shadow V out of Mullaghmore harbour. He was 79, the last Viceroy of India, a cousin of the Queen, and a regular summer visitor to Classiebawn Castle on the headland above the village. Two miles off the Donegal coast, a 50-pound bomb hidden in the boat detonated by remote control. Mountbatten was killed. His 14-year-old grandson Nicholas Knatchbull was killed. His daughter-in-law Doreen Knatchbull, the dowager Baroness Brabourne, died the next day. Paul Maxwell, a 15-year-old from Enniskillen working as a boat boy for the summer, died at the scene. The Provisional IRA claimed responsibility within hours.

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Image: Superbass | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mullaghmore: Classiebawn on the Headland

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Webster, CC BY-SA 4.0. The castle Mountbatten stayed in was not his by birth, but by marriage. Henry John Temple, the 3rd Viscount Palmerston, began building Classiebawn Castle on the Mullaghmore peninsula in the mid-nineteenth century, a baronial pile designed by James Rawson Carroll. Palmerston had i...

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Image: Tony Webster | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mullaghmore: Shovelled Out

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aonghus Flynn, CC BY 2.0. Mullaghmore's history with the Palmerston family is older and darker than 1979. In 1847, the worst year of the Great Famine, nine ships carrying over 2,000 evicted tenants left Sligo port bound for British North America. They had been 'shovelled out' from Palmerston's North Sligo...

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Image: Aonghus Flynn | CC BY 2.0

Mullaghmore: The Viking Storm

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. Mullaghmore Head is now one of the world's premier big-wave surfing destinations. On 8 March 2012, surfers and windsurfers from across the planet rode waves measured at over 15 meters off the headland. The storm system that produced them was nicknamed the 'Viking storm,' a compli...

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Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Mullaghmore: The Working Village

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sytheston at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Mullaghmore is small. Two hotels, a seafood restaurant, a grocery shop, a fish farm, a spiritual retreat centre, a scatter of B&Bs. Most of the businesses close for winter, except the fish farm. The sandy beach runs nearly two kilometres. There is no lifeguard on duty. Summer bri...

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Image: Sytheston at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Mullaghmore: Benbulben Watches

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit en:The.Q, CC BY-SA 2.5. From anywhere in the village, Benbulben dominates the southern horizon, a flat-topped limestone tower that defines the entire North Sligo coast. The mountain has been here long enough not to care about Palmerstons or Mountbattens or surfboards. In 2007 Mullaghmore hosted the fina...

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Image: en:The.Q | CC BY-SA 2.5