Qualla: Mullet Peninsula

Mullet Peninsula: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Conor Lawless from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0. On a map, the Mullet Peninsula looks like a fishhook flung out from the west of Ireland and snagged on the Atlantic. It is doglegged, narrow, in places only 200 metres wide. The town of Belmullet, anchoring the isthmus, has about 1,000 inhabitants. The whole peninsula has 3,963. From its northernmost tip at Erris Head to its southern villages, the land never gets far from the sea, and the sea never lets you forget it is there. Two bays cup against the peninsula: Blacksod Bay on the south side, Broadhaven Bay on the north. The shape of the place determines almost everything about life on it.

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Image: Conor Lawless from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, United Kingdom | CC BY 2.0

Mullet Peninsula: The Isthmus and the Bays

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger, CC BY-SA 2.0. Look at the Mullet from above and you understand its geography in a single glance. A long thin spit of land hangs westward from the County Mayo coast, joined to the mainland only at Belmullet by an isthmus so narrow that a canal cuts cleanly through it. The southern side faces Bl...

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Image: Roger | CC BY-SA 2.0

Mullet Peninsula: Saint Brendan's Departure

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Neville Goodman, CC BY-SA 2.0. According to legend, St. Brendan the Navigator established a monastery at Inishglora, the small island just off the western coast of the Mullet, at the start of his great sea voyage. Brendan is the Irish saint whose seventh-century travels supposedly carried him as far as the Ame...

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Image: Neville Goodman | CC BY-SA 2.0

Mullet Peninsula: Irish, Daily and Disappearing

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Bone, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Mullet Peninsula belongs to the Mayo Gaeltacht, the network of Irish-speaking districts that the Irish state designates and supports. According to the 2016 census, about 8% of the population speak Irish daily outside the education system. The figure is much higher among schoo...

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Image: Robert Bone | CC BY-SA 2.0

Mullet Peninsula: Sites, Towers, Beaches

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Saint Deirbhile heritage centre at Aughleam near the southern end gathers books and local history; the saint's church and well are a couple of miles south, the well still credited with curing eye complaints. Glosh Tower on Termon Hill, one of 82 signal towers the British buil...

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Image: Roger | CC BY-SA 2.0