Qualla: Rosses Point

Rosses Point: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit self, CC BY-SA 3.0. On a small rock at the mouth of Sligo Bay, a cast-iron sailor has stood since 1821 with his arm flung out, directing ships into the safe channel. Locals call him the Metal Man. Approaching by sea, you line up his lamp with the lighthouse on Oyster Island behind him, then sail in the direction his finger indicates. He has worked this job for two centuries without rest. Behind him, on the spit of land where Sligo Bay meets the open Atlantic, sits the village of Rosses Point - 900 people in 2022, a fishing community turned Victorian holiday resort turned weekend break. The Yeats family used to summer here. The bones of their old house still hold themselves together with ivy.

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Image: self | CC BY-SA 3.0

Rosses Point: The Metal Man's Twin

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Giuseppe Peronato, CC BY-SA 2.5. The cast-iron figure on Perch Rock is one of a pair. His identical twin stands on a clifftop above Tramore in County Waterford, on the opposite coast of Ireland. Both were erected in 1821 to mark hazardous approaches, both still serve as navigation aids two hundred years after th...

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Image: Giuseppe Peronato | CC BY-SA 2.5

Rosses Point: Elsinore and the Yeats Brothers

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geofreund1, CC BY-SA 4.0. Elsinore House stands above the strand at Rosses Point, now a ruin held upright largely by ivy. It was where the Pollexfen family - the merchants on William and Jack Yeats's mother's side - took the children on summer holidays. William turned the place and its surroundings into t...

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Image: Geofreund1 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Rosses Point: Three Beaches and a Spit

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Willie Duffin, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Atlantic-facing coast of the peninsula runs north as a chain of beaches. First Beach is 400 metres of sand with parking, toilets, and summer lifeguards. Bowmore Point caps it, its little cabin painted bright. Beyond, Second Beach stretches a kilometre to Wren Point, where the...

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Image: Willie Duffin | CC BY-SA 2.0

Rosses Point: Oyster Wars

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:FoekeNoppert, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1864, a fleet of "oyster pirates" sailed into Sligo Bay to plunder the local beds. The Royal Irish Constabulary came out in force and the pirates were beaten back that day. It was not enough. Within a decade or two, the Sligo oyster beds were gone, fished out by people who had...

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Image: User:FoekeNoppert | CC BY-SA 3.0

Rosses Point: Inishmurray, Unreachable

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Willie Duffin, CC BY-SA 2.0. Six kilometres offshore, north of the bay, the uninhabited island of Inishmurray holds the ruins of an early medieval monastic complex - circular stone enclosure, beehive cells, a scatter of cross-slabs. Monks lived there from the sixth century until Viking raids made it untenabl...

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Image: Willie Duffin | CC BY-SA 2.0