Qualla: Swinford https://qualla.com/swinford en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:12 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/9/d/swinford-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Swinford https://qualla.com/swinford Swinford: Introduction https://qualla.com/swinford/ Photo credit Liz McCabe, CC BY-SA 2.0. Two stories try to explain the name Swinford. The first traces it to Swineford, after a pig market once held in the town, and is supported by the official Irish name Beal Atha na Muice - the mouth of the ford of the pigs. The second says the town has always been Swinford, named after Swinford in Leicestershire, where the founding Anglo-Irish Brabazon family originally came from. Both might be true; in 18th-century Ireland, the English name and the Irish name often grew up alongside each other and pointed at different things. What is definitely true is that Swinford was a planned town, laid out from scratch in the late 1700s on a tributary of the River Moy, and that it was the first town in County Mayo to be bypassed when the new N5 swung around it in 1993.

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Image: Liz McCabe | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/9/d/swinford-wp/gc9d-swinford-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Swinford: The Brabazons and the Forty Plots https://qualla.com/swinford/ Photo credit MickReynolds, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Brabazon family had originally been settled in County Galway, but they backed the wrong side in the Williamite War and watched their Galway estates confiscated after the Treaty of Limerick in 1691. As a consolation, they were granted new land in County Mayo. In 1769 they bega...

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Image: MickReynolds | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/9/d/swinford-wp/gc9d-swinford-the-brabazons-and-the-forty-plots.mp3 0:06 2 full Swinford: Swinford in the War of Independence https://qualla.com/swinford/ Photo credit Oliver Dixon, CC BY-SA 2.0. Swinford had a sharp share of activity during the Irish War of Independence from 1919 to 1921. The town's nationalists had been divided since the Parnell crisis of 1890, with the factions in Swinford and the nearby village of Meelick particularly hostile to each other. That bitte...

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Image: Oliver Dixon | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/9/d/swinford-wp/gc9d-swinford-swinford-in-the-war-of-independence.mp3 0:06 3 full Swinford: Siamsa Sraide and Hardy Bucks https://qualla.com/swinford/ Photo credit Pamela Norrington, CC BY-SA 2.0. Since the mid-1980s, Swinford has hosted one of County Mayo's largest summer street festivals: Siamsa Sraide Swinford - Fun in the Streets of Swinford. The five-day festival in the first week of August fills the town with ceili dancing, live bands, open-air concerts, history walk...

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Image: Pamela Norrington | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/9/d/swinford-wp/gc9d-swinford-siamsa-sraide-and-hardy-bucks.mp3 0:06 4 full Swinford: Brabazon's Town, Three Centuries In https://qualla.com/swinford/ Photo credit The Carlisle Kid, CC BY-SA 2.0. Swinford railway station opened on 1 October 1895 and closed to passengers in 1963, finally shutting altogether in 1975 - a familiar arc for the rural lines that once knitted Connacht together. The town now sits 18 kilometres from Ireland West Airport at Knock, off the N5 that by...

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Image: The Carlisle Kid | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/9/d/swinford-wp/gc9d-swinford-brabazons-town-three-centuries-in.mp3 0:06 5 full Swinford: From the Air https://qualla.com/swinford/ Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. El Comandante assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. From the cockpit window, Swinford is a small but clearly designed town on flat country, with the N5 sweeping past it to the north on its run from Dublin to Westport. The river runs through. Old Brabazon-era stonework is visible in the centre. The town gives way quickly to the pat...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. El Comandante assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/9/d/swinford-wp/gc9d-swinford-from-the-air.mp3 0:06 6 full