Qualla: Townlands of Kilcommon https://qualla.com/townlands-of-kilcommon 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/9/6/townlands-of-kilcommon-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Townlands of Kilcommon https://qualla.com/townlands-of-kilcommon Townlands of Kilcommon: Introduction https://qualla.com/townlands-of-kilcommon/ Photo credit Comhar, Public domain. A townland is a unit of land measurement that does not really translate into other systems. It is older than the county, older than the parish, older than the Anglo-Norman invasion that arrived in Ireland in 1169. Many townland boundaries were already ancient when the Normans arrived. Some are demonstrably pre-Christian. They were the practical units by which Irish farmers thought about their own world: who owned what field, who held grazing rights in which patch of bog, where one family's responsibility ended and the next family's began. The civil parish of Kilcommon, in the wild Erris region of northwest Mayo, contains 37 of these ancient units. Most of them have populations in the dozens or low hundreds. Some are uninhabited. All of them have stories that go back further than any building in them.

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Image: Comhar | Public domain

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/9/6/townlands-of-kilcommon-wp/gc96-townlands-of-kilcommon-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Townlands of Kilcommon: Carrowteige and the Gaeltacht https://qualla.com/townlands-of-kilcommon/ Photo credit Comhar, Public domain. Most of County Mayo lost the Irish language in the twentieth century, the way most of Ireland did, as English replaced Irish in the schools, the marketplaces, and eventually the home. A few corners held on. Carrowteige, called Ceathrú Thaidhg in Irish, is one of them, a Gaeltacht...

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Image: Comhar | Public domain

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/9/6/townlands-of-kilcommon-wp/gc96-townlands-of-kilcommon-carrowteige-and-the-gaeltacht.mp3 0:06 2 full Townlands of Kilcommon: The Willows of Glengad https://qualla.com/townlands-of-kilcommon/ Photo credit Socleary, Public domain. In the 1650s, Oliver Cromwell's settlement of Ireland forced thousands of native families off their lands in the east and pushed them west, often with the phrase 'to hell or to Connaught' attached. Some of those displaced families ended up in the Erris bogs, in the townland that ...

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Image: Socleary | Public domain

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/9/6/townlands-of-kilcommon-wp/gc96-townlands-of-kilcommon-the-willows-of-glengad.mp3 0:06 3 full Townlands of Kilcommon: Sandhills and Promontory Forts https://qualla.com/townlands-of-kilcommon/ Photo credit Munifico, CC BY-SA 3.0. Almost every coastal townland in Kilcommon has prehistoric ruins. Cornboy has a Sandhills Settlement, an Iron Age occupation site half-buried by drifting dunes, with what may be cairns and middens scattered through the sand. Portacloy has the remnants of a promontory fort, a defe...

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Image: Munifico | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/9/6/townlands-of-kilcommon-wp/gc96-townlands-of-kilcommon-sandhills-and-promontory-forts.mp3 0:06 4 full Townlands of Kilcommon: Lace Schools and Lady Dudley https://qualla.com/townlands-of-kilcommon/ Photo credit MickReynolds, CC BY-SA 4.0. Several townlands in Kilcommon had lace schools, organised by the Congested Districts Board, the British government agency set up in 1891 to combat the poverty of Ireland's western seaboard. These were practical training centres where local girls and women learned crochet, knitti...

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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/9/6/townlands-of-kilcommon-wp/gc96-townlands-of-kilcommon-lace-schools-and-lady-dudley.mp3 0:06 5 full Townlands of Kilcommon: The Corrib Gas Controversy https://qualla.com/townlands-of-kilcommon/ Photo credit Comhar, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the late 1990s, Shell discovered natural gas off the coast of Erris, in a field called Corrib about eighty kilometres offshore. The plan was to pipe the gas to a refinery built on a Coillte forestry plantation in the townland of Bellanaboy, then onward to the national grid. Th...

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Image: Comhar | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/9/6/townlands-of-kilcommon-wp/gc96-townlands-of-kilcommon-the-corrib-gas-controversy.mp3 0:06 6 full