Belmullet

Belmullet Béal an Mhuirthead
Town
A view of Belmullet town
Location in Ireland
Coordinates: 54°13′30″N 9°59′28″W / 54.225°N 9.991°W / 54.225; -9.991
Country	Ireland
Province	Connacht
County	County Mayo
Elevation	5 m (16 ft)
Population  (2016)[1]
• Total	1,019
Irish Grid Reference	F701326
As this is a Gaeltacht town, the Irish Béal an Mhuirthead is the only official name. The anglicized spelling Belmullet has no official standing.

Belmullet (Irish: Béal an Mhuirthead, meaning "mouth of the Mullet [Peninsula]", IPA:[ˌbʲeːlənˠˈwʊɾˠhəd̪ˠ])^[2] is a coastal Gaeltacht town with a population of 1,019 on the Mullet Peninsula in the barony of Erris, County Mayo, Ireland. It is the commercial and cultural heart of the barony of Erris, which has a population of almost 10,000. According to the 2016 census 50% of people in the town were able to speak Irish while only 4% spoke it on a daily basis outside the education system.^[2][3]

Belmullet has two bays, Blacksod Bay and Broadhaven Bay, linked by Carter's Canal running through the town.

History

The origin of the name Belmullet is not clear. It may have come from Irish Béal Muileat or Béal an Mhuileat, which has been translated as "mouth of the isthmus".^[2] Bernard O'Hara in Mayo: Aspects of its Heritage suggests that "A change from 'L' to 'R', which is quite common in Irish, may have given Béal an Mhuireat which in turn became Béal an Mhuirhead". It has also been suggested that the latter half of the name may refer to the fish or the star shape used in heraldry.^[4]

18th century

According to

In 1820, the first post office in Erris opened in the new town of Belmullet. In 1822, a coastguard station was built. William Henry Carter had inherited huge tracts of Shaen's land in Erris when he married Shaen's daughter and began to put plans in place to develop the town. A new road was built which connected Belmullet with Castlebar, which was completed in 1824.^[5] In 1825, Carter built a pier large enough to accommodate vessels of 100 tons. Carter's stated objective was to "create a home market for produce that did not previously exist nearer than thirty miles by land," and his aim was to thrust the older village of An Geata Mór (Binghamstown), a village founded by the powerful Bingham family on the Mullet peninsula into a secondary position.^[6] By 1826, the Erris Hotel was opened.^[7]

In 1829, Alexander Nimmo, an

By 1831, the population of Belmullet was 585. A Roman Catholic chapel was built in 1832 at the cost of £300. There was a daily

In the latter half of the 19th century rural unrest was a common occurrence across Mayo. In November 1881, over 100 police officers needed in order to protect two process servers who were serving writs in the town. The police were confronted by an angry crowd throwing rocks and sticks. The police were obliged to charge the crowd and fire buckshot resulting in a large number of injuries. The police made 20 arrests.^[11]

A workhouse was erected on the site of the current hospital. The Head of the Treasury, Charles Trevelyan, notoriously decreed that relief was only to be given to workhouse people. Starving people crowded to the workhouse. At one stage at the height of the Famine, 3,000 people were recorded as being in Belmullet workhouse. The area around Belmullet was severely impacted by the Great Irish Famine in the 19th century and in the next 100 years many people emigrated from the area to the United States and to England. Throughout the second half of the 19th century, many proposals were made regarding the development of a

• Route One: Ballina – Ballycastle – Belmullet
• Route Two:
  Mulrany
  – Belmullet
• Route Three: Ballina – Crossmolina – Belmullet

People along these routes lobbied for the railway lines to pass through their district. However the merchants of Belmullet were more skeptical and feared that the introduction of a railway line would adversely affect their trading position, putting Ballina within easy reach of the population. Plans for a

John Millington Synge, author of "The Playboy of the Western World" and The Aran Islands, visited Belmullet in 1904, and reported: Belmullet in the evening is noisy and squalid, lonely and crowded at the same time and without appeal to the imagination. So at least one stays for a moment. When one has passed six times up and down hearing a gramophone in one house, a fiddle in the next, then an accordion and a fragment of a traditional lullaby, with many crying babies, pigs and donkeys and noisy girls and young men jostling in the darkness, the effect is not indistinct. All the light comes from doors or windows of shops. Last night was St. John’s Eve and bonfires were lighted all over the country, the largest of all being placed at the Town Square at Belmullet. Today, again, there was a large market in the square, where a number of country people, with their horses and donkeys, stood about bargaining for young pigs, heather brooms, homespun flannels, second hand clothing, blackening brushes, tinker’s goods and many other articles.^[14]

Irish War of Independence

One of the two R.I.C. Policemen killed in the January 1919 Soloheadbeg ambush – Constable McDonnell – was born in Belmullet. The event triggered the War of Independence. Constable McDonnell was 50 at the time of his death. He left a widow and five children.^[15]

On 26 October 1919 a young boy was shot and wounded by a sentry guarding the local wireless station. The boy was driving cows near his home early in the morning, when he was shot in the shoulder. The incident caused great indignation among the local population.^[16]

In June 1920, an R.I.C. policeman was killed and three were injured during a riot on the main street of the town. The policemen intervened to arrest a man for causing a disturbance during a fair. The crowd attending the fair resented the intervention and turned on the police officers. The police retreated and took refuge in a house, One of the officers – Constable Doogue – was later discovered on the street with a wound to the head. When the doctor arrived, he was found to be dead.^[17]

In late August 1920, the local Coastguard station was attacked. The raiders were interrupted by a police patrol, and shots were exchanged. The raiders escaped but not before the station was destroyed.^[18]

During the latter stages of the conflict, a Republican Court was established in the town. In January 1921 Two Ballina Solicitors – P. J. Ruttledge and Henry Bourke – were arrested and charged by the British military authorities for participating in the court. Mr. Ruttledge declined to recognize the British court and was subsequently jailed in Castlebar.^[19]

A breach of the Anglo Irish Truce occurred in the Town in October 1921. Two Republican Policemen were quelling a row that broke out in the evening after the town's regular fair. The Republican policemen were attacked by six R.I.C. officers. The fighting escalated as more RIC and IRA men joined the affray. Later, shots were exchanged by the two sides.^[20]

Irish Civil War

The conflict was fought between two opposing groups of Irish nationalists: those who supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty under which the Irish Free state was established, and the republican opposition, for whom the Treaty represented a betrayal of the Irish Republic. When hostilities broke out, Belmullet was under the control of the Republican opposition, also known as irregulars.

During the early weeks of the Civil War, Belmullet was under the control of the Irregulars. However, support for the Republican cause was not universal. A prominent member of the North Mayo brigade of the IRA – Mr P. Kelly – was arrested by the Irregulars due to his support of the government. Kelly was the Assistant Clerk of the Belmullet Union.^[21] In July 1922, the National Army entered Mayo and established control over the county on behalf of the Free State government. However, Irregular activity continued in Belmullet for months after. In September, Irregulars entered the town, took petrol and left. The National Army pursued the irregulars and arrested six of them.^[22] In October 1922, Irregulars established temporary control over the town. They stopped all traffic and raided all the banks in the town taking away a large sum of money. They also forced all the local public houses to pay a "Republican licensing fee". The mail van was also held up.^[23]

Second World War

On 6 August 1940, during the

In 1958, Belmullet became the site of a conflict between Erskine Childers, Minister of Lands, and local workmen who refused to construct a fence through an area thought to be occupied by fairies. The Government was unable to find other workers to build the fence, so finally relented and "bent" the fence around the disputed hill.[25]

21st century

In the early 21st century, improvement in the Irish economy has reversed population decline, and Belmullet has seen some immigration. Despite job losses in the area since the recession started in 2007, as with all over Ireland, Belmullet and the Mullet Peninsula has good natural resources in terms of fishing,^[26] tourism and small local industries are present such as Mayo Mats and the Corrib Gas terminal.^[27]

Culture and tourism

Although officially part of the Mayo Gaeltacht, it is both an English- and Irish-speaking town. The area plays host in summer months to students enrolled in local Irish language summer schools.

John Millington Synge's play The Playboy of the Western World was based on his experience of the Belmullet area. Synge also wrote a poem entitled "Danny" about a character who was murdered by a group of local men as he was on his way back into Belmullet from Bangor Erris.

The area is popular for fishing, with both fresh-water and sea-angling off Broadhaven Bay. Watersports are also common, with surfing, windsurfing, kitesurfing and sailing.

Belmullet is the nearest town to the Carne Golf Links, the last complete design from renowned Irish golf architect Eddie Hackett, frequently listed in the top 100 golf courses in the world.

This area of Erris was the setting for the Ulster Cycle legend of the Táin Bó Flidhais or the Mayo Táin.

In 2007, a new arts centre, Áras Inis Gluaire, opened in the town. Its mission was to become a leading bilingual arts centre in Ireland. As well as serving as the towns library and art gallery, the centre has a state of the art theatre, which has seen many accomplished artists perform in the town, among them being Mick Flannery and Damien Dempsey.^[28]

Since being included on the Wild Atlantic Way, and after the wider Erris region was named 'Best Place to Go Wild in Ireland' by The Irish Times in 2014, the town has experienced an increase in tourism.^[29]

Festivals

• Féile Iorras – International Arts Festival held in the town for a period of about ten days each July. It was set up in 1996 by Mayo County Council Arts Office to promote understanding and integration between the people of Erris and communities throughout the world. The festival encompasses all forms of folk art from dancing to visual arts to music. All the pubs in Belmullet participate.
• Lá an Logha – 15 August (also known as Ladies Day) each year sees the busiest time of the year in the town. This festival started off as a farmer's market and a day for men to
  propose to their future wives and go parading around the town with her on this special day.^[30]
• Féile na Seachtaine, another arts based festival follows Lá an Logha.[31] The town's annual Heritage Day is held during this time. Many people who have emigrated from Erris return to the area during the month of August.

Climate

Transport

The Belmullet Aerodrome is located 2 nautical miles (3.7 km; 2.3 mi) west of the town.

Bus Éireann route 446 links Belmullet with Bangor Erris, Crossmolina and Ballina. There is one service a day in each direction, including Sundays. On Friday evenings an extra journey operates from Ballina.^[35] Onward bus and rail connections are available at Ballina.

People

• Riocard Bairéad, poet.
• Philip Gaughan, sergeant.
• Patrick H. Monaghan, soldier.
• James Kilroy (politician), politician.
• Willie Joe Padden, Gaelic footballer.
• Billy Joe Padden, Gaelic footballer.
• Sinead Diver, long-distance runner.
• Chris Barrett, Gaelic footballer.
• Jimmy Monaghan, musician.
• David Munnelly, musician.
• Rose Conway-Walsh, politician.
• Ronan Murray, footballer.
• Mary Reilly (academic), academic.

See also

• Belmullet GAA
• Benwee Head
• Connacht Irish
• Kilcommon
• The Playboy of the Western World
• Richard Barrett (poet)
• Táin Bó Flidhais
• Wild Atlantic Way
• List of towns and villages in Ireland

References