Belmullet

According to Richard Pococke, in about 1715, Sir Arthur Shaen "began building a little town" where Belmullet now stands. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, an admiral chased pirates into Broadhaven Bay, hauled his boats across the isthmus, and caught up with them near the Iniskea Islands. To drain the area and form a passageway from Blacksod Bay into Broadhaven Bay, Shaen had a canal excavated, known thereafter as Shaen's Cut, large enough for small boats to pass through from one bay to the other. However, little development of the town occurred, and by 1752 the canal was choked up and impassable. Belmullet was the scene of Monster meetings of the Land League at the end of the 19th century. In the early 19th century Belmullet consisted of little more than a few thatched buildings.

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 engineer on the Erris roads, wrote the following: "at Belmullet, the advance is quite surprising; the place only commenced four years ago; it now consists of about seventy respectable houses etc... five ships were loaded with grain and kept; iron hoops and coal were imported; spirits, beer and wine. British manufacturers and tea and sugar were sold; the produce of the fisheries were admitted to a market."[8]

A map of Belmullet town from 1836

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 postal service between Ballina and Belmullet. In 1833, a courthouse was built also costing £300 which held weekly court sessions, demonstrating that the town was rapidly growing. In the 1830s, a visitor described it as "the youngest town in Ireland and like all young things it is comparatively fresh and fair. The town itself contains a few thatched cabins but consists of small streets of moderately sized slated houses branching from a little square, or market place; the shops looked to be well furnished with not only necessaries but articles conducive to comfort and convenience. Buildings are going on and speculation is progressing." He also commented that the approach to the town was "spoiled by deformed, wretched bog huts."[9] Two new roads were built – one to the east went to Ballycastle and one to the south to Newport. The export of meal from the area to England started. The local Protestant Church was built in 1843. In 1845, work began to re-open the canal which had been constructed by Arthur Shaen. Because of the Irish Famine, the canal was not completed until 1851. During the Relief work for the Distress (in the middle of the Great Famine) in 1846 and 1847, the footpaths were formed and flagged.[10]

Ballyglass Lighthouse, also known as Broadhaven Lighthouse, 11km from Belmullet town, was built in 1848

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 railway line in to Belmullet and Erris region. Three routes were surveyed and discussed:

• Route One: Ballina – Ballycastle – Belmullet
• Route Two: Newport – 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 Blacksod railway terminus, which would have served trans-Atlantic shipping, were therefore postponed. Many still pressed the authorities for a rail line, and this movement gained momentum during the latter days of the First World War, when it was proposed that a line would improve lines of communication between both London and Canada, and between London and the United States. However, when the war ended in 1918, the hopes for a railway service to Blacksod ended with it. In the early 1920, the Sligo Steam Navigation Company ran weekly sailings between Belmullet, Sligo and Liverpool.[12]

In July 1865, two local men – Richard Barrett and James Hogan were found guilty of piracy. They were convicted of plundering the schooner Elizabeth McClure of Indian meal near the island of Iniskea. Both men were sentenced to five years hard labour.[13]

Belmullet established a monthly cattle fair, and the town began to take trade from An Geatta Mór. The Bingham family fought back, but their village was more or less deserted by the cattle traders by the late 19th century.

Coming into Belmullet town

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]

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]

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]

On 6 August 1940, during the Second World War, Garda William Cullen of Belmullet station received a phone call from coast-watchers at the nearby Annagh Head lookout post. He learned that the Atlantic currents had washed ashore the body of a British soldier. From his army pay-book, Cullen identified 21-year-old Donald Domican of the 5th Battalion, the Welsh Regiment. On the evening of 6 August, Domican's body was brought to Belmullet hospital. He was buried the following day at the Church of Ireland cemetery in the town. The next day another body of a British soldier was washed up at the same site.[24]

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]

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]