Achill Island
Achill Island in County Mayo is the largest island off the Irish mainland. Early monastic settlements are believed to have been established on Achill around 450 AD. The island is 87 per cent peat bog.
Achill is attached to the mainland by bridge at Achill Sound and so it is possible to drive onto the island. Other centres of population include the villages of Keel, Doagh, Doeega and Dugort.
While a number of attempts at setting up small industrial units on the island have been made, the economy of the island is largely dependent on tourism. Agriculture plays a small role but the fact that the island is mostly bog means that it is limited - largely to sheep farming. In the past, fishing was a significant activity but this aspect of the economy is small now. At one stage, the island was known for its shark fishing. In particular, Basking shark was fished for its valuable liver oil. There was a big spurt of growth in tourism in the 1960s and 1970s before which life was tough and difficult on the island. Since that hayday, the common perception is that tourism has been slowly declining.
In terms of architecture, much of the recent building development on the island (over the last 40 years or so) has been contentious and in many cases is not as sympathetic to the landscape as the earlier style of whitewashed barged roofed cottages. Because of the inhospitable climate, very few houses date from before the twentieth century. An example of the style of earlier housing can be seen in the "Deserted Village" ruins near the graveyard at the foot of Slievemore. Even the houses in this village represent a relatively comfortable class of dwelling as, even as recently as a hundred years ago, some people still used "Beehive" style houses (small circular single roomed dwellings with a hole in ceiling to let out smoke). Many of the oldest and most picturesque inhabitated cottages date from the activities of the Congested Districts Board - a body set up around the turn of the twentieth century in Ireland to improve the welfare for inhabitants of small villages and towns. Most of the homes in Achill at the time were very small and tightly packed together in villages. The CDB subsisdised the building of new more spacious (though still small by modern standards) homes outside of the traditional villages.
Despite some unsympathetic development, the island retains some striking natural beauty. The cliffs of Croaghaun on the northern coast of the island are claimed to be the highest in Europe but are inaccessible by road. On the western tip near Achill Head, Keem bay/beach, while small, is arguably one of the most beautiful on the Irish west coast. Slievemore, the largest mountain on the island rises dramatically in the centre of the island and the Atlantic drive (along the South/West of the Island) has some dramatically beautiful views.
The artist Paul Henry stayed on the island for a number of years in the early 1900s and some of his most famous paintings are of the dramatic landscape of the island. The Nobel Prize winning author, Heinrich Böll, also stayed on the island (and his descendants still visit) and wrote of his experience in his Irish Journal. Graham Greene also spent time on Achill.