LOCAL HISTORY

Not much was written about Mulranny until the building of the hotel, after the railroad passed through on the way to Achill Island in 1895.

Oral history recovered through recordings obtained from the community during the Folklore Commissions in 1939 reported a rural life with subsistence farming. The people were poor and relied on small farms with many hardships and difficulties in paying landlord rents.

The area was hit hard by the potato famine of 1847 and many people immigrated or died.  However, further up the coast, the Ceidi Fields, a Neolithic farming area discovered under the blanket bog about 30 miles north,  show evidence of extensive farming life reaching back 5,000 years in that area.

Once the railroad to Achill was established in the 1890s, the hotel in Mulranny was built for tourists in search of a secluded and healthful resort experience by the sea. The hotel eventually went into decline and was in total ruins by early 1990s. The train tracks long since pulled up.

All this has passed now and Mulranny has regenerated to become a thriving tourist village with about 400 local inhabitants that swells to about 800 in the summer months, when holiday makers come to stay.  About half the houses in Mulranny are indeed ‘holiday homes’. The hotel, now fully restored, along with several B&B’s and holiday rentals are filled to capacity in the summer months and place is alive with happy hikers, bikers, musicians and children exploring the expansive white sandy beaches, salt marshes and walking trails.

On visiting you can see why it is so popular. The scenery is totally absorbing as the bay stretches ten miles across to land on the other side of Clew Bay where Croagh Patrick rises, like a pyramid to the sky and the little chapel on the top glints its whitewashed walls like a tiny star on the summit.

Mulranny is one of the most idyllic locations on the ‘Wild Atlantic Way’ and the old derelict railway has been promoted to a wonderfully-kept ‘Greenway’ upon which people can walk, run and cycle from Westport to the Achill sound, taking in the true Irish beauty that people have been seeking for centuries.

Hill up to the village centre c. 1900