Achill Island is the largest of the Irish isles and lies off the west coast of Ireland in County Mayo. It has a population of 2,345. Its area is around 148 km2 (57 sq mi). Achill is attached to the mainland by Michael Davitt Bridge, between the villages of Achill Sound and Polranny. A bridge was first completed here in 1887. Other centres of population include the villages of Keel, Dooagh, Dooega, Dooniver, and Dugort. The parish's main Gaelic football pitch and secondary school are on the mainland at Polranny. Early human settlements are believed to have been established on Achill around 3000 BC.
The island is made up of 87% peat bog. The parish of Achill consists of Achill Island, Achillbeg, Inishbiggle and the Corraun Peninsula.
Our Escort into Glenaragh, from the sketch book and diary of Elizabeth Thompson.
View of the "Colony", prior to 1900.
Memorial for the victims of the Clew Bay Drowning on 15 June 1894 at Kildavenet Graveyard
View of the deserted village from beside the ruins of one of the houses
Irish, also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language group, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was the population's first language until the 19th century, when English gradually became dominant, particularly in the last decades of the century.
Today, Irish is still commonly spoken as a first language in areas of Ireland collectively known as the Gaeltacht, in which only 2% of Ireland's population lived in 2022.
The distribution of the Irish language in 1871
Bilingual sign in Grafton Street, Dublin
Bilingual road signs in Creggs, County Galway
Dublin airport sign in both English and Irish languages