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Achillbeg

Island in County Mayo, Ireland

Summary

Island in County Mayo, Ireland

Field	Value
name	Achillbeg
image_name	Achillbeg.jpg
image_caption	Achillbeg's lighthouse
map	island of Ireland
native_name	Acaill Bheag
native_name_link	Irish language
location	Atlantic Ocean
coordinates
country	Ireland
country_admin_divisions_title	Province
country_admin_divisions	Connacht
country_admin_divisions_title_1	County
country_admin_divisions_1	Mayo
population	1
population_as_of	2016 census

Acaill Bheag, or Achillbeg, is a small island in County Mayo, Ireland, just off the southern tip of Achill Island. The island is located within a Gaeltacht (Irish speaking) area.

Name and history

The English name Achillbeg derives from the Irish Acaill Bheag meaning "Little Achill".

Having been inhabited for over 3000 years, Acaill Bheag was evacuated in 1965 and the inhabitants were settled on the main (Achill) island and nearby mainland. A lighthouse on Acaill Bheag's southern tip was completed in 1965 to replace and coincide with the closure of the lighthouse on nearby Clare Island.

A book about the life and times of the island and its people, Achillbeg - The Life of an Island by Jonathan Beaumont, was published in 2005. The Irish artist Pete Hogan also wrote a book about his time spent living on the island in 1983, The Artist on the Island: An Achill Journal, which was published in 2013.

In 2012, a small plaque was built on Achillbeg to celebrate 100 years since boxer Johnny Kilbane's first championship win. Though born in Ohio, Kilbane's father was from the area.

Geography

The main settlement was in the centre of the island, bounded by two hills to the north and south. There are a small number of holiday homes on the island, but they are usually empty for most of the year. Access to the island is from Cé Mhór, in the village of An Chloich Mhór (Cloghmore), by local arrangement.

Demographics

The table below reports data on Achillbeg's population taken from Discover the Islands of Ireland (1999) and the Census of Ireland.

|1841|178 |1851|149 |1861|137 |1871|93 |1881|105 |1891|113 |1901|104 |1911|117 |1926|99 |1936|67 |1946|63 |1951|54 |1956|50 |1961|38 |1966|0 |1971|0 |1979|0 |1981|0 |1986|0 |1991|0 |1996|0 |2002|0 |2006|0 |2011|0 |2016|1

References

"Acaill Bheag / Achillbeg Island". Placenames Database of Ireland.
(December 2025). "Achill Beg".
"Achillbeg Lighthouse". Commissioners of Irish Lights.
Beaumont, Jonathan. (28 February 2005). "Achillbeg: The Life of an Island". The Oakwood Press.
Hogan, Pete. (3 February 2014). "The Artist on the Island: An Achill Journal". The Liffey Press.
McNulty, Anton. (2012-06-12). "Statue of former boxing champion unveiled". [[The Mayo News]].
Ritsema, Alex. (1 January 1999). "Discover the Islands of Ireland". [[HarperCollins.

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

islands-of-county-mayo ghost-towns-in-europe villages-in-achill-island achill-island

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