Killawalla or Killavally ()
is a village located in
County Mayo
County Mayo (; ) is a Counties of Ireland, county in Republic of Ireland, Ireland. In the West Region, Ireland, West of Ireland, in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Connacht, it is named after the village of Mayo, County Mayo, Mayo, now ge ...
,
Ireland
Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...
, from
Westport on the R330 road to
Ballinrobe
Ballinrobe () is a town in County Mayo in Ireland. It is located on the River Robe, which empties into Lough Mask two kilometres to the west. As of the 2022 census, the population was 3,148. The town is in a civil parish of the same name.
Hist ...
.
Saint Patrick
Saint Patrick (; or ; ) was a fifth-century Romano-British culture, Romano-British Christian missionary and Archbishop of Armagh, bishop in Gaelic Ireland, Ireland. Known as the "Apostle of Ireland", he is the primary patron saint of Irelan ...
is alleged to have passed this way en route to
Croagh Patrick
Croagh Patrick (), nicknamed 'the Reek', is a mountain with a height of and an important site of pilgrimage in County Mayo, Ireland. The mountain has a pyramid-shaped peak and overlooks Clew Bay, rising above the village of Murrisk, several ...
, and accordingly the local Catholic church is named after him. The village also contains a primary school and MacEvilly's pub established in 1968. The village post office closed in 2017. Killawalla is part of the parish of
Carnacon and
Ballintubber. Research carried out by NUI Maynooth showed Killawalla to have sustained the biggest population loss of any village in Ireland during the
Great Famine. Between 1841 and 1851, the village lost two thirds of its population.
Mayo News 9 Aug 2011 "Killawalla had famine's biggest population drop" The 1916 rising participant and sport administrator Seán O'Duffy who was heavily involved in the development of camogie
Camogie ( ; ) is an Irish stick-and-ball team sport played by women. Camogie is played by 100,000 women in Ireland and worldwide, largely among Irish communities.
A variant of the game "hurling" (which is played by men only), it is organised ...
in Ireland for 40 years, was born in the old barracks in Killawalla in 1886 according to a plaque erected on the wall of the school. This RIC barracks located in Kinury was one of those closed in the wake of the Tourmakeady ambush during the Irish War of Independence in May 1921.
Killawalla is also home to Pollatoomary
Pollatoomary is the deepest explored underwater cave in Ireland. It has been explored to an underwater depth of .
The explored limit of Pollatoomary is also deeper underwater than that of the terminal sump in Wookey Hole Caves in Somerset, Eng ...
cave, the deepest explored underwater cave in Britain and Ireland. The cave has been explored to a depth of 113 m in June 2018 by Michal Marek.
References
{{County Mayo
Towns and villages in County Mayo