Rutland Island (), also sometimes known as Inishmacadurn, is an island in

County Donegal County Donegal ( ; ) is a Counties of Ireland, county of the Republic of Ireland. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Ulster and is the northernmost county of Ireland. The county mostly borders Northern Ireland, sharing only a small b ...

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 ...

, and an electoral and census reporting district covering it, surrounding islands and part of the mainland. The island itself has no permanent inhabitants, but the district, which includes

Burtonport or ( English name: Burtonport) is a fishing village about northwest of Dungloe in The Rosses district of County Donegal, Ireland. The main employers in the village were the Burtonport Fishermen's Co-op and the ''Bord Iascaigh Mhara'' (BIM; I ...

and its environs, had 1,428 residents in 2006. The island lies between Burtonport and the inhabited

Arranmore ''Árainn Mhór'' (English language, English name: Arranmore) is an island off the west coast of County Donegal in Ulster, the northern Provinces of Ireland, province in Ireland. Arranmore is the largest inhabited island of County Donegal, wit ...

Island, and is not officially served by ferry.

History

The island was previously populated, with a planned settlement having been established by

William Burton Conyngham William Burton Conyngham (1733 – 31 May 1796) was an Anglo-Irish politician. Life He was born William Burton, the second son of Francis Burton and Mary Conyngham, sister of Henry Conyngham, 1st Earl Conyngham. In 1781, his name was changed ...

from 1784, including a street of residences and business premises, with the area's

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

, school house and a fish landing and processing facility being built in this village. While fish catches declined heavily shortly after construction, with services closing or leaving, the island remained inhabited into the 1960s. Mains electricity reached the island in 1957, due to its being a crucial stepping stone for the

supply, but piped water has never been provided for its remaining housing stock, which consists entirely of holiday homes. Rutland Island has become a popular holiday destination with a number of holiday homes built in the first decade of the 2000s.

Demographics

The table below reports data on Rutland's population taken from ''Discover the Islands of Ireland'' (Alex Ritsema, Collins Press, 1999) and the

Census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

of Ireland. Census data in Ireland before 1841 are not considered complete and/or reliable.

Fauna

Badgers have been recorded from this island. There is evidence that their diet is poor. The island is also home to some foxes.

Flora

The following

algae Algae ( , ; : alga ) is an informal term for any organisms of a large and diverse group of photosynthesis, photosynthetic organisms that are not plants, and includes species from multiple distinct clades. Such organisms range from unicellular ...

have been reported from Rutland South Channel: ''Gracilaria gracilis'' (Stackhouse) Steentoft, L.M. Irvine et Farnham; '' Rhodymenia holmesii'' Ardissone; ''

Polysiphonia ''Polysiphonia'', known as red hair algae, is a genus of filamentous red algae with about 19 species on the coasts of the British Isles and about 200 species worldwide, including Crete in Greece, Antarctica and Greenland. Its members are known by ...

fucoides'' (Hudson) Greville; ''

nigra'' (Hudson) Batters; ''Sphondylothamnion multifidum'' (Hudson) Nägeli; ''Heterosiphonia plumosa'' (J. Ellis) Batters.Morton, O. 2003. The marine macroalgae of County Donegal, Ireland. ''Bulletin Irish Biogeographical Society'' no. 27: 3 - 164

References

{{County Donegal Former populated places in Ireland Gaeltacht places in County Donegal Ghost towns in Europe Islands of County Donegal Uninhabited islands of Ireland Planned communities in the Republic of Ireland