Mayo Heritage Trails

A mile-long deserted famine-era village on Slievemore Mountain and Grace O'Malley's tower house guarding Achill Sound.

Saint Muredach’s Cathedral, two bridges over the River Moy, and a monument to the French general who landed nearby in 1798 — 10 stops through Ballina town.

A ruined Augustinian friary founded before 1337, a cavalry barracks burnt in 1922, a market house where John Wesley once preached, and a Famine-era workhouse — 10 stops through Ballinrobe.

Walk the grounds of the only Irish church founded by a native king that has stayed in daily worship for over 800 years — burned, suppressed, and rebuilt three times over, yet never fully abandoned. This short loop takes in the abbey church, its ruined cloister and graveyard, the holy well that gave the town its name, and the trailhead of Tóchar Phádraig, the ancient pilgrim path that has led walkers toward Croagh Patrick since before recorded history.

A Board of First Fruits church at Doonfeeny, a Ralph Byrne-designed Catholic church and its cross-referenced parochial house, and a late-Georgian farmhouse — 4 stops through a small Mayo coastal village near Downpatrick Head.

A courthouse, a convent of Mercy, and a Catholic church built on the site of a 14th-century Augustinian friary — 6 stops through a Mayo market town with roots in medieval monastic Ireland.

Belmullet was raised almost from scratch in the 1820s by William Henry Carter on a narrow isthmus between Blacksod Bay and Broadhaven Bay, its market square, hotel, church and harbour built within a single generation. This short walk traces Carter's planned town from its central square to the ancient canal cut that gave the settlement its reason for existing, and on to the harbour that carried its trade and the workhouse that bore witness to the Great Famine.

The hotel where the Land League was founded in 1879, a monument to the 'Races of Castlebar' during the 1798 Rebellion, and five churches of different faiths within a few streets — 12 stops through Castlebar, Co. Mayo.

A Victorian railway goods shed from the town's days as a rail hub, a presbytery built on land split from a grand estate, a mid-18th-century Georgian country house later a convent, and a Catholic church with Harry and Joshua Clarke stained glass — 4 stops through a South Mayo market town.

A Gothic Catholic church with Franz Mayer stained glass, a Church of Ireland church built in 1818, a rare roofless Methodist meeting house, and a mid-19th-century farmhouse named for a lost abbey — 4 stops through a Mayo market town on the River Deel.

A 350-million-year-old headland and the sea stack a storm tore from it in 1393, complete with a medieval house still found on its summit.

The Foxford Woollen Mills, founded in 1892 by Sister Agnes Morrogh-Bernard to relieve local poverty, and a monument to Admiral William Brown, founder of the Argentine Navy, born nearby — 7 stops through Foxford.

A restored 1856 Presbyterian kirk, a bridge over the River Robe marked with an Ordnance Survey benchmark, the ruins of a Papworth-remodelled country house built for the Lindsey family, and a National-rated cruciform church with a rare dedication to Charles I as martyr-king — 4 stops through a small Mayo estate village.

An early Christian round tower standing over the bay where the French army landed in 1798, twin cathedrals of two faiths, and the old constabulary barrack and railway station — 6 stops through a small town with an outsized history.

A restored 1930s cinema, a convent and its chapel with a memorial stained-glass Trinity window, and a former goods shed turned town museum on the old railway line — 6 stops through Kiltimagh.

Ireland's National Marian Shrine, from the preserved 1828 gable wall where fifteen witnesses reported an 1879 apparition to the modern basilica built to hold the pilgrims who followed.

Grace O'Malley's own coastal territory, from a former-church heritage centre to the dramatic headland just outside town.

Follow the vanished Achill branch railway through Mulranny — from the fern-covered hillside that gave the village its Irish name, past the site of its former station and the grand railway hotel built to sell the view, out onto the Great Western Greenway, and down to the Blue Flag strand looking across the drumlin islands of Clew Bay.

A short loop through the pilgrim village at the foot of Croagh Patrick, taking in the trailhead where tens of thousands set out each Reek Sunday, the ruined Augustinian abbey on the shore, John Behan's coffin-ship Famine memorial, and the working pier on Clew Bay.

A seven-arch railway viaduct striding over the Newport River, Saint Patrick's Church with its Harry Clarke Trinity Window, and Newport House on the old O'Donel estate — 7 stops along the Great Western Greenway.

A bridge over the Black River that was the site of a 1642 massacre of Protestant refugees during the Irish Confederate Wars, a Catholic church built beside the ruins of a medieval castle, a farmhouse rebuilt by the Golding family, and a rare surviving handball alley — 4 stops through a village on the Mayo-Galway border.

Land League founder Michael Davitt's baptismal church, now his museum, standing beside the 13th-century abbey where he is buried.

A courthouse and town hall, a William Henry Byrne-designed Catholic church, a former railway station on the old "Burma Road" line, and the Union Workhouse that sheltered Mayo's poorest through the Famine — 5 stops through Swinford.

The ruined mansion of the Barons Kilmaine, a roofless Church of Ireland ruin built by the same family, their Catholic parish church, and "Gods of the Neale" — a National Monument inscribed stone bearing a curious pagan-sounding dedication — 4 stops through a small Mayo estate village.

A short loop through a single Mayo demesne that spans fifteen centuries: an early-medieval round tower and church ruin, the gambling duellist FitzGeralds' abandoned 1722 house, their Victorian Gothic Revival successor, and the National Museum of Ireland's only branch outside Dublin. Walk the terraced gardens and lakeside views that once framed the tower as a deliberate "eye-catcher" for the estate's owners.

A courthouse, three different churches, a market house, and a monument to Major John MacBride — 8 stops through Westport town.

Westport House and its Richard Castle-designed stable complex, the 18th-century Custom House that once cleared cargo for a working port, and the quayside cottages and bridge of Clew Bay — 5 stops along Westport's historic harbour.