The Story of the Belmullet Name

The Irish name Béal an Mhuirthead is generally understood as “mouth of the Mullet Peninsula,” referring to the narrow entrance to the peninsula where the town stands. The exact history of the name is somewhat uncertain, and older forms suggest that it may originally have referred to the isthmus itself. What is clear is that the name is rooted in the unusual geography of the place.

Belmullet stands on the narrow neck of land between Blacksod Bay and Broadhaven Bay, at the entrance to the Mullet Peninsula. This position has shaped the town's history from the beginning. The two bays provided sheltered waters, while the narrow land bridge offered a natural route between them.

The town itself is relatively young. In 1715, Sir Arthur Shaen began developing a small settlement here and had a canal excavated through the marshy ground to create a passage between the two bays. The project was ambitious, but development was slow, and the canal eventually fell into disrepair.

Belmullet began to grow more substantially in the 1820s, when William Henry Carter inherited the lands. Carter brought in the engineer Patrick Knight to design a planned town, with broad streets and new public buildings. A new road to Castlebar, completed in 1824, helped connect this remote corner of Mayo with the rest of the county.

A quay followed in 1826, allowing larger vessels to reach the town and encouraging trade. Hotels, churches, a courthouse, shops, and other buildings soon followed. Belmullet became the commercial centre of the barony of Erris, serving the scattered communities of the peninsula and surrounding countryside.

But the prosperity of the new town could not shield the region from the Great Famine. Erris suffered terribly from hunger, poverty, eviction, and emigration. The workhouse in Belmullet became overwhelmed, reflecting the hardship experienced throughout the remote communities of northwest Mayo.

The landscape around Belmullet carries much older memories. The wider Erris region contains the extraordinary remains of the Céide Fields, evidence of farming communities living here more than 5,000 years ago. Later came early Christian settlements, Gaelic communities, the upheavals of the seventeenth century, and the arrival of the French at nearby Killala during the rebellion of 1798.

The town's name, however, remains focused on the geography.

Béal an Mhuirthead describes the entrance to a peninsula—a narrow place between two bodies of water, where the land itself seems to become a gateway.

Belmullet grew from a remote and difficult landscape into the centre of Erris.

Its name remembers the place where the peninsula begins, and its history tells the story of the people who made a home at the edge of the Atlantic.