About the Killary Fjord Team

History Of Killary Fjord

Formed millennia ago by the action of mighty glaciers grinding down a local fault line, the Killary Fjord has witnessed many changes on its shores as time has passed.

Whereas the population of this area is now very low and few houses are to be seen, this is very different from the situation in the 1800s when the area was part of the “Congested Districts” which grew up after Catholics had been forced West by Cromwell in the infamous clearances of the 17th century. By the early 1800s the population had risen to over 1.5 million in the province of Connacht – most of these people did not own their land and lived in rough huts, depending heavily on potatoes for food.

Blight struck the potato harvest in 1845, and persisted over the next three years. The result was catastrophic: huge numbers of people either starved or emigrated. The population of Connacht fell sharply and even today is only one third of what it was in the 1840s.