Five men jailed for saying no to Shell
The Rossport Five
In June 2005, five men from the Rossport area — Willie Corduff, Micheál Ó Seighin, Brendan Philbin, Philip McGrath, and Vincent McGrath — were jailed for contempt of court after refusing to comply with an injunction sought by Shell E&P Ireland. The injunction related to construction of a high-pressure gas pipeline through their lands and community, part of the Corrib Gas project. They spent ninety-four days in Mountjoy before Shell withdrew the injunction. The case triggered national protests, a campaign called Shell to Sea, and years of further resistance involving locals, environmental campaigners, and eventually gardaí in numbers that no one in Erris had expected to see. The pipeline was eventually built. The community's view of what was done to get it built has not softened.
An old crossing, still in use
The Bangor Trail
The route from Newport across the Nephin Beg range to Bangor Erris is one of the oldest long-distance land routes in Connacht — a drovers' road used for centuries to move cattle from market to mountain and back. Twenty-six kilometres across the bog, with the massif of Nephin to the east and the wilderness of what is now Wild Nephin National Park on all sides. There are no paved roads crossing it. The route was never formalized as a waymarked trail in the Wicklow-Way sense — it is still essentially the old path, upgraded for boots rather than hooves. Starting from Newport, you climb through forestry, emerge onto open mountain, cross the pass above Tarsaghaunmore, and come down the long south side to Bangor. Bad weather makes it a different day entirely.
The Famine came hardest to the west
An Gorta Mór in Erris
Erris was among the most devastated parts of Ireland in the Great Famine of 1845–1852. The barony was already among the most impoverished in Connacht before the blight. What followed was catastrophic: death rates and emigration figures that left whole townlands empty. The relief schemes built roads that lead to nothing — famously so on the bog routes around Erris — because the work was the point, not the destination. The population of the Erris barony halved. Parts of it never recovered. The landscape of Bangor Erris and the surrounding bog carries that history in the emptiness of it.
Irish on the western edge
The Erris Gaeltacht
The area around Bangor Erris and west through Belmullet forms part of the Erris Gaeltacht. The Irish here is Connacht Irish — related to but distinct from the Galway and Kerry dialects — and it is a living language in the townlands around the village, not a heritage exhibit. Raidió na Gaeltachta goes out from Casla, but Erris hears itself in it. The Gaeltacht has contracted significantly over the twentieth century; the strongest-speaking communities now are further west on the Mullet Peninsula. But in Bangor Erris you are still on the edge of the language, and some of the older residents will have Irish as their first.