Bekan, Béacán, Co. Mayo

Béacán · Co. Mayo

A small Mayo parish that gave New York its cathedral's architect.

Bekan is a parish rather than a village - no main street, no pub, no cluster of buildings that announces itself as somewhere. The population is scattered across townlands between Knock and Ballyhaunis, farming the same east Mayo ground that families have farmed for centuries. By the standard measures of Irish tourism it has nothing to offer. By one specific measure it has a great deal.

In 1797, in the townland of Annaloghan in this parish, a child was born named John Hughes. His family emigrated to America in 1817, when Hughes was twenty. He was ordained a priest in 1826, became Bishop of New York in 1838, and Archbishop in 1850 - the first Catholic Archbishop of New York, in a city where Irish immigrants were pouring in by the hundred thousand and being met, often, with organised hostility. Hughes met hostility in kind. He threatened to burn Protestant New York to the ground if a single Catholic church was touched during the nativist riots of 1844. The churches were not touched.

He laid the foundation stone of St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue in 1858. He did not live to see it finished - he died in 1864, still in office, still combative - but the building that stands there now, the most famous Catholic church in America, started in a Mayo parish that has a population of a few hundred people and one sign pointing to where his townland used to be.

Come here to stand at the edge of a field that produced an improbable figure, and to think about what it means for a country to export its people at such scale and to such effect. That is what Bekan is for.

Population

Parish only - no village centre

Founded

Rural parish, east Mayo

Coords

53.7750° N, 8.7460° W

01 / 05

At a glance.

Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.

01 Archbishop Hughes

Born in a Mayo townland, buried under Fifth Avenue.

John Hughes - 'Dagger John' to his enemies - was born in Annaloghan townland, Bekan parish, in 1797. He became the first Catholic Archbishop of New York, laid the foundation stone of St. Patrick's Cathedral, and spent thirty years defending Irish immigrants in America when defence was urgently required.

Stories & lore → 02 The parish

Farming country between Knock and Ballyhaunis.

Bekan parish sits on the R323, about eight kilometres from Knock Shrine and twelve from Ballyhaunis. There is no village to speak of - a church, scattered townlands, fields. The scale is that of a community, not a town.

Getting here → 03 East Mayo

Where Connacht thins toward Roscommon.

This is the quiet interior of Mayo - no coast, no mountain drama. Good farmland, crossroads communities, the kind of countryside that produces emigrants and bishops in roughly equal measure. What it lacks in scenery it repays in history.

Stories & lore →

02 / 05

Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

'Dagger John' - first Archbishop of New York

John Hughes

John Joseph Hughes was born in Annaloghan townland, Bekan parish, on 24 June 1797. His family - tenant farmers with no particular prospects - emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1817. Hughes worked as a labourer and gardener, educated himself, and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1826. He became coadjutor Bishop of New York in 1838 and Archbishop in 1850. The nickname 'Dagger John' came from the cross he drew before his signature, which enemies said resembled a dagger. It suited him. He was not a conciliatory man, and conciliation was not what Irish Catholic immigrants in antebellum America required. When nativist mobs threatened New York's Catholic churches in 1844, Hughes surrounded each one with armed Irishmen and sent word to the mayor that if a church was burned, the city would learn what a genuine riot looked like. No churches burned.

The stone laid in 1858

St. Patrick's Cathedral

Hughes proposed a new St. Patrick's Cathedral in 1850 - a proper cathedral, not the modest building the diocese had been making do with. The site chosen was on Fifth Avenue, then considered too far north and too expensive. Hughes signed the contracts anyway. The foundation stone was laid on 15 August 1858. Hughes died in January 1864 with the cathedral still under construction, its roof not yet on, its spires not begun. The building was completed and dedicated in 1879. It still stands on Fifth Avenue, one of the most recognisable buildings in New York, begun by a man from a townland in east Mayo that no longer has a post office.

What Bekan sent west

The emigrant tide

The Hughes family were not unusual. The parish of Bekan - like every parish in east Mayo - sent wave after wave of emigrants across the Atlantic through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Great Famine of 1845-1852 accelerated what had already begun. The 1841 census recorded roughly 5,600 people in the civil parish; by 1851 the number was already falling. The people who left became Americans, Australians, Canadians, British. They built railways, fought wars, organised unions, ran cities. John Hughes was the most famous of them. He was far from the only one.

Recorded in 1986

The parish book

In 1986, Fr. Michael Comer and scholar Nollaig Ó Muraíle produced a parish portrait of Bekan - a documented record of the history, townlands, and people of the parish. It is the most thorough account that exists of what Bekan was and how it changed. Local histories of this kind are common enough in Ireland, produced by communities who know that the official record has missed most of what mattered. The Bekan book is a good one.

03 / 05

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

The parish is quietest and greenest. Knock Shrine, eight kilometres north, begins its pilgrimage season. Combine both if you are making the drive from any distance.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Light stays long. The drive from Ballyhaunis through Bekan to Knock is straightforward on the R323. No crowds here, whatever the season.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

East Mayo in October has a particular quality - big skies, the harvest in, the roads quiet.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

There is nothing weatherproofed here. Come on a dry day.

◐ Mind yourself

04 / 05

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.

Looking for a village centre

There is not one. Bekan is a parish - scattered townlands, a church, fields. Do not arrive expecting a main street.

A dedicated Hughes heritage site

There is a townland and a sign. The Archbishop Hughes memorial is in New York. Come here for the landscape and the idea of the place, not for an interpretive centre.

Getting there.

By car

On the R323 between Knock (8 km north) and Ballyhaunis (12 km east). The Connacht GAA Centre of Excellence at Bekan is the most visible landmark. Ireland West Airport (Knock) is about fifteen minutes.

By bus

Bus Éireann services on the Knock-Ballyhaunis corridor pass through the parish. Service is light. A car is the practical option.

By train

No station. Ballyhaunis, twelve kilometres east, is on the Westport-Dublin line - the nearest railhead.

By air

Ireland West Airport Knock (NOC) is the obvious choice - fifteen minutes by car. The fact that a major international airport sits next to this quiet parish is itself a Knock-shaped story.

Next on the tour

Co. Mayo

Ballyhaunis

Twelve kilometres east on the N60. The most ethnically diverse town in Ireland by ratio, on the Dublin rail line.

Co. Mayo

Knock

Eight kilometres north. The Marian shrine, the airport, the basilica. One of the major pilgrimage sites in Ireland.

Co. Mayo

Kilkelly

South and east, into quieter Mayo. The folk song of the same name - letters home during the Famine years - is one of the best things in Irish music.

Co. Mayo

Aghamore

Seven kilometres off to the north-east, another east-Mayo parish that lets its football do the talking.