Five lines into Claremorris, 1862–1895
The junction that made the town
When the railway reached Claremorris in May 1862, the town was already a functioning market centre. The junction made it something larger. By 1895 five lines converged here: the main route east to Athlone and Dublin, the extension west to Castlebar and Westport, the branch north to Ballina (1873), the line south to Ballinrobe (1893), and the cross-country route to Collooney in Sligo (1895). Goods from the west of Mayo — turf, cattle, wool — moved east through Claremorris. Merchants came west. The Saturday mart was the commercial engine and the railway was the fuel. The Ballinrobe line closed in 1959, the Collooney route in 1975. The Ballina branch and the Dublin–Westport main line survive.
Land League origins, 1879
The meeting before Irishtown
The meeting at Irishtown on 20 April 1879 is usually marked as the start of the Land League — fifteen to twenty thousand people assembled on a plain a few miles from Claremorris to hear demands for rent reduction and an end to evictions. That meeting was planned at a large gathering in Claremorris itself, attended by Michael Davitt. Through an irony that the railway makes pointed, Davitt missed the Irishtown meeting because he missed his train. He had helped set it in motion from Claremorris. The National Land League was formally founded in Dublin later that year with Davitt as one of its secretaries. Within three years the landlord system in Ireland was cracking.
The Norman in the place name
Clár Chlainne Mhuiris
The plain of the family of Muiris — that is what the Irish name means. The Muiris in question is Maurice de Prendergast, a Norman knight who crossed to Ireland with Strongbow in 1170 and received lands in south Mayo as part of the Norman settlement. He is long dead and the Prendergast family lands have passed through many hands, but the name stuck to the plain, and the plain stuck to the town. Claremorris in its English spelling is a loose phonetic rendering. The Irish is more accurate: a flat landscape associated with a twelfth-century Norman who most people in the town have never thought about.
Since 1904, with breaks for two wars and a pandemic
The Show at the Racecourse
The Claremorris Agricultural Show was first held in 1904 in Hollymount, found its home in Claremorris parish shortly afterwards, and has been running on August Bank Holiday Sunday ever since — with seventeen cancellations along the way: the First World War, the Second, foot-and-mouth outbreaks, and the two COVID years of 2020 and 2021. The 104th show ran in August 2024 at the Racecourse grounds. Two hundred and seventy-five show classes: cattle, sheep, horses, vintage machinery, farm and garden, cookery, dog show. The poultry classes came back in 2024 after a long absence. It is a farming day. The people who show cattle have been showing cattle here for generations.