Clifden

Clifden is a young town. John D'Arcy inherited the surrounding estate in 1804, when it was home mostly to fishermen and farmers, and first proposed a town on the coast in 1812. Progress was slow until the potato failure of 1821–22 brought government help: the engineer Alexander Nimmo arrived in 1822, built a quay, finished in 1831, and began a road to Galway. By D'Arcy's death in 1839 the town had 185 houses, most of them three storeys high, two churches, a courthouse, a jail, a distillery and 23 pubs, and about 1,100 people lived on the triangle of streets that survives today. Marble, corn, fish and kelp were shipped from the harbour, and in 1843 Daniel O'Connell held a 'Monster Meeting' here on repeal of the Union.

The Famine ended the boom. By 1848 nine in ten people were on relief, many emigrated to America, and in 1850 the bankrupt D'Arcy estates were sold. In 1895 the railway from Galway arrived. In 1907 Guglielmo Marconi's wireless station south of the town opened the first fixed point-to-point wireless service between Europe and North America, employing up to 200 people, and on 15 June 1919 Alcock and Brown crash-landed their Vickers Vimy in the nearby bog at the end of the first non-stop transatlantic flight.

The revolutionary years were violent. On St Patrick's Day 1921, after two policemen were shot, Black and Tans arrived by train and burned 14 houses. In 1922 anti-Treaty forces burned the Marconi station, costing an estimated 1,000 local livelihoods, and the town changed hands several times during the Civil War. The railway closed in 1935, and the town turned towards tourism.

As the largest town in the region, Clifden is often called the capital of Connemara, and its culture is that of a market and holiday town for a wide rural area. The Connemara Pony Show, run by the Connemara Pony Breeders' Society and held in Clifden every August since 1947, is the great event of the year, a gathering of breeders and riders around the native pony, known for its athleticism and good disposition. The Community Arts Week in late September, begun by teachers at the community school in 1979, brings poetry readings, lectures, recitals and traditional music, and April has a traditional music festival and the Connemarathon.

Music is heard most nights in the town's pubs, and the evening session is part of daily life rather than a show. Sport means Gaelic football — the Naomh Feichin's club won the Galway junior championship in 2022 — and rugby with the Connemara Blacks, who draw players from across the region.

The town keeps some unusual links abroad. John Riley, born in Clifden, deserted the United States Army and became a major in Mexico's Saint Patrick's Battalion; a bronze sculpture remembers him, the Mexican flag flies every 12 September, and the town is twinned with Coyoacán in Mexico City. Thomas Whelan, a Clifden man hanged in 1921, is remembered each year at a ceremony in the town. Michel Houellebecq set part of his novel Atomised here.

About 1,250 people lived in Clifden at the 2022 census, though the number swells in summer, when the town is the commercial and tourist centre of Connemara. It is the area's service town: the Connemara Garda headquarters and main fire station are here, along with a library that runs exhibitions and readings, three supermarkets and 13 pubs.

The economy rests on tourism, retail and services for the surrounding farms and fishing villages. In summer the streets fill with visitors heading for the Sky Road, the islands and the mountains; in winter the town is quiet, and life turns on school, church, the GAA pitch and the pub. Most residents depend on a car, and Galway city, an hour and a half away by coach, is the nearest city.

Religious life is shared between St Joseph's Catholic church, completed in 1879, and Christ Church of the Church of Ireland, built in 1853, and a Russian Orthodox mission opened in the town in 2023.

Clifden's food is that of the Atlantic coast. Irish cuisine rests on the crops and animals of a temperate climate and on fish and seafood from the surrounding Atlantic waters, and chowder is popular around the coasts. In Clifden that means seafood restaurants and pub kitchens on Market Street and Main Street, where fish and shellfish landed along the Connemara coast share menus with the national standards — Irish stew, bacon and cabbage and brown bread.

Drinking has deep roots here: by 1839 the young town already had a distillery and 23 pubs, and it still has 13 today. Pubs are also where most people eat, from lunchtime soup and sandwiches to full dinners, and several keep music going in the evening. Market Street also has a delicatessen, and the large supermarkets on the eastern edge of town supply self-caterers.