Westport

Westport takes its Irish name, Cathair na Mart, 'the stone fort of the beeves', from a 16th-century castle of the seafaring O'Malleys, who controlled Clew Bay. The original village of about 700 people, with a small port at the mouth of the Carrowbeg, stood where the east lawn of Westport House is now. The Brownes, a Sussex family who arrived in Mayo in the 16th century, built Westport House in the 18th century on the site of the castle, rebuilding it from the 1730s under Richard Cassels and later Thomas Ivory and James Wyatt. The 2nd Earl of Altamont acquired slave plantations in Jamaica by marriage.

To clear space for the parkland, John Browne, 1st Earl of Altamont, moved the old village, and in 1767 an advertisement announced a new town around an octagonal market place. The Malls along the river followed after 1800. The town held about 4,300 people before the Famine and, unlike much of rural Mayo, recovered later in the century as a market and service town. Westport's John MacBride was executed for his part in the 1916 Rising, and in March 1921 police destroyed homes and businesses in reprisal for the killing of a constable.

The railway to Achill closed in 1937 and the town shrank to about 2,900 people by 1961. Westport House opened to visitors in 1960, the pharmaceutical company Allergan arrived in 1977, and a long-term town plan from the late 1990s helped revive the centre. The Great Western Greenway opened in 2011, the Irish Times named Westport the best place to live in Ireland in 2012, and in 2017 the Brownes sold Westport House to the Hughes family.

Westport's culture is that of a lively west of Ireland market town turned holiday base. Traditional music is its signature: Matt Molloy of the Chieftains has a pub and music venue on Bridge Street, and sessions fill many of the town's pubs. The Town Hall Theatre on the Octagon, reopened in 2015 after a long restoration, hosts Westival, the Westport Folk and Bluegrass Festival and the Westport Festival of Chamber Music, and the Custom House Studios and Gallery is the centre of the local arts scene.

Croagh Patrick shapes the town's identity. The pilgrimage on Reek Sunday, the last Sunday in July, has been made for at least 1,500 years, on a mountain that was the focus of a prehistoric ritual landscape; thousands climb the mountain, many from Murrisk, some barefoot, and Masses are said at the summit. Westport is also an outdoor town, promoted as a centre for adventure sports, and every August hosts Gael Force West, a one-day multi-sport race. Gaelic football, played by the Westport GAA club since the 19th century, soccer and rugby all have local clubs.

People from the town are traditionally known as 'Coveys', and some decades ago the Covey dialect, unintelligible to outsiders, could still be heard. In 2014 a newspaper called Westport the stag and hen party capital of Ireland, a reputation that sits alongside the pilgrims and the walkers.

Westport had about 6,900 people at the 2022 census, after strong growth since the 1990s. The economy rests on two pillars. AbbVie, which took over Allergan in 2020, employed about 1,400 people in the town that year, around a quarter of the workforce, and the clothing company Portwest, founded in Westport in 1904, is based here. Tourism and hospitality accounted for roughly 1,000 jobs in 2020.

A long-term town plan encouraged people to live in the town centre, and new estates such as Knockranny and Springfield ring the older streets. Summer brings crowds of visitors, and in 2021 and 2022 Westport was one of the biggest destinations for Irish holidaymakers staying at home.

Since 2022 the town has taken in hundreds of Ukrainian refugees: by early 2024 about 1,300 had been settled in and around Westport, giving Mayo one of the highest numbers per head in Ireland. Hotels used for shelter reduced tourist capacity and added pressure on housing and services, though the community response has generally been supportive.

Westport's food reflects the Atlantic coast and the farms of Mayo. Irish cuisine is founded 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. Its representative dishes include Irish stew, bacon and cabbage, boxty, brown bread and colcannon, the kind of food served in the pubs around the Octagon.

Bridge Street and Market Lane hold most of the restaurants, from traditional pubs to Italian, Indian and Thai kitchens, and the Quay has restaurants and pubs in converted warehouses looking over Clew Bay. A weekly farmers' market off James Street sells local produce.

Pubs are where much of the eating and nearly all of the evening's music happens. Beyond the town, the Mescan Brewery was set up by vets, and the Lough Mask Distillery makes gin, vodka and whiskey and offers tours.