Mayo

In this area, you'll find Famine Walls and Famine Roads. These are tangible remnants of the Irish Famine and dark monuments to human despair and government failure.

Famine walls are long, often seemingly pointless stone walls built by starving Irish people in exchange for food aid during the famine. They were usually set up as work-creation projects by British landlords or the government, not so much to improve the land, but as a condition of giving poor people something to eat. The walls are often 2.5 to 3 meters high, up to 300 meters long, and bear silent witness to the hard, sometimes meaningless, work people had to do during their darkest days.

Today they can be found in the landscape, for example at Maghery and in areas such as Connemara, The Burren and Dingle.

Famine roads are characteristic "roads to nowhere," often winding paths that end abruptly, constructed as part of relief work where farmers were forced to build a road for starvation wages. Many died building these roads, which usually served no logical purpose other than to "account for" distributed food. The work was grueling: long days, primitive tools, harsh weather conditions, and often without adequate clothing or shelter. Today, many famine roads are still visible in the Irish landscape, for example, along ancient paths in Connemara, the Burren, Mayo, Kerry, and Dingle. Some are now part of walking routes, others are silent monuments, reminders of human resilience and the tragedy of the famine.

Pascal Brackman