In 1846 the Moore family’s racehorse Coranna won the Chester Cup in England, and George Henry Moore put the winnings into grain for his tenants. The story told locally is that nobody was evicted or starved on the Moore Hall estate through the Famine, and a portrait of the horse still hangs in the church at Carnacon. That tells you the kind of village this is: a shop, two pubs and a church on the shore of Lough Carra, but with a history out of all proportion to its size. Its name in Irish is Ceathrú na gCon, the quarter of the hounds.
Moore Hall
Moore Hall stands above the lake as a roofless ruin, burned out in 1923 during the Civil War. George Moore built it between 1792 and 1795, and it produced the novelist George Augustus Moore and, generations earlier, John Moore, briefly named President of the short-lived Republic of Connacht in 1798. The estate has since passed to the state: Coillte holds the woodland, Mayo County Council the house and around 80 acres, and in 2023 the council, Coillte and the National Parks and Wildlife Service published a draft masterplan to redevelop the site. For now it’s a shell in the trees, so come for the setting and the walk down to the water rather than a restored house.
Lough Carra and the mayfly
The lake is the other reason to come. Lough Carra is a shallow limestone lake of about 4,000 acres, clear and alkaline, and one of Ireland’s better wild brown-trout fisheries. The fishing year turns on the mayfly: when it hatches in late spring the trout rise to it and the anglers follow, so if you fish, this is the time to come. You’ll need a licence, and it’s worth checking the local rules before you travel. The Coillte woods around the shore – Kiltoom among them – shelter a colony of lesser horseshoe bats, one of Ireland’s rarer mammals, though you’re unlikely to see them.
Around the village
There’s more scattered about for anyone who wants it. The Doon peninsula juts into the lake as an inland promontory fort, with remains reaching back to the Late Bronze Age. Burriscarra Abbey, a Carmelite priory, was founded in 1298, and Castle Carra stands on the western shore. At Towerhill, seat of the Blake family, the Mayo county flag is said to have first appeared in 1885; the house lost its roof after the Land Commission broke up the estate in the 1940s, but Clooneen Mill survives on the grounds. Carnacon House, from 1740, was home to General James McDonnell of the 1798 rising and is still lived in.
For all the big houses, the name most tied to Carnacon now is Cora Staunton, who came up through the local Carnacon club to become one of the dominant forwards in ladies’ Gaelic football and later turned professional in Australian rules.
Getting there
Carnacon is about 12 miles south of Castlebar and roughly 8 from Claremorris and Ballinrobe; you’ll want a car, with the lake and the Doon peninsula signposted locally. Paths in the village are level enough, but the ruins and forts are uneven underfoot. There’s little accommodation in Carnacon itself – most people stay in Westport, Ballinrobe or Ballintubber and drive in – and the shore stays damp year-round, so bring waterproof boots. If you only do one thing, walk down through the woods to Moore Hall and out to the lake; if you fish, come for the mayfly in May.