Irishtown - The Cradle of The Land League
(Ballindine Post, Issue 15, Summer '96)
The Irishtown district has been populated for at least four thousand years as evidenced by Stone-Age dolmens in Lisduff and Knockadoon, a gallery-grave in Feamore and the unearthing of several axeheads in various places. Some of these are now in the National Museum, Dublin. There is a Bronze Age burial place in Knockadoon known as Carna Duin. The people then lived in fortified dwellings called lioses, raths or forts which are very numerous in the area.
It belonged to the ancient chiefry of Tir Enna and was the old parish of Kilvine with 14 townlands and 244 homesteads. The tithe-rent payable to the Protestant church was £116.00. It was in the old diocese of Mayo Abbey 'till about the year 160 A.D. The parish was enlarged between 1750 A.D. and 1800 A.D.. by the addition of 29 townlands and 330 dwellings from the Ballindine side. St. Patrick, according to tradition visited the village of Kilvine which is famous for its 62 houses, its blessed well and a distinctive type of corn-mill with a horizontal mill-wheel which operated to the end of the last century.
The district was ravaged by the Danes and Norse after 831 A.D. and a great battle was fought with the Irish at the northern end of Knockadoon bordering Levallyroe. Old people called the place Turlough an Air (of the slaughter).
In 1940 A.D. several skeletons were found there. After 1224 A.D. the district came under the ruling of Anglo-Norman chief Maurice Prendergast but his sub-chief was Fitzimon who had castles in Dunmacreena and Carrinlough. By 1642 A.D. Walter Blake, Galway merchant and banker, by foreclosing on mortgages and by purchase, was in full possession of the manor and castle in Dunmacreena. By 1800 A.D. the Blakes had left. Distinguished members were most Rev. Dr. Anthony Blake (1705 - 1787) who became Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All-Ireland and Anne Blake, who became the mother of John Blake-Dillon, young Irelander and a leader of the 1848 rising.
A poem in Gaelic about a later Walter Blake was almost certainly composed by the blind Lefface poet Cormac Commons, scholar, singer, historian and story-teller whose portrait and life story appear in Walkers "Memoirs of the Irish Bards" (Ballindine Post issue 12)
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