This year 2023, Ballina, in County Mayo in the west of Ireland, is celebrating the tercentenary of its foundation.   The town made world headlines on Friday April 14, 2023, when the President of the United States of America, Joe Biden, visited the ancestral homeplace of his great, great, great grandfather, who emigrated from there to the USA in the 1850s. He had visited the town as Vice-President of the USA in June 2016.        

           From the early fifteenth century onwards, a small settlement developed around the friary on the east side of the River Moy, but the modern town of Ballina was founded in 1723 by James O’Hara, second Baron Tyrawley (1682-1774).  James was a member of the O’Hara family from Annaghmore, County Sligo.  Their support for the Crown was rewarded with the title Baron Tyrawley in 1706.  The founder of Ballina built the first street, on which he set up a linen mill.  After establishing a colony of weavers from Ulster, he secured a patent for a weekly market and a fair. Ballina quickly developed into an important commercial town and small seaport.   A military barracks was erected in 1740, followed by two bridges over the River Moy. The town was briefly captured by General Humbert and his Franco-Irish forces in 1798.

          Ballina (Béal an Ātha, ‘the mouth of the ford’) is now a busy industrial, commercial and tourist town at the mouth of the River Moy, and a gateway to north Mayo.   Originally called Belleek according to Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary (1837), it is the cathedral town of the Catholic diocese of Killala.  St Muredach’s Cathedral (1827-1834), overlooking the River Moy, was designed in the Neo-Gothic style by Dominick Madden.  The spire was erected in 1858.  Ballina is a renowned angling centre, the ‘salmon capital of the world’, with excellent river, sea and lake waters nearby.  The Ridge Pool in the town, about 275m from the head of the tidal waters at the fish traps to Ham Bridge, is the most famous beat for salmon angling in Ireland.  Belleek Woods, on the west bank of the River Moy, are a delightful haven for relaxation, exercise and leisure, with walking, cycling, and nature trails. The quay and marina are also big attractions.

              The principal local landlord family, the Knox-Gores, had a big role in the development of the town.  Investment during the early nineteenth century led to the construction of roads, the quay and two new bridges over the Moy, the five-arched Ham Bridge erected in 1836 and the lower one built by Armstrong and West in 1835.  Other developments from this period included the port, the courthouse and the cathedral as well as several new houses. Belleek Manor was designed by the Dublin architect John Benjamin Keane (d.1859) in the Neo-Gothic style and erected between 1825 and 1831 as the opulent residence of the Knox-Gore family. 

           The Jackie Clarke Collection, which was opened to the public in Ballina on 15 June 2013, contains an amazing accumulation of more than 100,000 items relating to Irish history over four centuries, especially the struggle for freedom. It was assembled over a lifetime by Ballina businessman and politician, Jackie Clarke (1927-2000), and gifted in perpetuity to Mayo County Council and the Irish State by his widow, Anne, in 2005.  Jackie Clarke served as a councillor on Ballina Town Council from 1957 to 1974 and held the office of cathaoirleach in 1960 and 1968.  He attended antiquarian and second-hand book sales in Ireland and abroad, purchasing Irish historical books, maps and documents. The collection is housed in a former Provincial Bank on Pearse Street.  Now a listed building, it was designed by Thomas Newenham Deane in the 1880s, and acquired by Mayo County Council.  It was completely renovated and refurbished to store and exhibit the Clarke Collection.

        The town will soon have another major attraction, the Mary Robinson Centre, which has been developed in her childhood home to celebrate the extraordinary career of the first woman to become President of Ireland, 1990-1997. The main themes explored there are human rights and climate issues.

 For more information on the year see www.Ballina2023.ie