The inhabitants of the parish of Kilfian, between Crossmolina and Ballycastle, in North Mayo, Ireland, have honoured a daughter of the parish, Sarah McElroy (1881-1949) and her Scottish-born husband, Sir Alexander Fleming (1881-1955), by erecting a stone monument and bronze busts of the couple on August 6, 2001, beside Kincon Church. After going to London, she qualified as a nurse. She met Alexander Fleming and they were married on 23 December 1915. Their only child, Robert 1924-2015, became a doctor.

  Alexander Fleming was the physician and microbiologist who discovered penicillin in 1928, for which he shared the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine in 1945, (with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, who devised procedures for its large-scale production). His discovery has saved millions of lives around the world. He was knighted for his discovery in 1944. There is a museum in his honour in St Mary’s Hospital, London, where he made his famous discovery. In 1999, Sir Alexander Fleming was named in Time magazine as one of the 100 most important people of the twentieth century. He was also named one the 100 Great Britons in a BBC nationwide vote in 2002.

  Sarah was one of twelve children born on May 28, 1881, to Bernard McElroy, who came to Mayo from County Tyrone, and his wife, Maria, née Flynn, a native of the adjoining parish of Lackan. In London, Sarah ran a nursing home for a number of years, which she sold to help support her husband’s research. After her death on October 28, 1949, she was buried in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, and where his cremated remains of Alexander were buried in 1955.