Ceantar na nOileán: Lettermore, Gorumna and Lettermullan
At the far western end of Galway Bay three islands are strung together by road. Lettermore, Gorumna and Lettermullan, with the smaller Dinish, Furnish, Inisherk and Crappagh beyond, make up Ceantar na nOileán, the district of the islands, tied to the mainland by the bridges and causeways of the R374. Irish is the language of every one of them; on Crappagh and Furnish every resident is a native speaker.
Checked against the source on 2026-09-19.
Búistéir Leitir Móir on the 3D model; tap a pin for its page and directions.
Lettermore and Gorumna
Lettermore, Leitir Móir, the great rough hillside, is the first island and the village on it; its western half is Lettercallow, the rough hillside by the marsh. The Carraig an Logáin bridge carries the road onto Gorumna, Garmna, a hilly island of blanket bog, rock, furze and many lakes on Devonian granite that formed as the crust melted in the Caledonian mountain-building, with older Ordovician marine rock and basalt at its southern tip. In the 1860s, in South Boston, Bríd Ní Mháille from the Gorumna village of Trá Bhán composed Amhrán na Trá Bháine, the lament for her three brothers whose currach was rammed and sunk at sea; first sung at a céilí in Boston, it came home to Connemara and is still passed down as poetry and song.
Lettermullan
Lettermullan, Leitir Mealláin, Mealláin's rough hillside, is the westernmost, about 100 hectares of arable and pasture in the parish of Kilcummin, forming one side of Kiegall Bay and part of the shore of Casheen Bay, its people traditionally in the herring and cod fisheries and gathering seaweed for manure. A well-preserved signal station near Golam Head is one of the chain the British built along the coast in 1804 to 1806 to watch for invasion. Just past the bridge from Gorumna is the cemetery of Reilig Duigill, and the village has the national school, the only church, Séipéal Réalt na Mara, the heritage centre, a summer college and Caifé na Feamainne, the Seaweed Café. The model pins Leitir Móir's church and pier.
Questions people ask
How do you get to Lettermullan?
Is Irish spoken on the islands?
What is Amhrán na Trá Bháine?
Written from Wikipedia, "Lettermullen" (CC BY-SA 4.0), read on 2026-09-19, and from the OpenStreetMap places on the model. Nothing has been added from memory; follow the source for its footnotes.