The history of Milltown
The O'Flahertys in 1589, the mills, the races, the station, the carnival. 5 moments, in order.
- 1589
The O'Flahertys attack
Sir Murrogh O'Flaherty and his clansmen stormed Edward Bermingham's castle, burned half of Milltown and its grainfields, and still failed to take it; on the way home to Cong they burned sixteen villages and drove off three thousand cattle. It is the first record of the place.
- 1850s
Two mills
O'Grady's at Milltown and Bermingham's corn and tuck mill at Lack, with one pair of stones and a fourteen-foot wheel, valued at two pounds, John Farrell the miller. O'Grady's went in the Corrib drainage of the 1950s; Bermingham's ruin stands by the river.
- 1877 to 1966
The races
Meetings at the Race Park in Dalgin go back to the 1840s; from 1877 the Milltown Races ran on St Patrick's Day, then Easter Monday, and drew thousands. Porter ran in rivers, the Tuam Herald said. They faded in the 1930s, stopped in the war, came back in 1952 and ended in 1966.
- 1894 to 1963
The station
Opened on 30 April 1894 between Tuam and Claremorris, closed 17 June 1963.
- 1957 to 1981
The carnival
Two weeks from Easter Sunday with the showbands, until costs killed it.
Where this comes from
Every paragraph above summarises a statement in Wikipedia, "Milltown, County Galway", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, as it read on 2026-09-19. Follow it for the footnotes. Nothing has been added from memory.