The history of Mountbellew
The Bellews, the Brothers of 1818, the market, the college of 1904, five county titles. 7 moments, in order.
- 18th and 19th centuries
The Grattan-Bellews
The Bellew estate was the home of the Grattan-Bellew family, Galway parliamentarians in both centuries; the town, once called Creggaun, the rocky place, grew at its gate.
- 1818
The Franciscan Brothers
The order came from Milltown in Dublin at the Bellews' invitation, with land and a house, and ran a free primary school until 1884, then a boarding secondary school from 1875.
- 19th century
The Tuesday market
Christopher Dillon Bellew promoted the market that is still held in the triangular square every Tuesday; the old weigh-house across from it became a garage in the 1900s and is being redeveloped.
- 1904
The agricultural college
The Brothers turned from secondary to agricultural education and founded the first agricultural college in Ireland; from 1986 it worked with the forerunner of GMIT, and since 2022 it is a campus of the Atlantic Technological University.
- 1964 to 2021
Five senior titles
Mountbellew Moylough, in black and amber, won the Galway senior football championship in 1964, 1965, 1974, 1986 and 2021.
- 1999
Bobbyjo
A monument in the centre honours the racehorse that won both the Irish and the English Grand National.
- 2021 and 2022
Aldi, and 774 people
After a supermarket plan was refused as incompatible with the village, Aldi announced a store of 7 million euro in 2021; the census of 2022 counted 774 people.
Where this comes from
Every paragraph above summarises a statement in Wikipedia, "Mountbellew", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, as it read on 2026-09-19. Follow it for the footnotes. Nothing has been added from memory.