ACHILL-HENGE
One aggrieved developer, Achill man Joe McNamara, noted in Ireland for a series of protests against the government’s handling of the Irish financial crisis including driving a cement mixer through the gates of the Irish parliament buildings, found a particularly humorous way to express his angst on the tiger’s retreat with the construction of Achill-henge. Constructed over a weekend in November 2011 on the island, it consisted of a series of large concrete slabs sank into a bog on the side of a hill; four-and-a-half metres high and almost 100 metres in circumference and considered a ‘a tomb to the Celtic Tiger’. Though when he was ordered to take it down due to lack of planning permission he described it as being exempt as it was ‘a monumental garden’ and a ‘place for reflection’! In the rush for riches in the Tiger’s heady days one project would come to define Mayo however, the David and Goliath story of a fight between farmers and fishermen and oil giant Shell, as they and the Irish government sought to bring a gas pipeline from offshore over lands that have been a small community’s homes and livelihoods for generations. The project was met with fierce resistance resulting in five local men going to jail in protest and the subject of an award winning documentary ‘The Pipe’.
Standing up to authority isn’t just a modern day trend for Mayo people; in fact the word ‘boycott’ has its origins in Mayo. In 1880, an English landlord, Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott was so unpleasant to his tenants that they refused to work for him, so he brought in workers from outside of the county. He spent so much on security and protection for them that his harvest was unprofitable and nobody in the area would serve him in shops, or deal with him. This ostracisation became known as “boycotting” and Captain Boycott was left with no option but to leave Ireland.
