Oughterard 1842

'A more beautiful village can scarcely be seen than this. It stands upon Lough Corrib, the banks of which are here, for once-at least, picturesque and romantic and a pretty river, the Feogh, comes rushing over rocks and by woods until it passes the town and meets the lake.

Some pretty buildings in the village stand on each bank of this stream: a Roman Catholic chapel with a curate's neat lodge; a little church on one side of it, a fine court-house of gray stone on the other. And here it is that we get into the famous district of Connemara so celebrated in Irish stories, so mysterious to the London tourist "It presents itself, under every possible combination of heathy moor, bog, lake, and mountain, extensive mossy plains and wild pastoral valleys lie embosomed among the mountains, and support numerous herds of cattle and horses, for which the district has been long celebrated.

Those wild solitudes, which occupy by far the greater part of the centre of the country, are held by a hardy and ancient race of grazing farmers, who live in a very primitive state, and, generally speaking, till little beyond what supplies their immediate wants. For the first ten miles the country is comparatively open, and the mountains on the left, which are not of great elevation, can be distinctly traced as they rise along the edge of the heathy plain.

William Makepeace Thackery in his Irish Sketchbook of 1842 about the district of Oughterard.'

Living here, thankfully, it has not changed much since.

Barry