In spring, 1940, twenty-four families (127 people) boarded two buses in Clonbur to make new lives in a new Gaeltacht colony in Meath. Their cattle, sheep and all their worldly possessions travelled separately on thirteen lorries. This settlement was identified by De Valera’s government and by the Irish Land Commission as Gaeltacht Colony Number 5. A living wake took place, the likes of which had not been seen before in Clonbur. Strong men kissed stone walls. They left the lakes, rivers and mountains of the poorest and most congested of districts anywhere on the west coast of Ireland for the lush, fertile lands of Meath. This is their story – of poverty and congestion in rural slums in the west, the selection process by the Irish Land Commission, threats and conflict and opposition, the migration process, settlement and social integration in Allenstown, their struggle for survival during ‘The Emergency’, their triumph and their ongoing relationship with their homeland, and the death of a Gaeltacht.
