placenamesDoogort
Dumha Goirt
Doogort’s nineteenth-century mission buildings and Heinrich Böll cottage record contrasting chapters of religious and cultural activity beneath Slievemore.
The name
These Irish name elements are associated with this record in the Logainm glossary.
An element’s translation is a clue, rather than a complete explanation of the name. Its form and meaning depend on local history and the full Irish name.
Recorded forms
- Dumha Goirt · Irish · main form · validated name
- Doogort · English · main form
- Dugort · English · main form · local name
Place & story
The mission settlement
Doogort preserves buildings from the Protestant Achill Mission associated with Edward Nangle in the 1830s. The settlement included schools, cottages, an orphanage, a hospital and a hotel, and published the Achill Missionary Herald. A surviving two-storey house, recorded as standing by 1838, was the home of physician Neason Wildridge Adams, who left his practice in Kingstown, now Dún Laoghaire, to care for Achill's sick and poor. [2] [3]
Saint Thomas’s Church
Saint Thomas's Church was designed in 1851 and built in 1852 for the Church of Ireland. Its rectangular plan combines a four-bay nave with a chancel and a projecting entrance porch. A buttressed bellcote rises above the entrance gable. The National Inventory records surviving octagonal cast-iron rainwater fittings among its architectural details, distinguishing this substantial church within the older mission settlement. [4]
The Heinrich Böll cottage
German novelist Heinrich Böll lived and worked on Achill from the 1950s into the 1970s, residing in a cottage at Doogort. Since 1992 the cottage has served as a residency for writers and artists. The local Heinrich Böll Association developed the programme with the family, Mayo County Council and the Arts Council. Public readings, exhibitions and school visits connect the visiting artists with island life. [5] [6]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Mayo
- Barony
- Burrishoole
- Civil parish
- Achill
- Coordinates
- 54.00404, -10.02871 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1414524 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Doogort. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Doogort mission house,31304204 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
- Achillhistory:TheAchillMission · Achill Tourism
- SaintThomas’sChurch,31304206 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
- HeinrichBöllAssociation,cottagehistory · Heinrich Böll Association
- AchillHeinrichBöllAssociation,backgroundandaims,2022 · Achill Heinrich Böll Association
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.