From the archives: Volunteers built mile-long road in north Mayo in five days

By Tom Gillespie

FIFTY-six years ago 50 men from the village of Doohoma, which then had a population of 800, in north Mayo, rolled up their sleeves on Monday, February 8, 1967, and started building a one-mile long road to the village cemetery.

For years the villagers had been asking Mayo County Council to build a road - but without success. So, organised by local publican Mr. Vincent Henry, they got down to work themselves.

Mr. Henry explained to The Connaught Telegraph: “Coffins have to be carried by the mourners a distance of half-a-mile because no hearse could travel over the so-called road leading to the graveyard. On a wet day they have to be carried the full distance.

“We made many appeals to the council to help us out but we were not heeded.”

The villagers claimed that since the cemetery was opened in 1927 all the county council had done was to build a wall around it.

Mr. Henry added: “If we could we would bury our dead elsewhere, but the nearest other cemetery is 14 miles away.”

Supervising the work was Mr. Anthony Sweeney. He said: “The road is like one you would see in the Congo. A proper one should have been built 40 years ago but no one seems to care about it.”

Another local farmer, Mr. Pat Keane, said: “It is a very poor way to have to bury the dead.”

But the villagers’ list of grievances did not end there. They also wanted a protective wall built along by the seashore to stop the best land they have slipping into the sea.

Mr. Sweeney continued: “There has been a lot of coastal erosion, and if something is not done shortly all our land will be gone.

“A few years ago I got first place at the Dublin Show for my early potatoes, but now the land I grew them on is completely submerged. The county council doesn’t seen to realise that we exist at all.”

Another complaint voiced was that the local fishermen had no slipway for their boats.

Mr. Henry explained: “There is a natural pier here already and it would cost very little to make a proper slipway. A few years ago a local man bought a boat but it was wrecked during a storm as it had no protection.

“The existing slipway was built over 50 years ago, and nobody will now buy a boat unless some sort of protection is provided.”

Mr. Sweeney added: “A pier would be very beneficial for tourism in the area. By road to Achill is practically 50 miles but by water it is only three.

“Certainly if something is not done for this village soon we will all have to emigrate.”

Then there was a fresh development when a further 15 parishioners started to build a second roadway into the cemetery half a mile away.

Mr. Michael Cooney (81) told The Connaught Telegraph of the new turn, stating: “We are building this road on a site given for the purpose in 1917. The county council allocated £300 to build a road on this side some years ago but some people objected and it was not built.

“However we will make application to the council again tomorrow to build this road. The others who started road making on Monday are not legally entitled to build a road on the other side.”

Gardaí were called out to prevent any possible trouble between the two groups, and the first group, led by Mr. Henry, discontinued the work.

The following week, February 16, 1967, The Connaught Telegraph headlines read ‘Built mile-long road in five days’.

The article read: Gale force winds did not prevent a voluntary labour force of 109 men from completing a one-mile road into a cemetery at Doohoma in north Mayo.

Villagers, who had been agitating for 40 years for a road, finally got fed up and got down to work themselves.

They estimated it would have taken Mayo County Council six months to do what they achieved in five days.

They had also carried out a rough drainage scheme around the cemetery to prevent flooding.

There had been some dissension between the villagers about where the road should have been built, but eventually agreement was reached and forces were joined to complete the road in record time.

Mr. Vincent Henry, one of the men behind the project, said the villagers might now embark on other projects to make life more pleasant in the area.

On the same front page of that week’s Connaught Telegraph was another north Mayo story with the heading ‘£45,000 school may be closed’.

It read: A £45,000 vocational school at Geesala, in north Mayo, may have to be closed - because of a faulty sewerage system.

The four-roomed school, which has 50 pupils, was opened only in 1963.

Mr. Eamon Carey told a meeting of the Mayo Vocational Education Committee: “This building will have to be closed. The situation cannot be allowed to continue.”

The architect, in a letter, said the effluent was not seeping away from the septic tank because the ground was not sufficiently porous and now the ground had become waterlogged.

He pointed out that the effluent could be piped under the road, through adjoining land, and discharged into a ditch a quarter of a mile away.

He suggested the committee negotiate for the provision of such a drain into the property on the opposite side of the road.

Mr. Carey said the septic tank was ‘a prize piece of work’. “It has gone against every regulation,” he alleged. “There is no drainage from it, it is not 60 feet from the road, and it is in front of the school.”

Mr. P.J. Davey said the architect should pay for his mistakes.

Mr. Carey: “It’s the people of the county who are paying for this sort of stuff.”

Mr. Sean O’Regan, CEO, said as there was not enough soakage, a foul-smelling effluent came out sometimes. There was quite a problem at the school and the headmaster did not approve of the location of the septic tank.

Mr. Carey: “Putting a septic tank in front of a school is something which should not have been done.”

Mr. O’Regan said the tank was faulty from the very beginning and it was going to get worse.