Tag Archives: Lahardaun Co. Mayo

Titanic memorial garden

This Titanic memorial garden has been built in Lahardane Co. Mayo as a remembrance of the 14 people from Addergoole, the parish that includes Lahardane, booked passage to New York on Titanic. When the ship went down, 11 of them died, including the pregnant wife and sister of John Bourke, who refused to leave him.

Titanic April 14th 2012

This is the 76ft replica model of the RMS Titanic which was built in Lahardane Co. Mayo in Lough Conn behinde Addergoole graveyard on April 14th 2012.

LAHARDANE –The story of the building of Titanic is told in Belfast. The story of mass emigration from Ireland, of which Titanic was one small part, is told in Cobh, formerly Queenstown.  But the story of the people – laborers, farmers and tradespeople– who bought passage on Titanic to start new lives in America is told in the tiny County Mayo village of Lahardane, “Ireland’s Titanic Village.”

Fourteen people from Addergoole, the parish that includes Lahardane, booked passage to New York on Titanic. When the ship went down, 11 of them died, including the pregnant wife and sister of John Bourke, who refused to leave him. News of the loss plunged the village into shock and despair.

“It was the largest proportionate loss of life suffered by any community in the world,” says Dylan Nolan, public relations officer for the Addergoole Titanic Society.

The Western People newspaper of May 4, 1912, reported that the wake held for several of the Addergoole victims was “one of the saddest sights ever witnessed in the West of Ireland.” Photos of the victims were laid on the beds where they had slept the night before leaving home. “The wailing and moaning of the people was most distressing and would almost draw a tear from a stone,” the story said.

But, as decades passed, memories began to dim. Some of the families died out or moved from their home places, and their cottages fell into ruin. The Addergoole 14 were in danger of being lost again.

Most of the money for the memorials was donated privately, and most of the work in Lahardane was done by volunteers.