#IslandNews - A native Achill Islander believes he's discovered the only photo of the area's famous Deserted Village taken while it was still inhabited.
As Paddy Gallagher told The Irish Times, he was searching for images of Achill online when he came across a page from a 1915 issue of National Geographic magazine with a caption suggesting it was documenting village life on the east coast.
But Gallagher knew it was a photo of the Co Mayo island, and armed with a copy of the magazine ordered from eBay he set out to find the precise location and hopefully surprise whoever was living there today.
That's when he realised it was the Deserted Village, a collection of 80 unmortared stone houses all but abandoned after the Famine by 1852, and last occupied as a 'booley village' by young farmers from nearby Dooagh in the 1940s.
However, as the photo shows, at least one family seemed to still make its home in the village a century ago.
The Irish Times has more on the story HERE.