Discover Strandhill

A surf village under Queen Maeve's mountain

Strandhill grew from almost nothing. The land here was undeveloped commonage until 1895, when a Sligo merchant named Benjamin Murrow bought it, laid out a road down to the shore, and started selling plots along what he called Buenos Ayres Drive, after the money he'd made in Argentina. He built a bathhouse in 1912 to give visitors a reason to come, and the seaweed baths he started are still running today, now known as Voya, on the same stretch of road.

The village stayed small and the beach stayed exactly what it always was: an open Atlantic surf break, unsafe for swimming and very good for surfing. That combination, plus Knocknarea rising directly behind the village with Queen Maeve's cairn on its summit, is what Strandhill is actually about. It's a working surf town first, a heritage site second, and a place people from Sligo have been going to for a paddle, a pint, or a seaweed bath for well over a hundred years.