The neighbouring island of Inishark lies to the west of Inishbofin separated by a half-mile-wide Atlantic channel. In the eighteen hundreds, Inishark supported a population of over two hundred people but in the 1950s this had decreased to less than forty.
The island is now uninhabited; the last 23 inhabitants of this former isolated fishing and farming community were evacuated in October 1960 The islanders had been unable to leave for months in winter and the government opted to resettle them on the mainland rather than build an expensive pier on the island. The documentary film Inis Airc, Bás Oileáin (Inishark, Death of an Island) produced in 2007 by C-Board Films for TG4, told the story of the last years and abandonment of Inishark. Produced and directed by Kieran Concannon, it featured interviews with surviving islanders and archive newsreel footage of the final evacuation.
In 1949 three young men from Inishark were drowned returning from Easter mass on Inishbofin and a teenage boy died in 1959 from appendicitis when the island was cut off because of bad weather. These incidents as well as emigration were contributing factors driving the clamour to evacuate the island, as by this point there were few young people remaining on it.
The ruins of the old village with the school and the church are still visible and from Inishbofin you can get a sense of the life that was there. Even now it is a difficult place to land a boat but trips to Inishark can be organised and it is well worth a visit to wander through the eerie remains of the village.
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