Westport

Westport  meaning 'the stone fort of the beeves', historically anglicised as Cahernamart  is a town in County Mayo in Ireland.

 It is at the south-east corner of Clew Bay, an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean on the west coast of Ireland. Westport is a tourist destination and scores highly for quality of life.

 It won the Irish Tidy Towns Competition three times in 2001, 2006 and 2008. In 2012 it won the Best Place to Live in Ireland competition run by The Irish Times.

Westport is designated as a heritage town, and is one of only a few planned towns in Ireland.

The town centre was laid-out in the Georgian architectural style, and incorporates the Carrow Beg river into the design composition. This provides for tree lined promenades (known as The Mall) and several stone bridges.

The pilgrimage mountain of Croagh Patrick, known locally as "the Reek", lies some 10 km west of the town near the villages of Murrisk and Lecanvey. The mountain forms the backdrop to the town.

Westport originates and gets its name, in Irish, from a 16th-century castle - Cathair na Mart (meaning "the stone fort of the beeves" or "the city of the fairs") - and surrounding settlement, belonging to the powerful local seafaring Ó Máille clan, who controlled the Clew Bay area, then known as Umaill.

The original village of Cathair na Mart existed somewhere around what is now the front (east) lawn of Westport House.

It had a high street, alleys down to the river and a population of around 700.

 A small port also existed at the mouth of the Carrowbeg river. Roads lead from the village to the west (West Road), the south (Sandy Hill Road) and the east (Old Paddock Road).

The intention of John Browne, later the First Earl of Altamont to move the existing Cahernamart settlement to facilitate the landscaping of parklands around Westport House was outlined to Richard Pococke when he visited Browne in 1752.

Thanks to wikipedia