Ballyhaunis

An east Mayo crossroads town thought to have grown up around the Augustinian friary, 'the Abbey', which local tradition says was founded in 1348. It is one of the most diverse towns in Ireland: in 2011 non-Irish nationals made up 42% of the population, the highest of any Irish town, and it has Ireland's first purpose-built mosque. MidWest Radio broadcasts from here, and in 1999 the town trialled its own local currency, the ROMA.

The town is thought to have grown around St Mary's Augustinian Friary, founded in 1348 according to local tradition, and the Dillons, a Norman family, developed it from the 1200s. During the War of Independence, on 2 August 1920, the IRA ambushed a British Army lorry on the Claremorris road and took its weapons; a high cross marks the site of the Holywell Ambush. On 1 April 1921 Sean Corcoran, commander of the East Mayo Brigade, was shot dead at Crossard crossroads, and after a Black and Tan was killed in the town that day the Black and Tans executed Michael Coen, a local volunteer believed to have had no part in it. Patrick Boland was killed by crown forces in May 1921. The railway station opened on 1 October 1861, and in 1999 Ballyhaunis was one of the places in the EU chosen to trial the ROMA local currency ahead of the euro.

Drawn from the History section of the Wikipedia article on Ballyhaunis ↗, rewritten here and adding nothing it does not say; licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.