Sligo

A coastal seaport and county town on the west coast, the largest urban centre in its county with 20,608 people in 2022. The name anglicises the Irish Sligeach, meaning abounding in shells, a reference to the shellfish of the river and estuary and to the extensive shell middens nearby; Ordnance Survey letters of 1836 record cart loads of shells found underground where houses now stand. The river now called the Garavogue was originally the Sligeach, and is listed among the seven royal rivers of Ireland in the ninth-century tale The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel.