Ballinasloe: The Galway Town That Hosted Ireland's Great Cattle Fair

What was the Ballinasloe October Fair?

Long before the word ranching was applied to Irish farming, Ballinasloe in east County Galway was the place where cattle, sheep and horses changed hands on a huge scale. The October Fair brought farmers from the western counties, who raised young stock on cheaper grass, together with buyers from the east, who fattened it for market. The fair is also called the Great Horse Fair, and it is the same event that survives today.

The town's Irish name, Béal Átha na Sluaighe, is usually translated as the Ford-mouth of the Hostings, a reminder that the crossing on the River Suck was a meeting place for local clans before it was a market.

Origins of the fair

The evidence for the fair's start is thinner than local tradition suggests. The surviving record shows that in 1757 Frederick Trench was granted a patent for fairs on 15 May and 13 July, but no patent exists for the October fair itself. Wikipedia's account says the fair dates to the eighteenth century and that local belief holds it to be much older.

The wider context explains why it grew. Pasture farming expanded in Ireland from about 1730, and the modern livestock trade with England dates from 1785. Tax and tithe rules favored grazing over tillage, and short-term grazing suited Catholic tenants, who could not take long leases. Those conditions pushed western farmers toward raising stock and created demand for a central market.

How big did it get?

The numbers reported from the late eighteenth century are large. The Times is cited as reporting sales of 65,758 sheep and 6,565 bullocks in that period. A heritage account of the fair's development gives cattle sales of 7,782 in 1790, falling to 5,100 in 1799, while sheep sales ranged between about 68,000 and 74,000 over the decade before the Act of Union. Sources differ on year and counting method, so treat the figures as indicative rather than exact.

The Times called the fair the largest of its kind in Europe in 1804 and the greatest in the British empire in 1816. A heritage page describes it as the principal cattle mart of the British Isles for a long period, and a major source of income for the Trench family, who held much of the land.

From cattle mart to horse fair

The fair was once a general agricultural event for East Galway and South Roscommon. Over time the cattle and sheep trade moved elsewhere, and it is now mainly a horse fair. The sources used here do not explain why the livestock trade declined, and this profile does not guess at a cause. What they do show is continuity of the date: the fair still runs for seven days in early October, opening with a parade on the Sunday before the first Tuesday, and it has long been important to the Irish Traveller community.

Cancellations are rare. The fair did not run in 1915 to 1918, 1940 to 1945, 2020 or 2021. The 2022 event marked a 300th anniversary and drew about 85,000 visitors, according to reporting on the fair.

Costs and controversies

The trade rested on a system of land tenure that favored large landowners, and the sources note that Catholic tenants could not take long leases. That is part of why short-term grazing was attractive, and it is a limit on the picture of a free-market fair: many sellers had few other options. The Trench family's control of the fair through land ownership also meant a large share of the profit went to them.

Visit or learn more

The fair runs each October on a site off Society Street. For history, see the Wikipedia article on the Ballinasloe Horse Fair the Ask About Ireland account of the fair's development and the Irish Times collection of memories of past horse fairs. If you enjoy livestock markets of other countries, see ranching stories on farm.FM or a farm.FM story on cattle markets.