The workhouse just west of Dunfanaghy admitted its first inmates in June 1845, at the very start of the Great Famine, to house and feed the destitute of the district. Part of the original building has been restored as an interpretive centre that tells the story of the famine and its effect on the people of this corner of Donegal.
It is a small, sobering visit and a useful counterweight to the beaches and cliffs. Nearby on the Falcarragh road, the former fever hospital of the workhouse became a school in the 1930s and has been an artists' studio and gallery since 1968.