John Lennon visited the island Dorinish on 22 June 1968.
Dorinish was an uninhabited island in Clew Bay in County Mayo, Ireland. Lennon purchased it on 5 May 1967, paying £1,550 plus costs of £243.
Lennon visited Dorinish on 22 June 1968 with Yoko Ono. They arrived in the morning at Shannon Airport in County Clare, having travelled from Luton Airport by a Hawker Siddeley private jet. They then took a chartered helicopter from Shannon Airport to Dorinish.
They were accompanied to the island by Lennon’s former schoolfriend Pete Shotton, and Apple staff members Ronan O’Rahilly and Jeremy Banks. Lennon had brought an acetate of ‘Revolution 1’ but had no record player, so the helicopter was sent to Ballycastle, where O’Rahilly and Banks sourced a battery-powered turntable.
Julian Lennon’s gypsy caravan had been shipped to the island in May 1967 at a cost of £216. Lennon, Ono, and Shotton took refuge inside while waiting for O’Rahilly and Banks to return. That evening the helicopter took everyone to the Great Southern Hotel in Mulranny, where they arrived at 9.30pm.
They stayed at the Great Southern for two nights. On 23 June they took a tour of Achill Island and had lunch at the Amethyst Hotel in Keel. That evening an Irish concert took place at the hotel, after which Lennon played the as-yet unreleased ‘Revolution 1’ to the attendees.
The trip to Ireland ended on 24 June when the helicopter returned the visitors to Shannon Airport, from where they were taken back to London.
After this week, Dorinish was left unused for several months, until Lennon invited members of the London Street Commune to establish a hippie commune there in October 1969. The Diggers, as they were termed, remained there until 1972 when a fire burnt down their supply tent and the commune was disbanded.
Following Lennon’s death in 1980, Ono sold Dorinish for £30,000 and donated the proceeds to an Irish orphanage.