Island’s last single woman gets married

The last single woman on Coney Island off Sligo married yesterday.

Marie McGowan wore her bridal gown to take a boat from her home on the island to the mainland. She was ferried the one kilometre across to Rosses Point by Eithne Davis, a regular pilot of Daryl Ewing’s boat, known as the Coney Island taxi.

Marie, 36, a nurse at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, grew up on the island where her family — the only full-time residents — run the only pub which is visited by tourists and people who have holiday homes there. Marie’s only sister Anne left after she married 11 years ago.

Marie, who married Frenchman Christophe Perret, 33, a barman she met on a night out in Belfast, said: “I came home to wed because I am the youngest female on the island and I wanted to be the last woman to marry from it.”

Her parents, John and Margaret, and brother Michael, are now the only full-time residents on Coney Island.

Marie and Christophe were married at St Columba’s Church by Msgr Gerard Dolan, PP of Rosses Point.

The island gave its name to the better-known Coney Island off New York 250 years ago. The New York landmark was named by Capt Peter O’Connor who was master of the schooner Arethusa which plied between Sligo and New York.