Inishfree Lower (Inis Fraoigh) is an uninhabited island found approximately 1 nautical mile or 2 kilometres west of Donegal Airport. It is the largest island living at the seaward end of a mini archipelago of 4 islands found west of the township of Mullaghderg in the Rosses area of western Donegal. The island is approximately a quarter of a kilometre in size and has the remains of a solitary building in the most sheltered hollow near the centre of the island. The remains of the building on the island is not the standard pile of stone remains of buildings found on so many of these remote uninhabited islands. These remains still have the lintels and concrete forms around the door, windows and fireplace, alas the roof is of course long gone but the ruins still has a real house feel.
Access is by a 2-kilometre paddle from Oileán na Marbh (Island of the dead) by Carrickfinn Airport with the landward islands of the three Eileen Islands giving over a kilometre of lee on the journey. Landing on Inishfree is at the south-west tip of the island, there is a small sheltered cove of perfect sand between the large boulders. The rest of the coast of the island is very rocky and broken with no further sheltered suitable landing beaches.
Inishfree Lower is very much the neglected cousin of the much better-known islands off Gola Island, Cruit Island and Owey Island along the coast of mainland Donegal to the north and south.
On Oileán na Marbh an estimated 500 stillborn babies are thought to have been buried in a secret burial ground here because the church deemed there was no place for them in heaven. The island is also a burial place for some children and infants who died in the famine, and for several sailors who died at sea.
