One minute, Woods, Co Mayo, was a bustling village and close-knit community, the next it was bereft of almost all its residents and left to slowly decay. On 16 March, 1956, seven families of the area packed up everything they owned and, in search of a better life, moved to new farmland in Kilcullen, Co Kildare.

Woods became a ghost town, with only two families and one child left and it never recovered from the loss of 54 of its inhabitants.

"There was a lot of crying for a long, long time, " recalled John Joe Walsh, who made the move with his family when he was 15 years old. "It was very hard on everyone to start again from scratch in a new community. Back then, people didn't move from one end of Ireland to another, and we were almost like a different breed of people to those in Kildare."

This weekend, to mark the 50th anniversary of the move, the original families and their descendants, 122 in total, came back to Woods for the first time in half-a-century.

Yesterday, they unveiled a plaque amongst the few remaining boarded-up houses to commemorate this forgotten piece of history. These former residents of Woods may have settled down in Kildare, and married Kildare people, but they never forgot their Mayo roots.

"It's a momentous occasion for us, " said Walsh. "We could never forget Woods, and we often missed the life we had had there. There'll be some sing-songs and storytelling this weekend, that's for sure."

The seven families, two Walshes, two Lavins, the Byrnes, Gormans and Brennans, took the difficult decision to move under the Rural Resettlement Programme of the Land Commission (18811980). This was a resettlement policy devised to correct the imbalance of rural land ownership in rural Ireland.

In Woods, the families struggled to survive on small and stony patches of land. In Kildare, they were promised 33 to 40 acres of lucrative land on the Blackhall Estate and the guarantee of an income from dairy farming.

"Back then, we couldn't make a living on the land we had and the men had to go to England for most of the year to bring in the money, " said Walsh. "The women were outstanding. They worked the land, baled the hay and cut the turf. We had our own hens and a few cows and we were just about self-sufficient, but it was hard going."

Despite this, when the offer of the land in Kildare was made, the families spent a long time deliberating as to whether they could leave the village they had occupied for generations. Eventually, they made the unusual decision to move together and restart their community in a new location.

"In the end, only two families were left behind, including Jim Murtagh, the only child left in the village, " said Walsh. "It was very hard for them to watch us all go. Their lives were completely changed from then on as well."

The 54 residents packed up everything they owned, leaving nothing that could be used in Kildare. The Byrne family dismantled their hay shed and took it with them, while others tried to bring the timber roofs from their homes.

Arriving in Kildare was a "complete culture shock" for the Mayo people. There was no electricity or running water in their farms and the gardens they had been promised were just stretches of gravel. Dairy farming was an entirely new venture for them, while their accents marked them out as strangers to the community.

Although many settlers in the Rural Resettlement Programme experienced strong opposition from the communities they were sent to, the people of Woods were warmly welcomed by the Kilcullen residents. "We got involved in gaelic football and parish life and that brought us together more quickly, " remembered Walsh.

Eventually it was like they had always been in Kildare.

The children of the seven families all married Kildare residents and spread throughout the county. They in turn have had their own children and for many years, their memories of the little village of Woods faded into the background. Until this weekend, only their accents served as a reminder of where they originally came from.

"That's the funny thing, " said Walsh. "In Kilcullen, you'll find a lot of people with Mayo accents. That never died and we passed it on down through our children. It's a nice little reminder, really."