Clonakilty
stone (castle) of the woods, from a castle recorded in 1378 in a strip of woodland called Tuath na gCoillte; Joyce instead gives Cluain-Ui-Chaoilte, O'Keelty's or Quilty's meadow
A West Cork town at the head of Clonakilty Bay, famous for its black pudding, made to a spice recipe kept by the Twomey family since the 1880s. Michael Collins lived here as a boy and went to the local school, and a museum stands on Emmet Square where he lived. In April 1943 an American B-17 landed in a marsh outside the town, its crew thinking they were over Norway.
In 1292 Thomas De Roach got a charter for a Monday market at Kilgarriffe, near the present town, and a castle called Coyltes Castell was recorded in 1378. Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, obtained the town's charter from James I on 5 May 1613, and the borough sent two MPs until 1801. In the 1641 rebellion Protestant settlers fled to Bandon and much of the town was burned. Lord Forbes retook it in October 1642, but rebels attacked as soon as he left; the Scottish companies were killed to a man, and when Forbes returned the rebels fled towards Inchydoney, where about six hundred are said to have drowned at high tide.
There was a battle here in 1691 during the Williamite War, and in 1798 the Battle of the Big Cross was fought at Shannonvale nearby, remembered by a statue in Asna Square. The Earls of Shannon were the main landlords from the 18th to the early 20th century. Collins gave speeches from O'Donovan's Hotel; his statue on Emmet Square went up in 2002 and the museum opened in 2016. President Michael D. Higgins visited on 5 May 2013 for the 400th anniversary of the charter.
Drawn from the History section of the Wikipedia article on Clonakilty ↗, rewritten here and adding nothing it does not say; licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Templebryan Stone Circle · stone circle · 2 km
- Bohonagh · stone circle · 9 km
- Drombeg stone circle · stone circle · 15 km
- Castle Salem, Cork · castle · 12 km
- Ballinacarriga Castle · castle · 13 km
Straight-line distances from the town centre, from each site's documented coordinates.
- Drombeg stone circle · The 'Druid's Altar': seventeen stones aligned on the midwinter sunset, with a Bronze Age cooking pit beside it that still boils water in an hour.
- Béal na Bláth · The bend in the road where Michael Collins was shot on 22 August 1922, in his own county, by his own former comrades.
All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.
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