Kanturk
head (or headland) of the boar; Joyce says the little hill near the town must once have been a haunt of boars
A north Cork town where the Allow and Dalua rivers meet before running on to the Blackwater. Its great sight is Kanturk Castle, a four-towered fortified house begun around 1601 for MacDonogh McCarthy and never finished: work reputedly stopped around 1618 because English settlers feared it was big enough to be used against them, and the Privy Council ordered it halted. The town also has one of only three outdoor cycling velodromes on the island.
Ringforts, holy wells and fulacht fiadh sites in the surrounding townlands show early settlement at this crossing point where the Allow and Dalua meet. South of the town, in Paal East, stands Kanturk Castle, known locally as the Old Court, built around 1601 for MacDonogh McCarthy as a defence against English settlers during the Plantation. It was planned as a four-storey limestone mansion with five-storey corner towers, but building stopped around 1618, reputedly because the settlers thought it too large and too well fortified, and the Privy Council in England ordered the works halted. After changing hands several times it now belongs to An Taisce and is a National Monument. Most of the town's bridges date from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and its market house (1810), court house (1825), Church of Ireland church (1858) and Catholic church (1867) followed. The railway station opened on 1 April 1889 and closed completely on 4 February 1963.
Drawn from the History section of the Wikipedia article on Kanturk ↗, rewritten here and adding nothing it does not say; licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Dromagh Castle · castle · 7 km
- Liscarroll Castle · castle · 12 km
- Dromaneen Castle · castle · 13 km
- Drishane Castle · castle · 15 km
Straight-line distances from the town centre, from each site's documented coordinates.
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