myireland.ie
County Kerry · Munster

Listowel

Lios Tuathail

Tuathal's ringfort; Joyce agrees, from the Four Masters' Lios-Tuathail, Tuathal's fort

👥 4,794 (census 2022) 🏔 County Kerry Source: Wikipedia ↗
The story

A North Kerry market town on the Feale, called the Literary Capital of Ireland by its festival organisers; John B. Keane and Bryan MacMahon lived here, and Writers' Week, founded in 1970, is Ireland's oldest literary festival. From 1888 a Lartigue monorail ran to Ballybunion, where a cow going to market had to be balanced by two calves on the other side. The Kerry Group began here in 1972 as North Kerry Milk Products.

County Kerry through the ages →
The history of Listowel

The name first appears in 1303 in the Plea Roll as Lystothyl, and the Four Masters give Lios Tuathail in an entry for 1582. The town grew around the Fitzmaurices' 15th-century castle, the last Geraldine stronghold to hold out in the Desmond campaign; Sir Charles Wilmot took it after a 28-day siege on 5 November 1600 and had the garrison executed. It later passed to the Hare family, Earls of Listowel. Racing moved here from Ballyeigh, and the first Listowel meeting was held in 1858. The bridge over the Feale dates from 1829.

The monorail opened officially on 29 February 1888, and a replica opened in 2003. On 17 June 1920 RIC men at the barracks, led by Constable Jeremiah Mee, refused orders to move to rural posts, an episode known as the Listowel mutiny. The town hosted Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann 14 times between 1970 and 2002, and in July 2000 it was named one of Ireland's Heritage Towns.

Drawn from the History section of the Wikipedia article on Listowel ↗, rewritten here and adding nothing it does not say; licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

Castles and monuments within 15 km

Straight-line distances from the town centre, from each site's documented coordinates.

Worth seeing nearby
  • Rattoo round tower · A perfect 11th-century round tower — with a sheela-na-gig carved inside a window: a bold female figure on a holy building, 900 years old and still shocking.
  • Scattery Island · A monastic island with a round tower, a Viking base, a 19th-century pilots' village — all empty since 1978, in the mouth of the Shannon.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.

All towns and cities → · Every town name in Irish · Know Listowel better? Add to the story.