Mitchelstown

A north Cork town under the Galtees, described as one of the finest Georgian planned towns in Ireland, its streets laid out by the Earls of Kingston to frame views of the mountains. On 9 September 1887 police fired into a land-war crowd here and killed three men, and "Remember Mitchelstown", Gladstone's phrase, became a rallying cry. Today it is home to Dairygold and Kerrygold Park.

St Fanahan founded a settlement at nearby Brigown in the 7th century, and it had a round tower by the 9th. The Norman "Villa Michel" was granted market rights in the 13th century. From about 1300 to 1600 the White Knights, the FitzGibbons, held it and built the first castle in the 14th century. James King, 4th Baron Kingston, built Kingston College around 1764 for poor elderly Protestants, and Mary Wollstonecraft later worked briefly as governess to the Kingsborough daughters. Between 1776 and 1830 the medieval town was replaced by the present grid, and the castle was rebuilt in 1823-25.

Rent strikes were organised on the estate in 1879-81 and 1886-88 by John Mandeville and William O'Brien. At a protest on 9 September 1887 a scuffle over a police notetaker turned into a riot, and police firing from their barracks killed John Shinnick, John Casey and Michael Lonergan. The castle was occupied by the IRA in 1922, looted and burned on 12-13 August, and its stone was later used by the Mount Melleray monks. The co-op founded in 1919 grew into the largest dairy business on the island and merged into Dairygold in 1990.

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

• Labbacallee wedge tomb · tomb · 11 km
• Mitchelstown Castle · castle · under 1 km
• Galtee Castle · castle · 9 km
• Burncourt Castle · castle · 14 km

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