Skibbereen
a place frequented by skibs or small boats, according to Joyce, who admits the word skib is no longer used for a boat locally, which may make some doubt the derivation
A West Cork town on the River Ilen, about 12 kilometres upriver from the sea at Baltimore, and known locally as 'Skibb'. The area was among the worst hit by the Great Famine: the heritage centre estimates that 8,000 to 10,000 victims lie in the famine pits at Abbeystrewery, and the town hosted Ireland's first National Famine Memorial Day in 2009. Its old newspaper, the Skibbereen Eagle, once warned the Kaiser it had its eye on him.
Before 1600 most of the land around Skibbereen belonged to the MacCarthy Reagh dynasty. In 1631 refugees from the Sack of Baltimore came into the town, and its charter dates to 1657, with a copy kept in the council chambers. Between 1845 and 1852 the region suffered terribly in the Famine; records show the population falling from 58,335 in 1841 to 32,412 in 1861, though the census figures of the time are questioned. The local relief committee used the town as a base for organising voluntary relief, with soup kitchens and emigration schemes, and the song 'Dear Old Skibbereen' remembers the period as a father telling his son why he left.
The Phoenix Society, a forerunner of the Fenians, was founded here in 1856, and the Skibbereen Eagle newspaper followed in 1857, later superseded by the Southern Star, founded in the town in 1889. The town hall went up around 1862. The West Cork railways were built between 1851 and 1893 and Skibbereen was a stop, with its own terminus for the narrow-gauge Schull and Skibbereen Tramway, but all the West Cork lines had closed by 1961. In 1904 the 'Maid of Erin' statue was raised on a memorial to the risings of 1798, 1803, 1848 and 1867.
Drawn from the History section of the Wikipedia article on Skibbereen ↗, rewritten here and adding nothing it does not say; licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Drombeg stone circle · stone circle · 12 km
- Cloghan Castle · castle · 6 km
- Kilcoe Castle · castle · 10 km
- Dunasead Castle · castle · 10 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.
All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.
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