Valentia Island

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Coordinates: 51°54′N 10°21′W / 51.9, -10.35

Valentia Island (Irish: Dairbhre) is one of Europe's westernmost inhabited locations, lying off the Iveragh Peninsula in the southwest of County Kerry in Ireland. It is linked to the mainland by a bridge at Portmagee, as well as by a ferry which sails from Reenard Point to Knightstown, the island's main settlement. The permanent population of the island is 650, and the island is approximately 11 km long by 3 km wide.

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[edit] History

Telegraph Field, Valentia Island: Foilhommerum is the site of the first permanent communications link between Europe and America. In October 2002, a memorial to mark the laying of the transatlantic cable to Heart's Content, Newfoundland was unveiled atop Foilhommerum Cliff. Made of Valentia slate and designed by local sculptor Alan Hall, the memorial marks the importance of the site to telegraph communications with America from 1857 forward and to accurately linking longitude measurements in America to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich in 1866.
Telegraph Field, Valentia Island: Foilhommerum is the site of the first permanent communications link between Europe and America. In October 2002, a memorial to mark the laying of the transatlantic cable to Heart's Content, Newfoundland was unveiled atop Foilhommerum Cliff. Made of Valentia slate and designed by local sculptor Alan Hall, the memorial marks the importance of the site to telegraph communications with America from 1857 forward and to accurately linking longitude measurements in America to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich in 1866.

Valentia was the eastern terminal of the first commercially viable transatlantic telegraph cable. The first attempt in 1857[1] to land a cable from Ballycarbery Strand on the mainland just east of Valentia Island ended in disappointment. Subsequent failures of cables landed at Knightstown in 1858 and Foilhommerum Bay in 1865 finally resulted in commercially viable transatlantic telegraph communications from Foilhommerum Bay in 1866. Transatlantic telegraph cables operated from Valentia Island for one hundred years until Western Union International terminated its cable operations in 1966.

Prior to the transatlantic telegraph, American longitude measurements had a 2800 foot uncertainty with respect to European longitudes. Because of the importance of accurate longitudes to safe navigation, the U.S. Coast Survey mounted a longitude expedition in 1866 to link longitudes in the United States accurately to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Dr. Benjamin A. Gould, Jr. and his partner Mr. A. T. Mosman reached Valentia on 2 October 1866. They built a temporary longitude observatory immediately adjacent to the Foilhommerum Cable Station to facilitate synchronized longitude observations with Heart's Content, Newfoundland. After many rainy and cloudy days, the first transatlantic longitude signals were exchanged between Foilhommerum and Hearts's Content on October 24, 1866.

In 1993, an undergraduate geology student discovered fossilised tetrapod trackways, footprints in mud preserved in Devonian rocks on the north coast of the island. About 385 million years ago, a primitive vertebrate passed along a muddy shoreline in the equatorial swampland that is now southeastern Ireland and left prints as if in wet concrete. The prints were preserved by silt overlying them, and were converted to rock over the ages. The Valentia Island trackways are among the oldest signs of vertebrate life on land and have been studied extensively by the paleontologist Dr Stössel.

[edit] Places of interest

Dingle Bay from the North shore of Valentia Island
Dingle Bay from the North shore of Valentia Island

The combined features and history of the island make it an attractive tourist destination, easily accessible from the popular Ring of Kerry route.

  • Geokaun Mountain and Fogher Cliffs : the highest mountain on Valentia Island and the seacliffs of 600ft. on its northern face.
  • On the northeast of the island stands modest Glanleam House amid its famous sub-tropical gardens; protected by shelterbelts from Atlantic gales and never touched by frost, these gardens provide the mildest microclimate in Ireland. Starting in the 1830s, Sir Peter George Fitzgerald, the 19th Knight of Kerry (1808 – 1880) [2], planted these gardens and stocked them with a unique collection of rare and tender plants from the southern hemisphere, normally grown under glass in Ireland. The gardens are laid out in a naturalistic style as a series of walks. There are plants from South America, Australia, New Zealand (the tallest tree ferns in Europe), Chile, and Japan. The gardens are memorialized in a selected golden-variegated Luma apiculata "Glanleam Gold" that originated as a sport in the garden. The gardens are open to the public.
  • Attractions on the island also include a grotto with a statue of the Virgin Mary, in a recently reopened slate quarry that provided slates for the UK's Houses of Parliament.
  • There is also a fascinating Heritage Centre[3] which tells the story of the Geology, Human, Natural and Industrial History of the island, with exhibits on the Cable Station, the Marine Radio Station and the RNLI lifeboat.

[edit] Sport

[edit] People

[edit] See also

[edit] External links