Kilbrittain

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Kilbrittain
Cill Briotáin
Village
Lorry on main street
Kilbrittain
Location in Ireland
Coordinates: 51°40′24″N 8°41′17″W / 51.673401°N 8.68819°W / 51.673401; -8.68819Coordinates: 51°40′24″N 8°41′17″W / 51.673401°N 8.68819°W / 51.673401; -8.68819
Country Ireland
Province Munster
County Cork
Population (2006)
 • Urban 324
Time zone WET (UTC+0)
 • Summer (DST) IST (WEST) (UTC-1)
Irish Grid Reference W561512
Website www.kilbrittain.net

Kilbrittain or Killbrittain (Irish: Cill Briotáin, meaning "Britton's church")[1] is the name of a village, townland and parish in County Cork, Ireland. The village lies about 5 miles (8.0 km) southwest of Bandon, and near Clonakilty and Kinsale. The coastal route around the edge of the parish is the R600. The village itself is around 1 mile (1.6 km) inland from the coast.

Features of Interest

Kilbrittain Castle is the oldest inhabited castle in Ireland. The Castle is thought to date from 1035 where the original fortress may have been built by the O'Mahony Clan. Known to have been in the hands of the Norman family of de Courcey and possibly extended in the 13th Century, Kilbrittain Castle was the principal seat of MacCarthy Reagh family, Princes of Carbery, from the early 15th century. The castle was extensively restored and enlarged by the Stawell family in the 18th and 19th centuries, it was partially burned in 1920 and restored in 1969 by inventor Russell Winn. Kilbrittain Castle is now the home of the Cahill-O'Brien family.

Howes Strand is a beach in Kilbrittain with the ruin of a Coast Guard station that overlooks the beach, built in 1910 and burnt down in 1920.

Coolmain Castle was originally built by the de Courcey family in the early 15th century, but they lost it to the MacCarthy Reaghs, the Princes of Desmond, the following century. Over the years it passed through the hands of a number of families, including that of the Earls of Cork. In the middle of the 17th century, Oliver Cromwell acquired the property. In the early 1900s it was owned by a popular American novelist of the day, Donn Byrne. He was from New York, but his wife, Dolly Cadogan, was from the area. The late Roy Disney nephew of Walt Disney bought it about 25 years ago from Hollywood photographer Bob Willoughby, who had carried out extensive refurbishments to the property.

Sport

Kilbrittain club fields Gaelic football and hurling teams. It is affiliated with Cork GAA and Carbery GAA. Kilbrittain G.A.A club was founded In 1904 and was celebrated for its 100 year anniversary in 2004.

Kilbrittain have very successful underage teams. Under 14 and Under 16 have won the West Cork Championship in 2008. The club won the Cork Minor C Football Championship in 2008 beating Castletownbere in the Final at Pairc Ui Chaoimh. Kilbrittain has several popular beaches, and one of them, Coolmain, is designated the West Cork Windsurfing Centre. It is very popular with Windsurfers and Kitesurfers.

Harbourview, which is on the opposite side of the bay from Coolmain, is popular with walkers and also for Kitebuggies.

Education

There are two primary schools in Kilbrittain. Gurraneasig National School, which is located near to Howes Strand and Kilbrittain National School which is in the village, located alongside the church.

Kilbrittain NS received a new school building in the late 1990s as they used have a hedge school, while Gurraneasig has recently opened a new modern extension to the original building which contained just two classrooms.

Both Schools take part in GAA Leagues called Sciath Na Scoil. Kilbrittain N.S have won it with both the Boys and Girls team on several occasions.

Culture

Each summer, the owners of Burren House, which overlooks Courtmacsherry Bay, hold an open-air opera to raise funds in aid of the Courtmacsherry Lifeboat. Annually in August, Kilbrittain Village hosts a Family Festival which draws large crowds.

In the summer of 2011, a short film 'The Blow-Ins' was shot in Kilbrittain and Courtmacsherry. The Kilbrittain Whale featured in the film. The film is currently in post-production and due to be released early 2012.

People

Thaddeus MacCarthy - Bishop of Ross, Cork and Cloyne

  • Patrick Scott - Architect and Artist
  • Richard Townsend - English soldier and politician who lived at Kilbrittain Castle
  • John P. Walsh - prominent Irish businessman, nationalist politician, MP in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and member of the All-for-Ireland Party
  • Bob Willoughby - Hollywood photographer who lived at Coolmain Castle
  • Eoin Sexton - Eoin Sexton (born 1975 in Kilbrittain, County Cork) is an Irish sportsman. He plays Gaelic football with his local club Kilbrittain and has been a member of the Cork senior inter-county team since the late 1990s.

The Kilbrittain Whale

On 15 January 2009 an 18 metre (59 ft) fin whale stranded and subsequently died on a beach in Kilbrittain, after becoming disorientated and lured by unusually high tides. Efforts were made by Courtmacsherry Lifeboat to get the whale back into the sea but a combination of its size and weight meant that attempts to save the whale's life were unsuccessful. The people of Kilbrittain organised to save the its remains which are now displayed in the village.

The whale was featured in a Channel 4 documentary "Inside Nature's Giants" which showed autopsies of large mammals. It is still viewable on the Channel 4 website '4oD'.

The Book of Lismore

It is believed that the Book of Lismore was compiled in the 15th Century to commemorate the marriage of the Gaelic lord Finghin Mac Cárthaigh Riabhach, of Kilbrittain Castle, to Caitilín, daughter of the seventh earl of Desmond. The medieval manuscript contains 166 large vellum folios of material that a learned person of the time would have been expected to know. It later became known as Leabhar Mhic Cárthaigh Riabhaigh. MacCarthy was patron of the friary at Timoleague, and some of the book’s pages were copied there in 1629 by the scribe Mícheál Ó Cléirigh.

During a raid on Kilbrittain in 1642, the book was taken by Lewis, Lord Kinalmeaky, of Lismore who sent it back to his father, with a letter, at Lismore Castle. The book remained there until it was discovered behind a wall at the castle in 1814, during rebuilding works.

The Book of Lismore is written in Irish, but not the modern version spoken today. It is written on vellum, made from calfskin, an expensive material at the time of the book’s writing, in the 15th century. The Book of Lismore contains many important texts, including a cosmological work, the Ever-new Tongue; the most extensive account of the lives of the saints in an Irish-language medieval manuscript; an Irish translation of the travels of Marco Polo; and one of the greatest compositions of the Fenian Cycle, Acallam na Senórach, or The Conversation of the Old Men. The illustrated capitals are thought to have been added in the 19th century by Donnchadh Ó Floinn, an Irish-language scribe living on Shandon Street in Cork.[2][3]

Kilbrittain Festival

Kilbrittain Festival has been running since 2004 and has grown in popularity every year.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Placenames Database of Ireland
  2. ↑ http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2011/0708/1224300294060.html
  3. ↑ http://www.ucc.ie/celt/book_lismore.html

External links

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