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Kenmare Town

Beara Peninsula

Ring of Kerry

County Kerry

The Geology

The History

Shaminir is located on the beautiful Beara Peninsula only three miles from the town of Kenmare. This picturesque town offers all of the attractions of a lively traditional Irish town.

The Town of Kenmare

The town of Kenmare has a winter population of just over 2000 and is situated in the Southwest corner of the Republic of Ireland. Located south of Killarney and on the Ring of Kerry. The Irish name of the town, Neidin, means little cradle or little nest. Kenmare is positioned at the base of the Kenmare Bay, nestled between the Iveragh and Beara Peninsulas. The town has a long history and it enjoys a reputation for its excellent restaurants with the finest seafood from local waters. Kenmare was also named "Ireland's Tidiest Town" in the National Tidy Towns 2000 Competition.

Irish music, ballads and 'cracks' are played most nights in many of the numerous bars and restaurants scattered throughout the town - perfect for enjoying a fun night out followed by a relaxing meal. 

'Many Fine Pubs ....'

'Many Fine Restaurants ....'

'The Town and Market Square'

'A Good Selection of Shops ....'

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Touring the  Beara Peninsula there are blue waters far below on one side and the majestic 'wall' of the incredibly folded Caha Moutnains on the other. The further you go the more dramatic the sea views and the more torturous the mountains.  

Further on the peninsula is cut in half by taking the spectacular Healy Pass. A twisting, alpine style road with drops on one side snakes up the awesome 'wall' of the Caha Mountains, finally popping through the pass at the top to reveal County Kerry and the picturesque Glanmore Lough far below (not for the faint hearted). Alternatively, straight on will take you to Castletownbere (Baile Chaisleain Bhearra), an important fishing port with the Slieve Miskish Mountains providing a dramatic backdrop.

'View on The Healy Pass'

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On the opposite side of Kenmare Bay to the Beara Peninsula is the Ring of Kerry - Ireland's most popular scenic drive. This is a 110 mile circuit extending around the Iveragh Peninsula, a long finger of land jutting into the Atlantic Ocean west of Killarney. The route takes in Ireland's tallest mountains, stunning coastal panoramas, rocky seascapes, working boglands, remote country villages, and offshore islands.  

'The Rugged Beauty of Co. Kerry'

The Ring of Kerry drive is best taken in a counterclockwise direction, starting out from Kenmare through to Killarney and heading toward Killorglin and then simply following the "Ring of Kerry" signposts.

Even though it is only a little over 100 miles, the drive usually takes the better part of a day because roads are curvy and hug the coastline, and there are so many interesting places to stop and explore or photograph. Most people average 20 miles or less per hour. As well as a host of inviting little towns, there are also a number of heritage centres and museums along the way offering indoor exhibits, rest rooms and refreshments.

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The shifting balance of light, water, mountain and bog makes up the varied, and varying, personality of Kerry and this in turn much influences the personalities of its people - except that the county, as we know it now, is much more a creature of moods. There is not much climate in Kerry - temperatures normally range between 7 degrees Celsius (45F) in winter to 25 degrees Celsius (77F) in summer; but there is a great deal of weather, from clear sunny skies to winds from the Atlantic and much rain. It is precisely the inconstancy of this weather- often half day by half day - that leads to the interplay of light, water, wind and mountains that is the fascination of Kerry, as when a dull sea mist suddenly disperses to reveal brilliant , breath catching colours. The main element in the beauty of the Kerry is water - the sea that largely surrounds the county, the lakes, the intermittent rain, the white streams bursting down the mountainsides.

The Kerry we all love is not just the Kerry of landscape, glorious and varied though it may be, but the Kerry of language, song, story and personality.

You won't be short of entertainment in Kerry: in between, people keep each other entertained with talk! It is not that the actual range of topics are all that wide or startling either. Because Kerry is overwhelmingly an agricultural society there is endless talk about the Land itself. To hear farmers talk about land and grass is an education in itself; you immediately understand why generation after generation fought for the Land. Land brings the deepest passions into play. Of course Kerry people's conversational obsession with football and footballers is also an event to be witnessed.

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Apart from the older rocks at the west of the Dingle peninsula, Kerry was formed by great climatic changes and vast geological upheavals between 400 million and 200 million years ago. In the last 200 million years it has stayed above the sea, gradually being worn away by sun, wind, water and ice. What is left is no more than the "skeleton of a departed country", but, let us say, a most attractive skeleton. The highest mountain peaks in Ireland - those of the Macgillycuddy reeks above Killarney and Mount Brandon above Dingle range around 1,000 metres, but these are the worn stumps of once great mountains. As one moves down the country form north to south one travels back in geological time - from the coal measures of the north Kerry farm land to the rich limestone farm belt of the vale of Tralee and Killarney, to the melting sand stones of Dingle, Iveragh (Ring of Kerry) and Beara peninsulas, back to the time when Kerry was part of the great burning desert reduced by sun and torrential rain to sand , then sunk in the sea to make the limestone, then up again to be a tropical jungle that formed the coal measures. In the last of the great upheavals of some 200 millions years ago the east - west lines of mountains were formed and in them, the metals _ mainly copper - that were to play a big part in the country's early history. Some 60 million years ago were formed the great rias, or drowned rivers of the bays of Kenmare, Bantry and Dingle so that the surrounding sea penetrated far into the land . There were many later ups and downs of which no marks now remain except for the extinct volcanoes near Killarney.

Then, a million years ago, much of the county was locked in ice. This did not finally loosen its grip until some 10,000 years ago. Everywhere in south and west Kerry its marks are to be seen - the corries ( or glacial hollows) gouged out of the mountains, the great rocks scattered over the landscape as if (as a legend has it) giants were throwing stones , and outcrops of sandstone rounded and scarred by the passing ice . To the force of melting ice we owe the striking Gap of Dunloe and in the decaying limestone and the debris scattered below the Gap were formed the lakes of Killarney. Up to some 7,000 years ago the county was attached to the European mainland and along this bridge - now mainly under the Bay of Biscay - travelled those Lusitanian and Mediterranean plants that are now such an engaging feature of Kerry, and occasional small creatures like The Greater Spotted Slug from Portugal. Then, until about 500 B.C grew the great Irish forests, mainly oakwood ; but - the subsequent wet climate led to the growth of blanket bogs on the mountains killing, and the wet acid soil preventing the regeneration of the trees that once grew there. The lower land was covered with dense forest long since cut away except for such primeval survivals as Derrycunnihy at Killarney, Uragh Wood near Kenmare, and some others. Bogs, forests and mountains made much of the county largely impenetrable, especially , until the 19thcentury, the Iveragh and Beara peninsulas.

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Palaeolithic, or early stone age, man, creator of the great cave paintings of France and Spain, did not reach Ireland. Mesolithic, or middle stone age, man came to Ireland after the ice departed some 10,000 years ago. He was once believed to have stayed in the north-east of the country, but his traces have now been found over a much wider area; nothing definite has yet been found in Kerry , although traces of the survival of a Mesolithic culture are found in the sand hills sites of Inch Strand and Castlegregory, in the Dingle Peninsula and at Ballyeagh near Ballybunion. The Neolithic, or later stone age, culture - that of Newgrange and the other great passage graves of the Boyne valley - begins in Ireland some 6,500 years ago. There are a number of dolmens in Kerry that seem to be related to the passage graves, so they seem to be Neolithic; but this is not generally accepted. The remains of the bronze age, dating from some 4,500 years ago, are extraordinary plentiful in Kerry and West Cork. Sailing up the bays between the mountains came prospectors and miners from Spain and Portugal. On the mountains are still to be seen their mine workings, traces of their houses and fields, their , their smelting works, their stone signposts, their great wedge tombs. Occasionally have been found hoards of their copper and bronze tools and weapons. It is curious to think of these now empty mountains and bays the centre of an armament industry, the products of which have been found all over Europe. Some gold was also mined and a few beautiful examples of this gold work have been found in Kerry. From the later bronze age and early iron age can be seen many old roads, field systems, stone and promontory forts and ring (or earthen) forts, as well as an extraordinary body of legends - fanciful, tragic, romantic and comic - that , for the next 2,000 years were to be the basis of much of early Irish literature. Kerry was a major focus for these legends of invasion s , voyages, battles and the rest. Christianity came to Kerry in the 5thcentury AD, and much of the remains of the past now to be seen dates from the following centuries - monasteries, hermitage, inscribed crosses, tomb shrines and much beside. During the 6thand 7thcenturies there was an astonishing growth of these religious settlements mainly along the coast and on the islands, some 100 in all. The most spectacular is , of course, the almost perfectly preserved monastery on the Great Skellig. History deriving from contemporary written sources begins in Ireland with the coming of Christianity. During the iron age there had been various waves of Celtic invaders, but at the dawn of Irish history the predominant groups were Gaelic families, the Goidels. About that time, they established, at Cashel in county Tipperary, a strong kingdom over the southern half of Ireland. Beneath this were Gaelic sub - kingdoms, including that of west Munster; this had a focus at Killarney, with some sort of hegemony over pre Gaelic groups - principally the ciarraighe ( who gave their name to the county) in the north, the people of the goddess Duben on the both sides of Dingle Bay, and the people of the goddess Baoi in the Beara peninsula. In the struggles of the 11thand 12thcenturies to establish a single native kingdom of Ireland, three of the Gaelic ruling families established themselves in Kerry: MacCarthy south of Killarney, O' Donoghue around Killarney and O'Sullivan around the Kenmare river - surnames still dominant in the county.

Early in the 13thcentury the Anglo - Norman Fitzgearlds who became palatine earls of Desmond - established major strongholds in the rich limestone areas of Castleisland and Tralee. They planted their territory with tentants from abroad - hence such names as Brown, Landers, Ashe, Ferriter. Until the end of the 16thcentury they maintained a feudal independence. Then a combination of the centralising government of Queen Elizabeth and land - hungry adventures from England goaded the last palatine earl into rebellion and he lost his life and his lands. The county, as we know it, was finally defined in 1606 when, as part of the general post - Elizabethan settlement, the northern and southern parts of the present county were joined together. The wars of the 17thcentury saw the end of the political and economic power of the great Gaelic families and the establishment of the protestant ascendancy of the 18thcentury. However already by the end of the 17thcentury an old Gaelic and catholic family, the O'Connells, had, in the remote fastness of the Iveragh Peninsula, begun the long journey back, by way of trade with the continent, poetry and politics, to affluence and fame. These culminated in the great Daniel O' Connell, the main founder of Christian democracy not only in Ireland but in Europe, who in 1829 achieved for Irish Catholics the freedom from the last of the penal restraints.

The great famine of 1847 and the heavy emigration that followed reduced the county's population over the next century by almost two-thirds. The mountainous, beautiful Iveragh and Beara peninsulas lost, over the same period, about three- quarters of their population. Notwithstanding the political destruction of the 17thcentury, Kerry during that time remained a centre of Gaelic culture, largely in poetry and music. This continued through the 18thand 19thcenturies, to the present revival; but the Gaelic language itself remains as a vernacular only along the tip of the Dingle peninsula and in isolated parts of the Iveragh peninsula.

For the past century the great cultural preoccupation of Kerry, affecting virtually the whole of the population, has been the native form of football where the county's predominance is frequently (but by no means invariably) conceded.

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