ByRoute 6.2 Co. Limerick // Co. Kerry
These pages describe ByRoute 6 between Emly (Co. Tipperary) and Castlemaine on ByRoute 1.
Hospital & Knockainy (Co. Limerick / East)
Hospital (An tOspidéal) (pop. 1800), a rather confusingly named town, was founded c.1215 by Geoffrey de Marisco, Lord Justiciar of Ireland. He is believed to have intended it as a Commandery of the Knights Hospitallers of Jerusalem, although an alternative theory connects it with the Knights Templar.
The large medieval abbey church still stands in ruins, and inside can be seen three crude effigies, one of a knight in full armour; the images of a lord and lady are believed to cover the tomb of the founder. (Photo – Emma & Maneesh)
Kenmare Castle
Castle Farm, now home to an Equine and Small Animal Veterinary Practice, was the site of a Tower House built c.1588 by Sir Valentine Browne of Lincolnshire, which later came to be called Kenmare Castle. He acquired extensive property locally and around Killarney (Co. Kerry), and his successors were almost all named Valentine.
Although their support for the dethroned King James II, who granted them the legally dubious title of Viscount Kenmare, cost them their estates under King William III, they recovered the land in 1720 and, unusually for Roman Catholics, retained their property throughout the Penal Laws era. The family came to be identified with the old Gaelic aristocracy.
Their seat moved to Killarney, and by the mid-C19th the castle ruins were already vestigial.
Nearby Ballinamona is the site of a Stone Circle.
Hospital and its environs grew considerably at the turn of the Millenium, and there are plans for future expansion.
Hospital is linked by the R513 to Ballylanders on ByRoute 5.
Knockainy Hill
Knockainy Hill (Cnoc Aine) was long venerated as the dwelling place of Aine, the Celtic goddess of the harvest. (Photo – www.themodernantiquarian.com)
For centuries on every Midsummer Eve the locals made tall reed torches called cliars and made a procession around her hill. They then spread out to wave the torches over crops and cattle to entreaty Aine for good fortune and abundance in the coming year. There are folk tales of Aine revealing herself to the locals on occasion on these eves.In one such tale, collected by D. Fitzgerald, a number of girls had stayed late on the hill while watching the cliars. Aine appeared among them and asked them to go home as she and her people wanted the hill to themselves now. She called a few girls over to look through a ring where they saw a multitude of people on the hill who otherwise could not be seen.Ancient structures on the hill include a damaged cairn marking the burial site of a long forgotten chieftain, three conjoined burial mounds, a Standing Stone and a strange enclosure containing another small cairn.
Knockainy / Knockainey / Knockaney / Aney is a small village on the River Camoge, with several attractive houses and a couple of good pubs.
According to Lewis (1837), this was the location of an early Christian monastic centre of learning, allegedly founded in the C5th by Saint Patrick, which became an Augustinian convent in 941 AD, was destroyed by Norsemen, and after reëstablishment in 1246 by the FitzGibbon family, survived until King Henry VIII’s 1540 Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Knockainy Castle is a ruined and overgrown C16th Tower House containing a spiral staircase. It is said to have been a FitzGerald stronghold destroyed during the Desmond Rebellions.
St John’s church (1861) is a handsome Victorian edifice with beautiful stained glass windows and excellent acoustics. It has an unusual bell tower and steeple, erected c.1600, and underground vaults dating from the C17th, while the old churchyard contains several interesting mausolea. As the local Church of Ireland population is now too small to sustain it, the building is used as a cultural centre.
Knockainy is north of Kilfinnane on ByRoute 5.
Herbertstown (Baile Híobaird) was the scene of Land League agitation in 1887, organised by the local parish priest, Fr William Ryan, who was jailed for a month for inciting illegal acts. His release was greeted by jubilant crowds, including leading municipal authority figures, who escorted him 14 miles home from Limerick City, blocking the road to prevent police from following.
Herbertstown is not far from Kilteely and Pallasgreen on ByRoute 7.
Lough Gur (Co. Limerick / East)
Lough Gur is one of Ireland’s most important archaeological sites, with the remains of at least three crannogs and some prehistoric cottages and field systems, Standing Stones, Stone Circles, Ring Forts, a wedge tomb and two castles. (Photo - Tom Clarke)
A walk around the crescent-shaped lake and the rocky Knockadoon peninsula (formerly an island) to admire all the megaliths and ruins, not to mention the scenic lake itself, the ducks and swans on it and the beautiful wildflowers that grow near the shore, would take the whole of a very well spent day. However, visitors should remember the words of David Fitzgerald, author of Popular Tales of Ireland (1879), who wrote of Lough Gur “no minstrel, piper, or poet would willingly spend a night within a mile of its shore, such was its fearful reputation and potency. Even to fall asleep in daytime on its banks was considered among them to be reckless folly“.
Rather more upbeat was the modern writer Richard Jones, who commented “to come here in the silence of an early morning, when the suns first rays sparkle upon its glassy surface, and the breezes are heavy with the fresh scent of the new day, is to feel that all things are possible and that the gods and fairies truly do walk amongst us“.
The Interpretative / Visitors’ Centre (1981), comprising two Disneyland-twee but spacious reed-thatched huts, supposed to mimic the kind built by local stone age farmers 4000 years ago, houses a museum displaying replicas of artefacts retrieved from the lake and its surroundings.
Black Castle, a C14th Desmond stronghold, is said to be where Gerald FitzGerald, 15th Earl of Desmond, on his return to Munster from his brief 1566 sojourn in the Tower of London (for insolence to Queen Elizabeth I after she rebuked him for the Battle of Affane), symbolically cast off his English apparel and donned native Irish garments. This was an ominous gesture for the castle, damaged in the Second Desmond Rebellion and largely destroyed the 1641 Irish Rebellion.
According to legend, Gearóid Iarla, 3rd Earl of Desmond, whose father had copulated with the lake goddess, disappeared in mysterious circumstances from this castle. Some claim he lies in an enchanted sleep in an underwater palace, doomed to rise every seven years to ride at the head of a fairy entourage around the lake at night on his milk-white horse until its silver shoes wear out.
Bourchier’s Castle, a late C16th Tower House, is private property. It was erected after the end of the disastrous Desmond Rebellions by Sir George Bourchier, an English general, whose youngest son Henry Bourchier (b.c.1587) graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 1605, became a Fellow the following year, got an MA in 1610, was knighted in 1621, and outlived not only his childless brothers but also most of his paternal cousins to become the 5th Earl of Bath in 1637 and Defence Commissioner at the 1644 Oxford trial of King Charles I.
New church, constructed in 1679 on the site of an older church used by the Earls of Desmond, is an atmospheric ruin. The grounds contain the unmarked grave of the poet harper Thomas O’Connellan, who died in Bourchier’s Castle in 1698.
The church of SS Patrick & Brigid (RC), aka Grange church, was completed in 1837. It contains an interesting altarpiece and a plaque commemorating the locally born Bishop John Hogan, who founded the Diocese of Kansas City, Missouri, in 1880.
The Grange Stone Circle
The Grange Stone Circle, close to Lough Gur, comprises 123 contiguous standing stones, with an internal diameter of approximately 46m, making it the largest and arguably the finest in Ireland. (Photo – www.themodernantiquarian.com)
Grange is unique in many aspects. It looks more like a form of henge monument than a conventional stone circle, and almost certainly had a ritual purpose.
It has been calculated that the narrow stone-lined passage entrance was aligned with the sunset on the festival of Samhain (ancestor of the modern Halloween). The largest of the axial stones looks toward the midsummer sunrise.
The enclosure would have been built in stages, and a date around 2000 BC has been determined. The people who built and utilized it must have had a high degree of social organisation.
Archaeological excavators have discovered two hearths, some animal bones (mainly cattle), a few unburnt human bones, some bronze materials, and numerous Neolithic pottery shards
