Dunmanway

A horn dating to 1000-800 BC, which was found near Dunmanway, and is now in the British Museum

Dunmanway has been inhabited since prehistoric times, as testified by a Bronze Age trumpet in the British Museum.[10] From the mid-13th to the late 17th century the surrounding districts of the town of Dunmanway were included in the territory of the MacCarthy Clan.[11]

Dunmanway Castle once stood on a bank of the Sally River on the left-hand side of present-day Castle Street. It was one of the chief residences of the MacCarthy Lords of Gleannacroim,[12] cousins of the MacCarthy Reagh sept. Dating from the late 15th century, the tower house is recorded to have been built by Catherine Fitzgerald.[13] There was likely a small settlement in the environs of the castle.

19th century references date the founding of Dunmanway to the late 17th century, when the English crown settled a colony there to provide a resting place for troops marching between Bandon and Bantry. By 1700, about thirty families lived in the town.

Sir Richard Cox, Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1703 to 1707, was the town's most important early patron. In 1693, Cox obtained a grant from King William III to hold market days and fairs in the town and strongly encouraged the development of the local flax industry. To that end, Cox imported artisans from Ulster to teach the required skills. He sponsored numerous incentives for local residents involved in making linen, including rent-free housing for top producers, bonuses for efficient labourers, rewards for schoolgirls who showed strong loom skills, and production contests with generous prizes. In 1735, the town consisted of forty houses and two to three hundred people. By 1747, the linen industry was well established, and Cox's personal census recorded 557 people. Two years later, it rose to 807.[14]

Free market economic policies in England led to the removal of protective duties on linen in 1827.[15] In 1837, Samuel Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of Ireland recorded a population of 2,738. It also recorded the town's changing economic fortunes:

"The manufacture of linen continued to flourish for some years, but at present there are very few looms at work. A porter and ale brewery, established in 1831, produces 2,600 barrels annually; there are also two tanyards and two boulting-mills, the latter capable of grinding annually 15,000 bags of flour, and there are two or three smaller mills in the vicinity. Since 1810 a considerable trade in corn has been carried on."

West Cork was hit hard by the 1840s Great Famine. On 9 February 1847, U.S. Vice President George M. Dallas chaired a famine relief meeting in Washington, D.C. where participants heard a letter addressed to the "Ladies of America" from the women of The Dunmanway Indian Meal Ladies' Committee:[16][17]

"Oh! that our American sisters could see the labourers on our roads, able-bodied men, scarcely clad, famishing with hunger, with despair in their once cheerful faces, staggering at their work ... oh! that they could see the dead father, mother or child, lying coffinless and hear the screams of the survivors around them, caused not by sorrow, but by the agony of hunger."

In the early 1850s, following the migrations and evictions which characterized the famine's upheavals, more than seventy percent of Dunmanway residents did not own any land.[18]

On 28 November 1920, during the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921), seventeen British Auxiliary Division troops were killed by the Irish Republican Army at the Kilmichael Ambush (near Dunmanway). The subsequent sacking and burning of the city of Cork by the British forces is thought to be linked to the Kilmichael Ambush. On 15 December 1920, an Auxiliary shot dead the local priest, Canon Magner, for refusing to toll his church's bells on Armistice Day; a local boy, Tadhg Crowley, was also killed in an apparently random incident. There were numerous other actions in and around Dunmanway during the war (see Chronology of the Irish War of Independence). In addition, after a truce was declared in July 1921, the local IRA killed a number of alleged informers. Controversy continues in particular over the killing of ten men (including three residents of Dunmanway) in the spring of 1922, all of whom were Protestants (see Dunmanway killings).

As a person from Ireland is called Irish, or a person from County Cork is Corkonian, a person living in Dunmanway is known as a Doheny. This is as the local Gaelic Athletic Association club is known as "The Dohenys" in honour of Michael Doheny, a member of the Young Ireland nationalist movement who lived in the area for a short period while on the run from British forces.

Immigration to the town in recent years has caused a population growth. The population grew 52% in the period from 2002 to 2006. The 2002 census reported that there were 1,532 people living in Dunmanway and the 2006 census reported that the town had a population of 2,328.

Today, the construction industry and agriculture play a large part in the economic environment of the town.

Between 1975 and 1999, Swedish multinational firm Mölnlycke Health Care operated a manufacturing facility in Dunmanway. The plant employed over 250 people at its peak.

Dunmanway is approximately 60km southwest from Cork City, on the N71 national secondary road, and the R586 regional road. The town is served by Bus Éireann bus service from Cork City. The nearest airport is Cork Airport.

Dunmanway railway station opened on 12 June 1866 and closed entirely on 1 April 1961.[31]

Chapel Lake.

A later scion of the Cox family, Richard, heard that a preacher allied to John Wesley was due to visit the town and decided to give him a ducking in the local lake. To practice he went out in a boat but fell into the water and was drowned. The event was commemorated by the following verse:

"'Tis there the lake is,

Where the duck and the drake is,

And 'tis there the crane can have his fine feed of frogs.

When night come's round it,

The spirits surround it,

For in it was drownded Sir Richard Cox."

• Sam Maguire, Gaelic football player/ Irish republican
• Con O'Kelly, wrestler, gold medalist at 1908 Olympics
• Timothy J. Murphy, Labour Party politician and Minister for Local Government in the First Inter-Party Government
• Michael McCarthy, Labour Party politician and former member of Dáil Éireann
• George Beamish, rugby player for Ireland and the British and Irish Lions in the 1920s and 1930s
• Victor Beamish, RAF ace fighter pilot in WWII
• James MacCarthy, sculptor
• Éamonn Young (gaelic football), Jim Young and Kevin Murray (hurling), Aoife Murray (camogie) are All-Ireland winners within various GAA codes
• John McCarthy, athlete, silver medalist in discus at 2004 Paralympic Games
• Lee Carsley, qualified to play for the Republic of Ireland by virtue of his grandmother being from Dunmanway, and was a visitor to the town as a youth.
• Darren Sweetnam, former Cork Hurler and current Munster Rugby player
• Thomas Hovenden, artist and teacher
• Richard B. Connolly, American politician

• Coomatallin wind farm
• List of towns and villages in Ireland
• Sir Richard Cox, 1st Baronet

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dunmanway.

• Dunmanway Town
• Travel Dunmanway
• Doheny GAA Club
• The Tidy Towns of Ireland "Celebrating 50 years"