Skibbereen & District Historical Society

Flooding has been a perennial problem in Skibbereen for centuries, most likely from the time a settlement grew up on the banks of the Ilen River in the 1600s.

The Bath Chronicle of 31 August 1769 reported that: ‘We hear from the Barony of Carbery, in Ireland, that many bridges have been carried away, roads broke up, many ditches thrown down, the towns of Bridgetown and Skibbereen laid under water, and his Majesty’s stores and collector’s apartments very much damaged, by the heavy rain that fell on the 11t instant’.

In the mid-19^th century, the Board of Guardians in Skibbereen proposed the widening and deepening of the riverbed to ‘save the town from the floods and inundations to which it is every year subject’. But while the problem of flooding persisted and got progressively worse, the talking continued, and little was done to ease the situation.

The issue of solving the flooding problem in Skibbereen seemed to have been consigned to the hallowed hall of Irish
aspirations, much like the draining of the Shannon and other projects. That was
until a new committee was formed in Skibbereen in February 1982. Skibbereen
Floods Committee members quickly realised that for any significant flood relief
scheme they were talking about a thirty-to-forty-year timescale, and they were
in this for the long haul.

It was also evident from preliminary studies that any satisfactory solution would have to comprise three critical infrastructural developments – a sewage system, relief road and a flood relief scheme. This would be a massive task!

At the inaugural meeting of Skibbereen Floods Committee on 25 February 1982, Cathal O’Donovan was elected secretary. Cathal has been intimately involved with every aspect of the work of the committee for
the past forty years. Nobody knows more about how the enormous three-stranded infrastructural
developments were brought to completion in 2020.

Cathal is uniquely qualified to tell the story of the Skibbereen Floods Committee and in the Skibbereen Historical Journal 2021, he has written a comprehensive account of the work carried out over the past forty years which has culminated with the centuries old flooding problem in Skibbereen finally
being solved!

‘Skibbereen Flooding: a record in time’ is one of fourteen articles covering a diverse range of topics of local and national interest in Skibbereen Historical Journal, Vol. 17, 2021, which is now available for purchase in shops in Skibbereen and some other outlets in West Cork.

The Journal has fourteen articles covering a diverse range of topics and it maintains the very high standard of the previous sixteen. The Journal is selling for €12. It can also be purchased online by clicking on this link  https://www.biblio.com/book/skibbereen-district-historical-society-journal-vol/d/1408087414

In the 2021 Skibbereen Historical Journal, Eugene McSweeney of Ballydehob tells the story of an artefact known as the Murrahin Amber Necklace.

It is an incredible account of a set of amber beads which originated in the Baltic coast and how they came to end up in a bog in Murrahin North. There were three different types of beads in the find, the oldest most likely dating back to the late Bronze Age, 100BC–600BC.

Amber is the fossilised resin of ancient pine trees and since it often takes on a golden hue it has been valued as a precious gem since Neolithic times. It has been used in the making of jewellery, works of art and decorative ornaments.

The beads were discovered about 1920 when they dropped out of a sod of turf which was being broken for the fire by Henry Sweetnam of Murrahin North, in the parish of Kilcoe, just west of Skibbereen town. Henry gave the beads to his mother, Mrs T. Sweetnam. They remained in her possession for about thirty years when Mr Bernard O’Regan of Sea View House, Aughadown, Skibbereen, acquired them and he presented them to the Cork Public Museum.

Bernard O’Regan was one of the best-known antiquarians in West Cork; he had a deep interest in and knowledge of the history, archaeology, ornithology, and botany of this region. Bernard was a lifelong member of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society.

This is a fascinating story beautifully written by Eugene. He records in the most compelling way the chance discovery of the beads, how they were preserved so well by the Sweetnam family and how Bernard O’Regan understood the significance of the find and had the prudence to donate them to the Cork Public Museum.

Unfortunately, the Murrahin Amber Necklace is not on public display at the museum. Wouldn’t it be something if it could be acquired on loan and put on display somewhere in west Carbery? Maybe, just maybe, Eugene’s article will be the catalyst for such a move.

Skibbereen Historical Journal Vol 17, 2021, is now available for purchase in shops in Skibbereen and some other outlets in West Cork.

The Journal has fourteen articles covering a diverse range of topics and it maintains the very high standard of the previous sixteen. The Journal is selling for €12.

It can also be purchased online by clicking on this link  https://www.biblio.com/book/skibbereen-district-historical-society-journal-vol/d/1408087414

The death took place on 30 July 2021 of John Murphy, Ilen Street and formerly of the West Cork Hotel, Skibbereen.

John died full of years after a long and active life. His connection with Skibbereen goes back several generations and his singular knowledge of the area and its people was without equal. Though a very public figure as owner and manager of the West Cork Hotel for much of his life, and while he enjoyed the company of people, John was in many respects a very private person. However, the writer of this modest tribute has on many occasions been grateful to John for his patience and unfailing generosity with his time in answering many queries about aspects of the history of Skibbereen and its people.

John and Betty Murphy will of course be forever associated with the West Cork Hotel which they ran from 1959 until they retired from the business in the mid-1990s. John was predeceased by his wife Betty (née O’Driscoll) who died on 10 June 2018.

Great Grandfather

John’s great-grandfather, Patrick Murphy, and his great-grandmother, an O’Donovan from Drominidy, both emigrated to America during the Famine. They married in New York in 1853 before returning some years later to Ireland and to Skibbereen. Patrick brought a shop in North Street and later brought a premises in Main Street where he ran a pub and a meal and flour business.

Patrick Murphy died in July 1910 and Mrs Murphy died three years later in 1913. Patrick and Mrs Murphy were survived by one son, John, and this was the man who built the West Cork Hotel which opened in 1902.

John Murphy began his working life as a law clerk and later worked as a carpenter. He was a very progressive man and built a number of houses in Cork Road and at Market Street. John married Annie Fitzgerald of the Abbey, Skibbereen, on 8 September 1887.

By the turn of the twentieth century Skibbereen had become a very progressive market and business town, and Ilen Street was an ideal site for a new hotel, it being situated close to the railway station which then played such an important role in the commercial and social life of the town.

The original hotel had eleven bedrooms and early on the proprietors converted a downstairs billiard room into three bedrooms to bring the total up to fourteen. It was Annie Murphy who ran the hotel for many years. John and Annie Murphy had six children, three boys and three girls, Dan, John, Pat, May, Eileen and Katie.

Their eldest son Dan and his wife Lizzie took over the running of the hotel when his mother Annie’s health forced her to reduce her involvement in the business. Annie died on 27 September 1937.

Dan married Lizzie Ross of Glandart, Bantry, on 28 April 1927. It was Lizzie who mostly managed the hotel and she took over the business completely when Dan died tragically young on 1 August 1939. Dan pre-deceased his father by some sixteen months; John died on 13 November 1940.

Dan and Lizzie had two sons, John and Pat. John married Betty O’Driscoll from Carrigillihy, Union Hall, on 17 September 1959 and the couple took over the running of the West Cork Hotel. From the beginning, it was a real team effort. For thirty-five years John and Betty dedicated themselves to making the West Cork Hotel one of the best-known establishments in the south of Ireland.

The West Cork Hotel became an institution under John and Betty’s guidance. It was a tourist attraction, appealing to people from all over to come and enjoy the excellent hospitality and service. It was one of the most popular wedding venues in West Cork and over three decades John and Betty worked extraordinarily hard to make every visitor welcome. They treated everyone with the same respect and they, in turn, were greatly admired and respected for their enormous commitment to their guests.

John and Betty added seven bedrooms in 1960. Then when the railway closed in 1961, they bought more land behind the existing hotel and in 1965 they added a substantial extension. They added the function room and an extra seven bedrooms. In 1972 they carried out a further expansion to bring it up to a forty-one bedroom hotel. John and Betty retired in the mid-1990s and the management of the hotel was taken over by their son John, the fourth generation of the family to run the business.

Recognised in the Bridgestone Guide as one of the best one hundred places to stay in Ireland, John McKenna wrote that: ‘People find the West Cork to be a home away from home, a place of relaxation where things are done properly according to ageless standards of service. It demands that rare epithet, venerable, to describe its charms’.

John decided to pursue other business interests and in 2005 the West Cork Hotel was purchased by the Looney family who have continued the fine tradition of the hotel.

John Murphy is survived by his children John and Liz, sisters in law Elmar Nolan and Noreen Lucey, relatives, and a large circle of friends.

P. O’R.

In February 1921 three burials took place in the old graveyard in Aughadown, four miles west of Skibbereen town. Those interred were Patrick O’Driscoll of Mohonagh, William Connell and Mathew Sweetnam, both of Lissanoohig.

The deaths of these three neighbours were not normal. Each man had died a violent death, the casualties of the ongoing War of Independence, which was then in its most intense phase.

In the 2021 Skibbereen Historical Journal William Casey tells story of these three men, neighbours but from different backgrounds.

Skibbereen Historical Journal Vol 17, 2021, is now available for purchase in shops in Skibbereen and some other outlets in West Cork.

The Journal has fourteen articles covering a diverse range of topics and it maintains the very high standard of the previous sixteen. The Journal is selling for €12.

It can also be purchased online by clicking on this link  https://www.biblio.com/book/skibbereen-district-historical-society-journal-vol/d/1408087414

https://youtu.be/TK86_-PS-5A

Skibbereen Historical Journal Vol 17, 2021, is now available for purchase in shops in Skibbereen and some other outlets in West Cork.

The Journal has fourteen articles covering a diverse range of topics and it maintains the very high standard of the previous sixteen. The Journal is selling for €12.

It can also be purchased online by clicking on this link  https://www.biblio.com/book/skibbereen-district-historical-society-journal-vol/d/1408087414