Dunmanway

Dunmanway (Irish: Dúnmaonmhuí, official Irish name: Dún Mánmhaí) is a market town in County Cork, in the southwest of Ireland. It is the geographical centre of the region known as West Cork. It is the birthplace of Sam Maguire, an Irish Protestant republican, for whom the trophy of the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship is named. The town centre is built on and around two rivers, which are tributaries of the larger River Bandon, which passes by at the east end of the town.

The town is twinned with Quéven, France. Dunmanway won the Irish Tidy Towns Competition in 1982. The town came to national and international attention in 2009 when Liverpool Football Club played a pre-season soccer friendly in the area.

The population of Dunmanway at the 2011 census was 1,585, rising to 1,964 by the 2022 census.

The town's Irish language name is rendered, among other variations, as Dúnmaonmhuí or Dún Mánmhaí. A number of derivations are given for the meaning and origin of the town's name. For example, in Irish Local Names Explained (first published in 1870), the historian and etymologist Patrick Weston Joyce gives the meaning as "the fort of the gables (or pinnacles)". In A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, published by Samuel Lewis in 1837, it is given as meaning "the castle of the yellow river" or "the castle on the little plain", referring to a MacCarthy castle in the area. Other sources suggest it means "the fort of the yellow women".

Dunmanway has been inhabited since prehistoric times, as testified by a Bronze Age trumpet in the British Museum. 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.

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, cousins of the MacCarthy Reagh sept. Dating from the late 15th century, the tower house is recorded to have been built by Catherine Fitzgerald. 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.

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

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:

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.

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. 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. These events are sometimes known as the Dunmanway killings.

As of the 2016 census, the population (of 1,655) included a small number of people from the United Kingdom, Poland, Lithuania and elsewhere within the European Union. The 2016 census returns also indicated that people in Dunmanway were predominantly Roman Catholic. There are also two Protestant denominations in the town, namely the Church of Ireland and Methodism.

As of the 2022 census, the population had grown to 1,964. Of these, approximately 85% were born in Ireland, 6% in the United Kingdom, 3% in Poland, 4% in other EU countries, with less than 2% (39 people) born in other parts of the world.

The Ballabuidhe Festival is held annually over the August Bank Holiday weekend and centres around both the Ballabuidhe Horse Fair and Ballabuidhe Races. The Ballabuidhe Horse Fair dates back to 1615, when King James I granted Randal Óg Hurley a charter to hold a fair at Béal Átha Buidhe on the River Bandon.

The Dunmanway Agricultural Show, first held in 1946, takes place on the first Sunday in July each year, and with contested classes including horses, cattle and horticulture.

The Sam Maguire Festival runs in September, and focuses on the life and ethos of Sam Maguire.

Dohenys is the local Gaelic Athletic Association club and the club play their home matches at Sam Maguire Park. Dohenys' under-age teams play under the name "Sam Maguires". The club is named in honour of Michael Doheny, a member of the Young Ireland nationalist movement who lived in the area for a short period.

As of 2023, Dohenys were competing in the Cork Senior A Football Championship. The club has produced a number of inter-county players, including Éamonn Young, who captained Cork to victory in the National Football League and the Munster Football Championship in 1952, having also been a part of Cork's All-Ireland-winning team of 1945. Although the club has historically had more success in Gaelic football, Dohenys became Munster Junior B Club Hurling Champions in 2006.

The local soccer club is Dunmanway Town, which plays in the Premier Division of the West Cork League. In 2009, it was announced that Liverpool F.C. had agreed to visit Dunmanway to play the club in a pre-season friendly on 6 August 2009. Liverpool, fielding players from their reserve and youth teams (the home side supplemented their line-up with a number of players from prominent Cork-based clubs like Avondale United and Cobh Ramblers F.C.) won the game by one goal to nil in front of 6,800 fans, and Gardaí estimated that more than 15,000 people visited Dunmanway on the day to catch a glimpse of the Liverpool stars of the future.

The stretch of the River Bandon which flows east through Dunmanway holds brown trout, sea trout and salmon.

Other sports clubs in the town include rugby, athletics, pitch and putt, badminton and volleyball. Dunmanway has also been home to an indoor heated swimming pool for many years, with the 25-metre pool being the only public swimming pool in the West Cork area.

August 2010 saw the revived "Munster 100" motorcycle road race take place in Dunmanway. This was followed two years later by the first Dunmanway 'Lightning Sprint' Grand Prix motorcycle meet.

Like other parts of County Cork, road bowling events are held in the surrounding area, and the All-Ireland road bowling championships took place in Dunmanway in July 2011.

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.

The construction industry and agriculture have also played a role in the economic environment of the town.

Dunmanway is approximately 60 km 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.

• 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
• 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
• Richard B. Connolly, American politician
• Thomas Hovenden, artist and teacher
• Con O'Kelly, wrestler, gold medalist at 1908 Olympics
• James MacCarthy, sculptor
• Sam Maguire, Gaelic football player/ Irish republican
• John McCarthy, athlete, silver medalist in discus at 2004 Paralympic Games
• Michael McCarthy, Labour Party politician and former member of Dáil Éireann
• Timothy J. Murphy, Labour Party politician and Minister for Local Government in the First Inter-Party Government
• Darren Sweetnam, former Cork Hurler and Munster Rugby player
• Éamonn Young (Gaelic football), Jim Young and Kevin Murray (hurling), Aoife Murray (camogie) are All-Ireland winners within their GAA codes

• List of towns and villages in Ireland

• Dunmanway Town
• Travel Dunmanway
• Doheny GAA Club