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KENMARE |
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With its delicatessens and designer boutiques, KENMARE feels like a
prosperous foreign enclave, and you're more likely to hear English or
German tones here than Irish. Neatly organized on an X-plan (laid out by
the first Marquess of Lansdowne in 1775), the town is pleasantly
cosmopolitan: besides the resident foreigners, it's the natural crossing-over
point for everyone travelling up from Cork.
Kenmare was founded by Sir William Petty , Cromwell's surveyor general,
to serve his mining works beside the River Finnihy. Petty was extremely
active in (and benefited greatly from) the dealings in confiscated
properties that went on after the Cromwellian wars. Many soldiers were
paid by the impecunious government in land, but not all of them wanted
to settle in Ireland and so sold their land to dealers - such as Petty.
His acquisition of land all over Ireland, including roughly a quarter of
Kerry, was surely helped by his commission to survey the country on
behalf of the government, when he investigated two-thirds of the Irish
counties in the amazingly short period of fifteen months. Petty's other
achievements were no less remarkable: a professor of medicine at Oxford
at 27, he was also a professor of music and founder member of the Royal
Society in London; an early statistician, economist and demographer; and
politically astute enough to get yet more land and a knighthood out of
Charles II, even though he had earlier served Cromwell faithfully. In
Kerry, he laid the foundations of the mining and smelting industries,
encouraged fishing, and founded the enormous Lansdowne estate which once
surrounded the town; many of its buildings still remain today.
Evidence of a much more ancient settlement are the fifteen stones which
make up the stone circle just outside the centre of town on the banks of
the river; go up by the right of the market house that faces the park,
and past some estate houses. Then walk up the lane at the cul-de-sac
sign, and a few yards after it meets another lane coming in from the
left you'll find the circle, behind a high ditch.
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