Cloghnakilty
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Clonakilty Cloich na Coillte |
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| Town | |
Clonakilty
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 Clonakilty
Location in Ireland
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| Coordinates: 51°37′19″N 8°53′11″W / 51.62194°N 8.88639°WCoordinates: 51°37′19″N 8°53′11″W / 51.62194°N 8.88639°W | |
| Country | Ireland |
| Province | Munster |
| County | County Cork |
| Area | |
| • Total | 1.325 sq mi (3.433 km2) |
| Population (2016) | |
| • Total | 4,592 |
| • Density | 3,464/sq mi (1,337.5/km2) |
| Time zone | WET (UTC+0) |
| • Summer (DST) | IST (WEST) (UTC-1) |
| Irish Grid Reference | W381417 |
| Website | www.clonakilty.ie |
Clonakilty (/ˈklɔːnæˌkɪltiː/; Irish: Cloich na Coillte, Clanna Chaoilte), sometimes shortened to Clon, is a town in County Cork, Ireland. The town is located at the head of the tidal Clonakilty Bay. The rural hinterland is used mainly for dairy farming. The town's population as of 2016 was 4,592. The town is a tourism hub in West Cork, and was recognised as the "Best Town in Europe" in 2017, and "Best Place of the Year" in 2017 by the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland. Clonakilty is in the Cork South–West (Dáil Éireann) constituency, which has five seats.
The Clonakilty area has a number of ancient and pre-Celtic sites, including Lios na gCon ringfort.
Normans settlers later built castles in the area, and a number of Norman surnames survive to the present day. In 1292, Thomas De Roach received a charter to hold a market every Monday at Kilgarriffe (then called Kyle Cofthy or Cowhig’s Wood), close to where the present town now stands.
In the 14th century, a ten-mile strip of fallow woodland called Tuath na gCoillte (the land of the woods) divided the barony of Ibane (Ardfield) and Barryroe and reached the sea at Clonakilty Bay. Here a castle called Coyltes Castell was recorded in a 1378 plea roll. This was subsequently referred to as Cloghnykyltye, one of the many phonetic spellings for Cloch na gCoillte (meaning the castle of the woods, from ‘cloch’, the Irish for stone or stone building, and ‘coillte’ meaning woods).
Clonakilty benefited from the patronage of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork ('the Great Earl'), who is sometimes regarded as its founder. It was this Lord Cork who obtained its charter from King James I of England in 1613 with the right to return members to the Irish House of Commons. The borough of Clonakilty returned two members from 1613 to 1801; it was disenfranchised when the Act of Union came into force in January 1801.
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Wikipedia