Town
The main feature in Abbeyfeale's Square is a statue of Father William Casey. Fr. Casey was the parish priest from 1883 to 1907 and helped the tenant farmers fight against their landlords. The local Gaelic football team is named in his honour (Fr. Caseys GAA Club). Recently the town celebrated the centenary of Fr. Casey's influence by having a Fr. Casey themed St. Patricks Day Parade.
The May Bank Holiday weekend sees the town host the "Fleadh by the Feale" traditional music festival. The 2007 festival was the thirteenth of these annual events. The International Bone Playing Competition is the highlight of the festival and is held on the Bank Holiday Monday evening on the open air stage in the town square.
The town is known for its extensive musical tradition, notably the Celtic progressive-rock musician Lorcan O'Neill being raised in this town with other exponents of traditional music such as Donal Murphy and Eibhlin Healy both living in the town. Others of notoriety include the striker Denis Behan for Cork City and Republic of Ireland U23.
There was a cinema in the town, but this closed in the early 1990s. The remains can be still seen today.
The town previously had an abbey, located in the centre of the town square, but this has since all but disappeared, and the only identifiable remnants are those used in the construction of the Roman Catholic Church in 1847, on the site of the current boys national school on Church street. Church street as it is now know was originally named Chapel street, as can be seen in old period OS maps of the town. The Geraldine Portrinard Castle (or Purt Castle) is situated about 2.5 km northwest of the town, on the northbank of the Feale.
Phil Danaher, Irish Rugby International (28 senior caps) and Gaelic Footballer (Limerick Senior team, Kerry minor team), also grew up in Abbeyfeale. The family of William Webb Ellis, who 'while at school in rugby with a deligthful disregard for the rules picked the ball and ran with it' and whose name is commemorated in the World Cup, also had strong connections with the town.
Future plans for Abbeyfeale have paved the way for the first new street opening since 1880. The new town redevelopment proposal was designed by Conor Dennison, a local architect who himself is originally a native of Abbeyfeale town.
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Famous quotes containing the word town:
“Let us have a good many maples and hickories and scarlet oaks, then, I say. Blaze away! Shall that dirty roll of bunting in the gun-house be all the colors a village can display? A village is not complete, unless it have these trees to mark the season in it. They are important, like the town clock. A village that has them not will not be found to work well. It has a screw loose, an essential part is wanting.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A little instruction in the elements of chartography—a little practice in the use of the compass and the spirit level, a topographical map of the town common, an excursion with a road map—would have given me a fat round earth in place of my paper ghost.”
—Mary Antin (1881–1949)
“This was the most completely maritime town that we were ever in. It was merely a good harbor, surrounded by land, dry if not firm,—an inhabited beach, whereon fishermen cured and stored their fish, without any back country.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)