Sliabh Luachra - History

History

The mountainy area along the Cork/Kerry border is known as Sliabh Luachra and was the uninhabited wet, marshy, rushy, mountain area of the old Kingdom of Luachra first noted in the Annals of Inisfallen in 534 when the King of Luacar won a battle against Tuathal Moel nGarb and again in 741 with the death of Cuaine, Abbot of Ferna and Flan Ferna, son of Cormac King of Luachra.

A settled population did not populate the remaining thousand square miles of Sliabh Luachra until the Desmond rebellion, which ended with the death of Gerald Fitzgerald the 15th Earl Of Desmond in 1583. His last hiding place Teach an Iarla can still be seen cut into a glen in the heart of the Sliabh Luachra mountains near the source of the river Backwater. The rebellion resulted in the scorched earth policy of Queen Elizabeths army, which devastated much of Munster with men women and children put to the sword, land and crops burned resulting in a great famine. The song of the thrush or the lo of an animal was not to be heard from Ventry to Cashel.

Following this the plantation of Munster began with a half a million acres being declared Crown property and distributed among English landlords with the old population being ordered to Hell or to Connacht. Some of the dispossessed and thus poverty stricken people of Munster took refuge in Sliabh Luachra which was also Crown property with much of it recorded as mountain pastures but the authorities had despite their many efforts failed to get any landlord to take any of it.

With the army of the Confederation led by Lord Muskerry, again the army of the Parliament won the battle. Traditional Gaelic Ireland, which barely survived after the Battle of Kinsale in 1601, reached its end after of these two battles, but in its defeat started the flowering of the old Gaelic Traditional culture in Sliabh Luachra.

The survivors of the defeated confederate armies from both battles took refuge in the Sliabh Luachra area, which was then a very inhospitable place with marshes, scrub woodland, wet rushy ground, no roads, fences, drainage, or services, but at least any authorities did not disturb them. Despite their poverty they lived reasonably happy lives, cultivating some of the wet mountain by hand to make land, to grow very basic vegetables and feed the few cattle. Their children getting a high level of education in the hedge schools around the area with many being fluent in Irish, English, Latin, and Greek. They provided their own entertainment by getting immersed in the old music, dance, poetry, and story telling, of Sliabh Luachra, which indeed became the property of the dispossessed.

This area remained undisturbed and unaccounted for, until the agrarian disturbances of the Rockite movement in the 1820s. The Rockite movement began in West Limerick in the summer of 1821. The first leader of the Rockite movement known as Captain Rock was a Patrick Dillane who may have come from the Sliabh Luachra area. Many of the leaders of the movement taking up hiding in Sliabh Luachra, led the then British Government becoming concerned about this area of about 960 square miles from which they were getting no return, and which they stated was a haven for outlaws, rebels, and rapperees, and since there were no roads or communications into the area it was impossible to control it.

A report by James Weale on the Crown Lands of County Cork was debated in the House of Commons It pointed out the disadvantages of the area, that the people were rebellious, and that their wickedness went unpunished as the authorities could not get into them. It was also pointed out that farmers from North Kerry and parts of West Limerick would in the summer time take butter on a mountain path through the Rockchapel area on horse back, two firkins per horse to Newmarket where it was transferred to horse carts carrying 24 firkins and send on to the largest butter market in the world in Cork City. In 1830, these farmers send 30000 firkins valued at 52000, with much of it passing through the Rockchapel mountain path.

As a result of this report many roads were built in the area, including the road from Castleisland to Clonbanin, from Ballydesmond to Newmarket, and the new line road, along the Feale valley from Feales Bridge through Rockchapel to Newmarket The engineering work on these roads and bridges was done by Richard Griffith who later became well known in Ireland through his Griffith valuations of 1852. The village of Kingwilliamstown (Ballydesmond) was also built as a result of the report as was a model farm at Glencollins near Ballydesmond where it was demonstrated that good grass could be grown on peaty soil by the use of burnt lime. As a result many limekilns were also built round the Sliabh Luachra area. The new line road and the building of a church in 1833 and a school in 1847 started the formation of a community and village in Rockchapel.

In 1896, Gneeveeguilla was the scene of the devastating moving bog, a landslide which wiped out an entire family as they slept.

The first Auxiliary Division fatality was killed in Rathmore on 11th July 1920.

The Headford Ambush took place at Barraduff in 1921. 32 IRA volunteers ambushed a train carrying British soldiers. A total of 16 people died including 10 British soldiers, 2 IRA volunteers and 4 civilians.