CASTLEISLAND |
It was the Norman Geoffrey De Marisco, who singled out the site of the modern town as the site of one of his castles in 1226. Geoffrey is said to have been a nephew of Strongbow. It is around this Castle that the town of Castleisland gradually grew up. |
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Castleisland has always been and still is
a market trading town. The town has the advantage of one of the
widest main streets in Ireland. When the town was build, it
consisted of small thatched houses or 'bothans' as they were
called. When these houses were being replaced the new ones were
build at the back of the old ones and eventually the old
'bothan' in front were demolished, thus leaving a very wide
street.
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Castleisland is famous for it's
Castle.
The Castle was build
in 1220 by Geoffrey De Marisco. The Castle was known as
"the Castle of the Island" as it was formed by turning
the waters of the Maine into a moat around the Castle. The ruins
of the Castle still stand and can be seen from the river walk
that follows the Maine.
The beautiful gothic style church was designed by the famous architect Pugin, who also designed the Cathedral in Killarney. The pillars in the church are made from Red Marble which can be found in Lisheenbawn. This Marble was also used in the Honan church at University College Cork. |
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The Kerryman Thursday, March 29, 2001 Castleisland
Golf Course, Castleisland Tulligbeen 18 hole golf course is now in its advanced stages and looks set to be up in action by June 2002 The golf course has been causing quite a stir, according to Sergeant Mick Coote, who is involved in the development of the course. “There was a long list of applications to design the golf course and these were headed by international golfer Darren Clarke following his visit to the area in October 1999. The people in Castleisland are very interested in the project and 1.25 m of share capital was raised in the autumn of 1999. Everybody who was interested invested £5,000 said Sgt. Coote. The project is also benefiting from the additional £ 150,000, which was received through grant aid. The golf course will be a major boost for Castleisland.
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667,500 pounds for Castleisland Library The approval of this new project marks the significant progress being made to modernise the library service, following the policy review published in 1998- 'A new library public service'. The Minister of Environment Noel Dempsey has also funded the provision of Internet access. |
Castleisland has run of the Country
Castleisland Community College won the award for the best overall school at the Kerry Vocational School cross country championships which took place in Castleisland. |
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Restoration of Castleisland cemetery, A committee has been formed to look after Churchtown Cemetery, Castleisland. Fr Stack CC Castleisland contacted the NGA last year about this historical burial ground. Bob Finn, Founder of the Moonlighters, is buried in Churchtown and restoration work was carried out on his grave by the NGA. An appeal to people who may have family members buried in the cemetery to contact us. Fr. Stack can be contacted at the Presbytery, Catherine O’Connor, Dooneen, Castleisland, or John Houlihan, member of Church town Cemetery Committee, Currow, Killarney.
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Tidy Towns,
Castleisland.
The tidy Town committee, formed in 1990, and led by Sheila Hannon. This year, even more so than last year, a lot of effort has been put into making Castleisland look brilliant. Many hanging baskets and barrels filled with very beautiful flower combinations, new shrubberies at Castleview, College Road, Pound Road, Killarney Road, Convent Street and Church Street. Since last year the committee has completed the Riverside Walk and the Graveyard project. Sheila is delighted with the work in the Graveyard, that is completely renovated with new gates, a stone wall and nice grass areas around this historic graveyard. Some of the headstones date back to 1641, it also contains a Famine Graveyard. Part of the committee's work is the maintenance of all. Sheila mentioned the litter, that is still a big problem on the approach roads into the into the town and the Car Park. |
Mary Walsh, Sheila Hannon and Millie Browne Another development will hopefully be the establishment of a play area for children with a fully equipped play ground. One of the wishes of the committee is that more people would come forward and help out in watering and maintaining. |
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The History of Rhyno Mills
Since 1846, a mill has stood at Tonbwee, Castleisland. Built by Lord Baron Ventry as a flour mill. On the 25th of March 1873, Redmond Roche of Maglass acquired a 98 year lease on the premises at an annual rent of 14 pounds 12s-6d. In 1926 the mill was reopened as an animal feed manufacturing plant by local man William H.O Connor. Read all the history: click http://www.rhyno.pair.com/history.htm
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Castleisland Community College |
Ms. Anne O'Sullivan, Vice-Principal, Tel:(066) 7141196 |
Aerobics- Feng Shui- Flower Arranging- Foot Reflexology- |
Gardening- Gift to yourself- Beauty Therapy |
New Tartan Athletic Track Castleisland Kerry's eye 6th July 2000 | |
10 years of hard
work came to fruition with the opening of the new tartan athletic track
located at the Crageens. The official opening was performed by the
Olympic 1,500 metre gold medal winner Ronnie Delaney, who described the
track as an essential development for the future of Irish athletics.
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"de Marisco" The Marsh
family held land in the marshes of Somerset -- whence the name -- and
were known in England at the time as "de Marisco", Latin for
"of the marsh". ("Marris", "Morris",
"Morrissey", etc. are variants.) Richard's
nephew, Geoffrey de Marisco, was a first-rate scoundrel among those
Anglo-Norman robber-barons who came ostensibly to help Dermot MacMurragh
regain his Leinster kingdom. Geoffrey built the motte, or fortified
hill, in Hollywood, County Wicklow, to defend his first holdings in
Ireland. Also the
nephew of the Archbishop of Dublin, and related to King Henry II,
Geoffrey de Marisco was Justiciar (chief governor) of Ireland for eight
years between 1215 and 1228. He was thus well placed to grab a good bit
of Leinster and Munster for himself, snatching equally from Irish chiefs
and fellow Normans alike. He tried to confiscate Terryglass in County
Tipperary on the flimsy excuse that the Norman owner had not fortified
it strongly enough, having built a stone house instead of a castle. The fact
that a child-king -- Henry III -- was on the throne did not exactly give
Geoffrey a free hand in managing the affairs of Ireland, but he took it
anyway. One of his tricks was to keep the taxes he collected in the
king's name, and spend the money, as one chronicler put it tactfully,
"more at his own free will than according to the king's
commands." He was eventually sacked. Later, he got caught with his
hand in the Church's till in Limerick and was
excommunicated. Geoffrey de
Marisco, his son William, and three of his nephews were implicated in a
nasty assassination on the Curragh, amidst plots and counter-plots and
treachery at the highest and lowest levels swirling as thick as Kildare
fog. On 1 July
1231, "Richard Marshall presented himself to the king as the heir
of his brother William Marshall [who had died in early April] ... The
king in reply, by the advice of the justiciary Hubert [de Burgh], told
him he had heard that his deceased brother's wife was pregnant, on which
account he could not listen to his demand till the truth of this matter
was discovered." Richard Marshall was then exiled, accused of
associating with the king's enemies in France. In 1234,
advisers of the king misled him (in their own best interests) into
ordering Geoffrey de Marisco "to seize him [Richard Marshall] if he
should happen to come to Ireland, and bring him, dead or alive, before
the king". Richard Marshall's extensive Irish holdings were
promised as a reward to whoever carried out this task. On 1 April
1234, Richard Marshall and a handful of men loyal to him, along with his
supposed friend and ally Geoffrey de Marisco and his soldiers, were
surrounded by the infamous Hugh de Lacy and a large number of knights on
the Curragh. The sides were more or less equally matched. Marshall was
called on to surrender. Geoffrey advised him against it, and Marshall
refused to surrender. When the
fighting started, Geoffrey suddenly remembered: "My wife is the
sister of the noble Hugh de Lacy [some historians doubt this], and I
cannot fight on your side against him with whom I am allied by
marriage." Geoffrey withdrew himself and his soldiers from the
battle, leaving Marshall and his men outnumbered ten to one. Marshall
said he would "seem a man of a wavering mind" if he
surrendered then, and the battle went on. Marshall killed six of the
knights, and the others feared to approach him. They persuaded foot
soldiers to maim his horse with lances, pitchforks, axes and halberds.
As he lay helpless on the ground in his armour, one of his enemies
lifted up his armour and wounded him in the back. He had fought for ten
hours. Marshall
was taken to a supposed friend's castle for medical treatment. He
recovered enough to walk about and play at dice, but after further
"treatment" by a doctor who probed his wounds with a red-hot
poker, he died 16 April. Afterwards,
Richard Marshall was proclaimed "The Knight of the Curragh"
for his heroic stand. Roger of Wendover says of him, "Amongst the
sons of men his person was so beautiful that nature seemed to have
striven with the virtues in its composition." Geoffrey
and his son William were at the same time accused of involvement in the
assassination and fined for siding with the murdered knight against the
king. Both charges seem to have been more or less justified. Afterwards,
William began a vendetta that "disturbed the peace and affected the
peace of mind of the king himself for many years", until eventually
he avenged Marshall by killing the chief assassin. The de
Mariscos were outlawed -- wrongly, I think -- and became pirates on the
Irish Sea. They concentrated their depredations on shipping to Dublin
and Drogheda, which prompted Dublin to beef up its city walls. Warning:
skip the next two paragraphs if you have a weak stomach. William was
accused -- probably falsely -- of instigating an attempt on the king's
life in 1238. The would-be assassin, who accused him, was torn limb from
limb by horses at Coventry, then beheaded. In 1242,
William was captured -- undoubtedly through treachery -- tried and
condemned. He was then "dragged from Westminster to the Tower of
London, and from thence to that instrument of punishment called a
gibbet, suspended on which he breathed forth his miserable life. After
he had grown stiff in death, his body was let down and disembowelled;
his entrails were immediately burnt on the spot, and his wretched body
divided into four parts, which were sent to the four principal cities of
the kingdom, that the sight of them might strike terror into all
beholders. His sixteen accomplices were all dragged through London at
the horse's tail, and hung on gibbets. ... And thus, as before
mentioned, horrible to relate, he endured not one, but several dreadful
deaths." The
13th-century historian Matthew Paris describes Geoffrey's end: "About
this time [1245], Geoffrey Marsh, a man who had been formerly a noble,
and not the least one amongst the magnates of Ireland, who had incurred
an indelible stain by the treacherous murder of Earl Richard Marshall,
and who was now an exile, and a wretched and proscribed man, having been
expelled from Scotland, banished from England, and disinherited in
Ireland, after the ignominious death of his son and the loss of all his
friends, was himself taken from amongst us; thus finally ending so many
deaths by his own." Uncle
Geoffrey's line of male descent died out in the 14th century, and so
fell a rotten -- though colourful -- branch from my family tree. from The
Song of Dermot and the Earl, a 14th-century French
poem* |
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