One of the most beautiful places in Skibbereen town is what is known locally as the Church Meadow. The site of Abbeystrewry Church and Parochial Hall is not a meadow at all of course but it is an oasis of tranquility right in the centre of town. There has been a church on this site […]

Skibbereen had a large and active Methodist community from early in the 1800s. However, that community dwindled substantially in the latter decades of the twentieth century. John Bredin, a Methodist Preacher stationed in Cork City, is credited with bringing Methodism to Skibbereen. In 1779 he literally rode into town and announced that he intended to […]

Market Street is a relatively new street in the town of Skibbereen and was constructed in the late 1850s, after the Famine. A building adjacent to what is now Connolly’s Electrical Shop at the Square was demolished to allow access to area behind it. In 1853 Table Lane, which runs from High Street to Market […]

  The Famine mass graves at Abbeystrowry Graveyard in Skibbereen are one of the most poignant Famine sites in Ireland. The ‘pits’, as they were known contemporaneously, are the final resting place of up to 10,000 victims of Ireland’s Great Hunger. Click here to see a short film which gives the background of these mass […]

The beautiful old graveyard at Caheragh is one of the burial grounds which has been surveyed in recent years by Skibbereen Heritage Centre. A short video about Caheragh Old Graveyard, which was made by Skibbereen Heritage Centre, was published recently and generated quite an amount of interest. Among the graves highlighted in the video is […]

CLICK HERE for our latest ‘Graveyard Video Tour’ – this time of Abbeymahon Graveyard in Skibbereen. Abbeymahon Graveyard is the final resting place of many interesting people from the Protestant community in the Skibbereen area. These include Frederick Peel Eldon Potter, the proprietor of the ‘Skibbereen Eagle’ newspaper who became famous for ‘keeping its eye […]

In the mid-nineteenth century, Ireland was mostly a rural based peasant society. Out of a population of over 8.5 million people, 86 per cent lived in rural Ireland and the vast majority of those struggled to eke out a meagre subsistence. The fundamental problem in pre-Famine Ireland was poverty. Much of the illness and disease […]

As far back as 1890 the Skibbereen Town Commissioners were discussing a site for a new Crown Post Office in the town. However, it took nearly fifteen years before the ambition was realised and a new Post Office opened in 1904. Like most things in the town, the process was far from straight-forward and business […]

The Town Hall is one of those places that holds some memories for everyone who has lived in or near Skibbereen over the past one hundred and fifty years or more. Since the late 1850s the Town Hall has been the most prominent building in the Town Square, the focal point of Skibbereen, right in […]

Over 15,000 previously unavailable genealogy records relating to the greater West Cork area are now added to our Graveyard Database. Skibbereen Heritage Centre has been digitising Cork County Council burial registers for a number of graveyards in West Cork for some time now and the results of this work are now available on this site.  […]

The town of Skibbereen is built in the low-lying Ilen Valley and is mostly surround by hills. One of the best vantage points to view Skibbereen town is Windmill Rock, which rises behind North Street and slopes up from High Street. This was obviously the site of a windmill at one time, but we have […]

In Slater’s Director of 1846, Skibbereen is listed as having two hotels, both of them in North Street. The Becher Arms Hotel was run by Mary Hegarty, and the Mountjoy Hotel was run by Tomas Mountjoy. The Becher Arms Hotel opened in January 1838 at North Street, with Mrs Mary Hegarty as proprietor, and traded […]

In its almost two-hundred-year history, we think this may be the first time that there will be no Easter Week ceremonies at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Skibbereen. The ceremonies throughout the week leading up to Easter Sunday are the highlight of the religious year for Christians all over the world, but at this extraordinary time […]

The Irish revolutionary Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa’s fire and his fight against injustice was forged by Famine. As a child, he led a comfortable life in Rosscarbery and Reenascreena until the arrival of the Famine that changed his life. His father lost his business and died from ‘famine fever’ in 1847 when Rossa was just 15 […]

While our exhibitions are closed to the public, we can still share the story of the Great Famine in Skibbereen with you …. ‘The Great Irish Famine: Remember Skibbereen’ TV documentary was made by the award-winning film-maker Pat Collins of Harvest Films. It features interviews with Professor Joe Lee, Gary White Deer, Fr Paddy Hickey […]

As far back as 1850 a site for a convent had been established in Skibbereen when Sir William Wrixon Becher donated eight acres of ‘good land’ adjacent to what is now St Patrick’s Cathedral. The land was acquired by Rev. John Fitzpatrick and a 200-year lease was obtained by Dr William Keane, who was consecrated […]

In terms of Famine heritage, Skibbereen is almost certainly one of the most important towns in Ireland. Many buildings and areas in the town have a link to the Great Irish Famine (1845-52) and because so much was written and documented about that time in Skibbereen, we know a lot about these sites. In January […]