Contact Us
Opening Hours
Directions
Donate
The earliest known settlement in the area we now call Skibbereen, the Gortnaclohy McCarthy Reagh Castle, once stood c. 1 km south-east of the town in the townland of Gortnaclohy.
Skibbereen’s newly-opened facility, The Rock Amenity Park, once formed part of this McCarthy territory, and is situated on land referred to today as ‘The Rock’ but was traditionally known as ‘Windmill Hill’.
The Petty Parish Map of the 1650s shows Gortnaclohy Castle with just a few cabins situated in the area we now know as Skibbereen town (Image courtesy of the National Library of Ireland).
The description given with this map says that “on the aforesaid Gortnaclough are scituate [situated] a ruined castle & a church with an orchard and garden with a mill and many cabins” .
In the seventeenth century, with the end of the Gaelic era, ownership of these McCarthy lands were transferred to English settlers. The colonists were granted rights to hold fairs and markets in Gortnaclohy in 1615 and 1681 and, over time, Windmill Hill became the ‘Fair Green’.
Skibbereen grew in importance in the following centuries, becoming a busy centre of trade following the establishment of these fairs and markets. With the main road into the town coming though adjacent High Street until c. 1815, Windmill Hill was positioned at the centre of Skibbereen’s commercial activities.
A Market House (on the site of today’s Town Hall) collected the tolls for the Fair Green with “large quantities of butter, corn, pigs and cattle being annually disposed of at its weekly markets and fairs”. A bustling place, it attracted all sorts with a report from the Fair Green in 1864 advising that “nine pickpockets were brought before their worships by the police”.
The origins of the name ‘Windmill Hill’ are lost in the mist of time as there is no remaining evidence of a windmill ever in existence here. However, it is possible as windmills have been used in Ireland since the thirteenth century, with over 230 of them in operation by the 1830s. The 2015 archaeological excavation of the ‘rock cut houses’ (see below) suggests some sort of industrial activity was carried out on Windmill Hill but it’s not known if this involved a windmill.
This representation of a contemporary windmill in Youghal gives a sense of what might have once existed in Skibbereen.
This area was particularly badly affected by the Great Famine of the 1840s (see below) but, even at the height of the crisis in 1847, the Fair Green market “was supplied with meat, bread and fish”.
Post-Famine, Windmill Hill fell into decline despite the erection of “a new block of labourers’ and artisans’ dwellings … on a fine healthy site on the Windmill by Mr G.W. Johnson” in 1892. Now the property of Cork County Council, this site was developed in association with the community organisation ‘The Friends of the Rock’ and The Rock Amenity Park was formally opened in 2024.