About Kenmare
The history, geography, and character of Kenmare.
History & Heritage
A planned Georgian market town
Kenmare is not a village that grew by accident but a town that was designed. Its distinctive X-plan, three main streets, Main Street, Henry Street and Shelbourne Street, meeting at a triangular market square, was laid out under the Lansdowne estate in the Georgian period, and the shape still governs how the town works and how you walk it. That planning, along with the strong colour of the shopfronts and the care the town takes with itself, is why Kenmare is a designated Heritage Town and a two-time national Tidy Towns winner, in 2000 and 2013. The market square remains the heart of it, the focus of the weekly market and the peak-of-summer Fair Day, and the planned streets give the town a tidiness and a legibility unusual on this stretch of coast.
One of Ireland's best small food towns
For a town of about 2,566 people, Kenmare eats remarkably well, and food is now the main reason many people come. The town carries a run of serious kitchens, from long-standing names like Packie's, The Lime Tree and Mulcahy's to family-run rooms and gastropubs, alongside a smoked-salmon curer, a French-trained chocolatier out at Bonane, artisan bakers and a good market. It is worth being clear about one thing: while several Kenmare restaurants are listed in the Michelin Guide, none currently holds a star, so the town's reputation rests on consistent quality and local produce rather than a starred badge. What Kenmare offers is a refined, walkable base where you can eat very well two nights running, which is exactly what a food town should be.
The bay and the two rings
Kenmare sits at the head of Kenmare Bay, and it is worth knowing that the so-called Kenmare River is not a river at all but a tidal sea inlet reaching in from the Atlantic, which is why the sea, the seals and the tides matter here. From the pier, Seafari cruises and local kayaking take you out onto that sheltered water. The town is also a road junction that most visitors overlook: the Ring of Kerry runs through on its way north over Moll's Gap toward Killarney, while the quieter Ring of Beara loops south and west over the dramatic Healy Pass. The Beara loop straddles two counties, with Kenmare and the north shore in Kerry and the peninsula's far end, around Castletownbere and Allihies, in Co. Cork, so it is a Kerry-and-Cork drive rather than a purely Kerry one.
Stone circles, lace and the deep past
Kenmare wears its history close to the surface. A few minutes' walk from the market square stands the Kenmare Stone Circle, a complete Bronze-Age ring of fifteen stones around a central boulder dolmen, one of the largest in the south-west and reached through an honesty-box gate. In the town itself, needlepoint lace has been made since the 1860s, when the Poor Clare nuns established lace-making as relief work, and Kenmare lace became one of the finest of the Irish laces, still shown and taught at the Lace and Design Centre above the Heritage Centre. Add the Gothic-Revival Holy Cross Church of the 1860s and the planned Georgian streets themselves, and the town rewards a slow wander as much as a good dinner.
Wildlife & Nature
Marine Life
Grey and common seals
Kenmare Bay is a tidal sea inlet with resident seal colonies, and grey and common seals are the wildlife highlight of a trip on the water. The Seafari cruises from the pier make for the rocks where the seals haul out, and they are a near-certain sighting on a calm day, along with the sea birds of the bay.
Spring to autumn, on a bay cruise from the pier
Estuary and shore birds
The tidal estuary where the Roughty and the Sheen meet the bay, along the edge of Reenagross Park, draws waders and shore birds, best watched on a falling or low tide when the mudflats are exposed. It makes the woodland-and-shore walk as much a birdwatching stroll as a leg-stretch.
Autumn and winter, on a low tide from the Reenagross shore paths