Kenmare's heritage: the stone circle, the lace and the planned town

It would be easy to treat Kenmare as a place to eat and a base for the drives and miss what is underneath it. The town has a genuine, layered history, from a Bronze-Age monument on its edge to a lace tradition kept alive since the 1860s, all of it walkable from the market square. Here is the heritage worth an hour or two between meals.

The stone circle

A five-minute walk from the square, on a low rise above the town, stands the Kenmare Stone Circle, known locally as the Druid's Circle. It is one of the largest stone circles in the south-west of Ireland and, unusually, a complete one: fifteen standing stones set in a ring around a central boulder dolmen, a large capstone raised on smaller supports. It dates from the Bronze Age, which puts it well over three thousand years old, and it was almost certainly a ritual and burial site. You reach it through a field gate with an honesty box, usually a couple of euro, so bring coins. Go early or late for the quiet, and take a moment with the age of the thing; there is very little else this old that you can walk to from a town centre.

The lace

Kenmare's other great heritage is a craft rather than a monument. The town has made needlepoint lace since the 1860s, when the Poor Clare nuns, who came to Kenmare in the 1860s, established lace-making as relief work in the hard years after the Famine. Kenmare lace, worked with needle and thread rather than bobbins, became one of the finest of the Irish laces, prized far beyond Kerry. The tradition is kept alive today at the Kenmare Lace and Design Centre, above the town's Heritage Centre by the square, where you can see historic and modern pieces and, in season, watch and learn the craft from local makers. It is a small, genuine thing, and a good wet-weather stop, but it is worth seeking out as a living piece of the town's story rather than a museum case.

The planned town

The town itself is a heritage object. Kenmare did not grow at a crossroads by chance; it was laid out deliberately on its distinctive X-plan, three main streets meeting at a triangular market square, developed under the Lansdowne estate in the Georgian period. That planned shape is why the town feels so orderly and walks so easily, and it is part of why Kenmare is a designated Heritage Town and a two-time national Tidy Towns winner, in 2000 and 2013. As you walk the triangle, look at the strong colour of the shopfronts and the consistency of the streetscape; it is a rare surviving example of a small planned town, and the plan is still doing its job two and a half centuries on.

The tidal town

Kenmare's history is tied to its water as much as its streets. The town sits at the head of Kenmare Bay, and the name Ceann Mara, head of the sea, records exactly that; the so-called Kenmare River is not a river but a tidal sea inlet reaching in from the Atlantic. That salt water shaped the town, from the pier and the boat trade to the seals that still haul out on the rocks a short cruise from the quay. A walk down to the pier and along the shore of Reenagross Park, where the Roughty and the Sheen rivers meet the tide, joins the human heritage of the streets to the older heritage of the bay, and it is worth doing on a falling tide when the mudflats and their wading birds are exposed.

The church and the rest

Round out the heritage wander with Holy Cross Church, the fine Gothic-Revival Catholic church built in the 1860s a short walk from the square, worth stepping into for its timber roof and coloured window light. From there the town's other stories are close at hand: the pier and the tidal bay that gave Kenmare its name, the Reenagross woodland where the rivers meet the sea, and the food culture that is the town's living heritage as much as its lace. An hour or two spent on the old layers makes the good dinner that follows sit better.