Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Self-Guided Walk
Dingle Introductory Historical Walk
This quick 10-stop circle through town gives you a once-over-lightly overview and good
orientation.
Start at the “old roundabout” (next to O'Flaherty's pub, not the “new roundabout” by
the hospital), which replaced the big bridge over the town river in the 1980s. Step out to
the tiny pedestrian bridge (toward the bay) with the black wrought-iron railing. This was
the original train line coming into Dingle (the westernmost train station in all of Europe
from 1891 to 1953). The train once picked up fish here; its operators boasted that the cargo
would be in London markets within 24 hours. The narrow-gauge tracks ran right along the
harborfront. All the land beyond the old buildings you see today has been reclaimed from
the sea. Look inland and find the building on the left with the slate siding (the back wall
of O'Flaherty's pub) facing the worst storms coming in from the sea. This was the typical
design for 19th-century weatherproofing. The radio tower marks the salmon-pink police
station.
Dingle's History
The wet sod of Dingle is soaked with medieval history. In the dimmest depths of
the Dark Ages, peace-loving, bookish monks fled the chaos of the Continent and
its barbarian raids. They sailed to the drizzly fringe of the known world—to places
like Dingle. These monks kept literacy alive in Europe, and later provided scribes
to Charlemagne, who ruled much of Europe in the year 800.
It was from this peninsula that the semi-mythical explorer-monk St. Brendan is
said to have set sail in the sixth century in search of a legendary western paradise.
Some think he beat Columbus to North America by almost a thousand years (see
sidebar on here ) .
Dingle was a busy seaport in the late Middle Ages. Dingle and Tralee (covered
later in this chapter) were the only walled towns in Kerry. Castles stood at the low
and high ends of Dingle's Main Street, protecting the Normans from the angry and
dispossessed Irish outside. Dingle was a gateway to northern Spain—a three-day
sailduesouth.Many14thand15th-centurypilgrimsleftfromDinglefortherevered
Spanish church in Santiago de Compostela, thought to house the bones of St. James.
In Dingle's medieval heyday, locals traded cowhides for wine. When Dingle's
position as a trading center waned, the town faded in importance. In the 19th cen-
tury, it was a linen-weaving center. Through most of the 20th century, fishing dom-
inated, and the only visitors were scholars and students of old Irish ways. Then, in
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