Dunmanway (, official Irish name: ) is a market town in County Cork, in the southwest of Ireland. It is the geographical centre of the region known as West Cork. It is the birthplace of Sam Maguire, an Irish Protestant republican, for whom the trophy of the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship is named. The town centre is built on and around two rivers, which are tributaries of the larger River Bandon, which passes by at the east end of the town.
The town is twinned with Quéven, France. Dunmanway won the Irish Tidy Towns Competition in 1982. The town came to national and international attention in 2009 when Liverpool Football Club played a pre-season soccer friendly in the area.
The population of Dunmanway at the 2011 census was 1,585,
Name
The town's Irish language name is rendered, among other variations, as or . In A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, published by Samuel Lewis in 1837, it is given as meaning "the castle of the yellow river" or "the castle on the little plain", referring to a MacCarthy castle in the area. Other sources suggest it means "the fort of the yellow women".
History
thumb|A Bronze Age trumpet, found near Dunmanway, is now held in the British Museum
Origins
Evidence of ancient settlement in the area includes a number of ringfort, standing stone and ogham stone sites in the townlands of Dunmanway North, Dunmanway South, Demesne and Underhill. A Bronze Age trumpet, discovered in the area, is now held in the British Museum.
From the mid-13th to the late 17th century the surrounding districts of the town of Dunmanway were included in the territory of the MacCarthy Clan.
Dunmanway Castle and the MacCarthys of Gleannacroim
Dunmanway Castle once stood on a bank of the Sally River on the left-hand side of present-day Castle Street. It was one of the chief residences of the MacCarthy Lords of Gleannacroim, cousins of the MacCarthy Reagh sept. Dating from the late 15th century, the tower house is recorded to have been built by Catherine Fitzgerald. There was likely a small settlement in the environs of the castle.
In 1590, Dunmanway and its hinterlands were surrendered and regranted as freehold under English tenure to Tadhg-an-Fhorsa MacCarthy being part of the sept's ancestral lands. In 1615, under King James I, a charter reaffirmed his possession of the manor and manorial privileges, including the right to hold a Saturday market at Kilbarrah (now Kilbarry), an annual fair at Ballyhallowe (now Ballyhalwick) on 24 September and legal jurisdiction through a court of pie powder. These grants reflect an earlier phase of Crown-sponsored territorial consolidation in the Dunmanway area, preceding the 17th-century colonial developments.
Planned development
By the late 17th century, much of the MacCarthy estate had been forfeited and Sir Richard Cox—Lord Chancellor of Ireland (1703-1707)—soon began acquiring extensive lands in the Dunmanway area. This included property previously granted to the Cromwellian officer Lieutenant-Colonel William Arnopp.
Cox was the town's most influential early patron. In 1693, he obtained a grant from King William III to hold regular market days and fairs in Dunmanway. According to 19th-century sources, the emerging town was also established to serve as a strategic rest point for troops moving between Bandon and Bantry. Cox initiated a programme of planned settlement and development, playing a central role in shaping the early economy of the town, particularly by promoting the development of the flax and linen industry. To that end, Cox brought skilled artisans from Ulster to train others in the required techniques. He sponsored numerous incentives to stimulate production. These included rent-free housing for top producers, bonuses for efficient labourers, rewards for schoolgirls who demonstrated strong loom skills, and production contests with generous prizes.
In 1700, around thirty families lived in the town. As of 1735, the town comprised forty houses and a population estimated at between 200 and 300 residents. By 1747, the linen industry was well established and Cox's personal census recorded 557 people; two years later, the population had risen to 807.
Free-market economic policies in England led to the removal of protective duties on linen in 1827. In 1837, Samuel Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of Ireland recorded a population of 2,738. It also noted the town's shifting economic fortunes:
<blockquote>"The manufacture of linen continued to flourish for some years, but at present there are very few looms at work. A porter and ale brewery, established in 1831, produces 2,600 barrels annually; there are also two tanyards and two boulting-mills, the latter capable of grinding annually 15,000 bags of flour, and there are two or three smaller mills in the vicinity. Since 1810 a considerable trade in corn has been carried on."</blockquote>
Great Famine
West Cork was hit hard by the 1840s Great Famine. On 9 February 1847, U.S. Vice President George M. Dallas chaired a famine relief meeting in Washington, D.C. where participants heard a letter addressed to the "Ladies of America" from the women of The Dunmanway Indian Meal Ladies' Committee:
<blockquote>"Oh! that our American sisters could see the labourers on our roads, able-bodied men, scarcely clad, famishing with hunger, with despair in their once cheerful faces, staggering at their work ... oh! that they could see the dead father, mother or child, lying coffinless and hear the screams of the survivors around them, caused not by sorrow, but by the agony of hunger."</blockquote>
In the early 1850s, following the migrations and evictions which characterized the famine's upheavals, more than seventy percent of Dunmanway residents did not own any land.
War of Independence
On 28 November 1920, during the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921), seventeen British Auxiliary Division troops were killed by the Irish Republican Army at the Kilmichael Ambush (near Dunmanway). The subsequent sacking and burning of the city of Cork by the British forces is thought to be linked to the Kilmichael Ambush. On 15 December 1920, an Auxiliary shot dead the local priest, Canon Magner, for refusing to toll his church's bells on Armistice Day; a local boy, Tadhg Crowley, was also killed in an apparently random incident. There were numerous other actions in and around Dunmanway during the war. In addition, after a truce was declared in July 1921, the local IRA killed a number of alleged informers. Controversy continues in particular over the killing of ten men (including three residents of Dunmanway) in the spring of 1922, all of whom were Protestants. These events are sometimes known as the Dunmanway killings.
Late 20th century
Between 1975 and 1999, Swedish multinational firm Mölnlycke Health Care operated a manufacturing facility in Dunmanway. The plant employed over 250 people at its peak.