About County Kerry
County Kerry occupies the most southwesterly point of Ireland, a county of remarkable natural beauty, the Ring of Kerry, the Dingle Peninsula, Killarney's lakes and the remote Skellig islands rising from the Atlantic. Kerry people are known across Ireland for their wit, their storytelling and their passion for Gaelic football. The county's isolation preserved both its landscape and its cultural traditions.
History
Kerry was one of the last areas of Ireland to be effectively conquered by the English, its mountain passes and sea inlets made military control almost impossible. The O'Sullivan and McCarthy families ruled here for centuries. The Desmond Rebellions of the 16th century devastated the county, and Edmund Spenser's famous description of a starving Kerry landscape shocked Elizabethan England.
How Kerry families left Ireland
Kerry families left through Cork's port of Cobh and through the smaller Kerry ports. The county was severely affected by the Famine, and emigration continued at a high rate throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Kerry people settled heavily in Boston, New York and Chicago, where Irish-American communities were built around Kerry county associations.
Places worth visiting in County Kerry
- Skellig Michael, the notable early Christian monastery perched on a rock twelve kilometres out in the Atlantic
- The Ring of Kerry, the coastal drive around the Iveragh Peninsula through some of Ireland's finest scenery
- Killarney National Park, Ireland's first national park, protecting ancient oak woodland and three mountain lakes
- Dingle Peninsula, the westernmost point of Europe, with the highest concentration of ancient monuments in Ireland
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