This book is more than the “cultural atlas” of its subtitle. Insomuch as it covers almost all aspects of the geography and history of the Iveragh Peninsula, it is nearer to a regional monograph in the old tradition of French geography. It is substantial not only in terms of its format and size (it weighs in at 3kg) but in the range of its content and the quality of its illustration. The joint editors have managed to weave together over 50 contributions from recognized experts in their fields, into a coherent, interdisciplinary, scholarly and very readable account. This could not have been achieved without support from institutions (University College Cork, the ordnance Survey and the National Tourism Development Authority among them) and the large number of individuals listed in the Acknowledgements. Throughout, the quality of maps and illustration is outstanding. Endnotes are useful for further references and there is a comprehensive index. John Crowley, geographer, and John Sheehan, archaeologist, both at University College Cork, are to be congratulated along with their cartographic editor, Mike Murphy, the University Press and its printers in Spain on producing a fine book. It is a worthy successor to the earlier writings on the area of, among others, Robert Lloyd Praeger, Frank Mitchell and Estyn Evans, and it deepens our understanding of the landscape, history and heritage of this distinctive corner of Atlantic Europe.

This book is a celebration of the famed Ring of Kerry in southwest Ireland from prehistoric times to the present. The use and range of illustrative material makes this book a visual delight. Recommended for all libraries supporting Irish Studies

Iveragh, A Cultural Atlas of the Ring of Kerry, is in effect a follow up to The Iveragh Peninsula: An Archaeological Survey, published in 1998 also by Cork University Press. Both books study Ireland’s largest peninsula, which extends out in to the Atlantic Ocean far enough to make it the westernmost point of Europe, and which constitutes one element of the county of Kerry. The Archaeological Survey was a big,thorough book, documenting in text, image and diagram, almost field by field, Iveragh’s extraordinarily rich inheritance of material remains of past settlement. Now in 2009 we have The Iveragh Peninsula: A Cultural Atlas of the Ring of Kerry, courtesy of State, institutional and private financial backing. It is a truly wonderful 512 page book, beautiful (and quite heavy) to hold, to feel and to look at, and greatly rewarding to read.

Cork University Press has a long and glorious history of documenting the parish and the county, and this book is perhaps the apogee of such enterprises. It looks like a very handsome coffee-table book, it is much more. It is a very digestible summary of research on every aspect of the physical topography, social and cultural life of the Iveragh Peninsula in West Munster.

The Iveragh Peninsula - A cultural atlas of the Ring of Kerry is a very beautiful and hugely informative publication . It is a treasure and a reservoir for anybody remotely interested in Kerry. Over 500 pages….it includes hundreds of photographs .. over 90 new maps as well as historic maps -some never published before. This publication should be in every house and it should be read in every house. It should be an integral part of the syllabus at primary, secondary and third level. Dozens of copies should be in every branch and mobile library in the area. It is essential reading for all economic, social and cultural activity. - Frank Lewis, Saturday Supplement, Radio Kerry 14th November '09

More than 40 contributors have come together to bring us an impressive volume dealing with one of the most attractive landscapes in Ireland. The Iveragh Peninsula–a cultural atlas of the Ring of Kerry (hb,€59/£50) is yet another of those highly illustrated, colour-rich and sumptuous productions from Cork University Press. Iveragh, the largest peninsula in the country and featuring the highest mountainous terrain, is a popular destination for tourists from all corners of the world. Edited by John Crowley and John Sheehan, the book presents a most comprehensive view of Iveragh, beginning with its geological origins and continuing through to contemporary developments in the landscape. Such a multi-layered landscape requires a multi-disciplinary approach to disentangle it and present it in this format. The presentation of the text is supported by stunning photographs, detailed maps and drawings of the highest quality, which describe in various degrees of detail the cultural background to Iveragh. Some of the photographs almost transport the reader to the location. Frank Coyne’s double-page image of the rock art overlooking Lough Brin and Valerie O’Sullivan’s take on the snow-capped Magillycuddy’s Reeks are particularly arresting shots. The book contains over 50 individual chapters, case-studies and features covering all sorts of topics, including archaeology, folklore, mythology, place-names, art history, geography, cartography and zoology. This book is a superb medium for the communication of this landscape and I am sure it will tempt many to visit the area whenever it stops raining!

this 'sweeping new book is a fascinating blend of geography, history and places of cultural interest in the Ring of Kerry.... ...The magic of this book lies in the way in which contemporary trends- in marketing, farming and such cultural developments as, for example, the Cill Rialaigh artists' retreat at Ballinskelligs - are linked to the great historic events and personalities, from the MacCarthy kings of Desmond, to Daniel O'Connell, or from the dolmens, cairns and standing stones to the sculptures in Sneem, from the arrival of the Milesians to the introduction of the Irish parochial systems, from Jack B. Yeats and Paul Henry to Saint Fionan of Lough Currane, from Kenmare lace to the War of Independence...Editors John Crowley and John Sheehan, cartographic editor Mike Murphy and consultants Hick Hogan and Helen Bradley share the honours of this publication- readers will have its vast pleasures.

....This is a wonderfully detailed, wonderfully illustrated, wonderfully informing account of one samll corner of our island. One would wish such a book could be done for every place. Sponsored by FEXCO, a large local employer and by several state sgaencies, this veritable encyclopedia is the work of some 52 contributors...Adjectives desert one when dealing with a book of this kind. It is just not a book to read, but a lovely thing to own and cherish if one has any interest at all, not just in the ten thousand year human history of Kerry but the million year old aspects of 'our own place'....

The Iveragh peninsula is one of our most glorious and beloved landscapes, and a new book puts the whole area into a geological, historical and social context THE PEOPLE OF the Iveragh peninsula are lucky. That would be the part of Ireland more commonly known as the Ring of Kerry, where huge vistas flood the horizon at every turn of the road. The Iveragh residents are not only fortunate because they live in a beautiful place: they’re additionally lucky to have a superb new book to consult about the place where they live. The Iveragh Peninsula: A Cultural Atlas of the Ring of Kerry was three years in the making and has 52 contributors, ranging from historians and archaeologists to mountaineers, poets and sports journalists. Edited by John Crowley and John Sheehan, the book examines the peninsula from a number of perspectives. There are as many layers within it as strata in the Kerry stone – history, geography, social history, culture, folklore. “When one looks around, one sees a continuously moving picture not just of the present but of our past.” That sentence, from Brendan O’Sullivan’s chapter on contemporary change and planning in the Iveragh peninsula, could be applied to the book as a whole. The Iveragh peninsula occupies the area that lies south of Killarney, roughly flanked by Killorglin and Kenmare. It’s a 140,000-hectare area that incorporates some of the country’s most famous lakes, mountains, and coastline, and one of Ireland’s two Unesco World Heritage sites, the Skelligs. One of the reasons Cork University Press decided to put considerable resources into the book is that the area receives so many visitors. Even if you don’t live there, you’re likely to have spent time in this part of the world, thus they are rightly hoping The Iveragh Peninsula will appeal to a wide audience. It all starts with geology. Only discovered in 1992, the footprints of tetrapods (four-legged vertebrates) on Valentia Island are the world’s oldest reliably dated evidence of amphibians walking on land, which is pretty thrilling. The photograph in the book looks a little as if a goat has been trotting across freshly washed sand; neat little regular prints. They’re actually stone tracks, 150 of them discovered in sandstone by a Swiss geology student when he was mapping the northeast coast of Valentia Island. The tracks would have been made by a creature that, according to the accompanying artist’s impression, looks a little like a crocodile with a large paddle-shaped tail. The creature would have lumbered across an ancient flood plain, resting its large tail every now and then. Afterwards, the fresh tracks were covered and preserved by a fine sand, brought there by floods. The area is now the country’s only geological National Heritage Area. Elsewhere, mountaineer Dermot Somers writes a personal essay about his knowledge of the mountains he has been climbing all his life. To Somers, Broaghnabinnia “is a sturdy thug of a mountain. There is no easy or elegant way up or down.” Archaeologist Tomás Ó Carragáin writes about mountain pilgrimages, and holy places of the peninsula and poet Paddy Bushe takes as his subject landscape, myth and imagination. He looks at place names in the Amergin poem, several of which are in and around the Waterville area, including a sea-rock still known locally as Carraig Éanna. “Two houses and one beauty salon in Waterville are named after it,” Bushes writes. “It is not certain whether their owners are aware of the name’s provenance, but its continued use is some sort of testament to the enduring power of the myth.” Several chapters use maps to focus on and highlight a particular subject. Thus, in archaeologist Frank Coyne’s piece on rock art, there is a useful accompanying map that gives locations of the approximately 120 sites on the peninsula. There are also wonderful photographs illustrating several of these sites, showing concentric circles carved into stone with dramatic backgrounds, empty of any sign of human habitation. Looking at a series of maps has a cumulative effect. You get to read the layers of history as you turn the pages. For example, in the same luscious pieces of land that so many tourists now throng to, such as Kenmare town, there was once a workhouse. During the Famine, there were so many people seeking refuge in it that in 1847 the medical officer there described the place as “an engine for producing disease and death”. The Kenmare workhouse, built to shelter 500, is now a private residence. The Great Famine map reveals how Iveragh, more vulnerable than other places in Ireland due to its remoteness and high population density, struggled to cope. On the maps, you can see where workhouses, relief committees and coastguard stations that provided relief were located, and where the temporary hospitals were set up. In the same chapter, there is a map depicting the dramatic population changes within the decade 1841-1851. In a county that had many landlords, times may have changed, but many of the original planted gardens still thrive, such as the 2,000-acre estate of Derreen, which gets its own chapter. Prior to the Famine, butter production was prevalent on the peninsula, one of the side-products of the famous Kerry cow. Made on local farms, the butter was carried to the Cork butter market in firkins along a series of mountain tracks. The butter sold there made its way all over the world. Colin Sage and Flicka Small, authors of a chapter on the food culture of the Iveragh peninsula, recount that Iveragh butter “ended up being consumed everywhere from the colonial plantations of the West Indies to the pioneer settlements of Australia”. Many of the existing green lanes of rural Kerry, some of which are now part of the Kerry Way, are still known locally as the “butter roads”. Remoteness is relative. Iveragh may be a long way from some parts of Ireland, but it’s the closest point to Newfoundland. Hence, Valentia was the location of the first successful transatlantic cable link. The American financier Cyrus Field, whose idea it was to lay a transatlantic cable, had it sealed with a substance called gutta-percha, a waterproof organic substance that came from Malaysia. In Denis Linehan’s chapter on the telegraph cables, he recounts that when the underwater cable was successfully laid, enterprising hawkers in New York sold earrings made of gutta-percha and breast-pins of little pieces of cable wire. Iveragh’s dramatic landscapes have inspired generations of people to try and capture it in different ways. Mary Butler, who died in 1934 aged 83, was a member of a local landlord family. In 1910, she replied to a public appeal from Bertram Windle, then president of UCC, who was looking for people in Munster to record the locations of antiquities in their area. He did not have much success, but from Mary Butler he did get 19 careful watercolours of archaeological monuments on the peninsula, some of which are reproduced in the book. The originals are all now held in UCC, along with the accompanying letters she wrote to Windle. Among the many other visual artists who have interpreted the landscape, and whose images are included here, are Jack B Yeats, Paul Henry, Pauline Bewick, and, latterly, the painters who have worked at Cill Rialaig. You may not be able to eat the Iveragh scenery, as the expression goes, but if you’re considering tackling the Tour de France, you might be interested to find out what the winner of the 1958 Rás Tailteann, Mick Murphy, ate while training for the challenging 1,494km race. GAA correspondent Michael Foley, in his chapter on the sporting heritage of the peninsula, records that Cahirciveen-born Murphy retreated to the Nadd mountain prior to the race. While there, “he subsisted on grated carrot, raw eggs, turnips, potatoes, honey, juice extracted from the stems of nettles, goat’s milk and cow’s blood”. @The Irish Times

The Iveragh Peninsula, or Ring of Kerry, enjoyed a starring role when it was the location of the annual world-famous charity cycle recently and it is now set to take centre stage yet again thanks to a new book. The Iveragh Peninsula: A Cultural Atlas of the Ring of Kerry was launched at Tech Amergin in Waterville on Friday, by John A Murphy, Emeritus Professor of History, University College Cork, and Ceann Comhairle John O'Donoghue. Given its status as a peninsula projecting into the Atlantic, the history and culture of the Iveragh Peninsula have been moulded by external influences as well as by regional and national ones, according to the authors of the, John Crowley of the Department of Geography, University College Cork, and John Sheehan of UCC’s Department of Archaeology. "Its story is multi-layered, involving the imprint of mythological as well as historic settlers and invaders," stated the authors of the new book. "The peninsula has witnessed significant periods of transition, perhaps none more so than in the present era. “This book seeks to deepen and illuminate our understanding of its landscape, history and heritage." Although not a conventional atlas, the publication contains many historic and newly commissioned maps from over 40 contributors. "It provides the reader with a broad range of perspectives on the peninsula and the human interactions with it since prehistoric times to the present day," said Mike Collins publications director of Cork University Press, which publishes the book. "It also combines many different approaches towards understanding the distinctive character – both physical and human – of this unique landscape." The publication comprises over fifty individual chapters and case studies and it opens with an exploration of the physical and environmental setting of the peninsula. Subsequent chapters deal with its development over the millennia and the influences that have shaped it. Iveragh's past and present are considered, using the evidence of disciplines such as archaeology, arthistory, cartography, folklore, geography, geology, history, mythology and zoology. The range of topics that arise from this approach is tremendously wide, and occasionally surprising.

This magnificent book is a detailed compendium of the most important cultural aspects of one of Ireland’s most stunning landscapes, Kerry’s Iveragh peninsula. The variety and depth of the heritage of this distinctive region is impressive in both Irish and European contexts, particularly in terms of landscape, archaeology and folklore as well as for the pivotal role it played in early global telecommunications. This volume is an inspiring example of interdisciplinary scholarship in which the work of academics and local historians is successfully combined with that of poets and artists. The result is an accessible, highly readable and beautifully illustrated volume that succeeds in conveying a true sense of the multifaceted spirit and dúchas of the peninsula that is Iveragh.

This is one of the most beautiful books I've been privileged to experience. I say 'experience' because it turns history, geography and mythology into a stunningly arresting gallery through which I can move in a state of fascinated admiration and delight. Sometimes, moving through that unique gallery, I simply close my eyes and enjoy the beauty of the world created and explored in Kerry by all the gifted people who produced this book. Cork University Press, Editors John Crowley and John Sheehan, Cartographic Editor Mike Murphy, and Consultants Nick Hogan and Helen Bradley can be proud of this massive work of art which will charm, delight and educate generations to come.