What is it about the Dingle peninsula that ensnares the senses?  Is it the ever changing and dramatic moods, the friendliness of the people, the historical legacy, the remains of which litter the place, or a restorative feeling of invigoration one gets whist there?  Probably all of these and more.  

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Slea Head Dingle.  Upper picture Tod Adams.   Lower picture by Sean Tomkins

From the head of the Connor pass looking northwards.

For more pictures visit the DoDingle photo gallery.

It would be foolish to try and convey the history of the area here, this is far better done by visiting the likes of the excellent  DoDingle website, from which the following extract is taken about the town of Dingle itself.

Nobody knows when Dingle first became a centre of population. Some people mention the fact that Queen Elizabeth I of England announced, in 1585, her intention of granting the town a charter, and suggest that Dingle is therefore four hundred years old. However, the place was populated for a good deal more than four hundred years before Queen Bess took an interest.

The proper name for the town is Daingean Uí Chúis, O’Cush’s fortress. The fact that there is no record of the name O’Cush has led to a suggestion that the name is a corruption of Hussey, or Huysse, a Flemish family which came to the area in the thirteenth century. In a document of 1290 the name of the town is given as Dengynhuysse.

When the Norman settlers arrived in the thirteenth century they quickly set about developing Dingle as a very substantial trading port. Butter, wool, hides, fish and meat were exported, and coal, salt, clothes and wine were imported. By the fourteenth century it was a major Irish centre of trade, particularly with Spain and France. Merchants’ houses were built here of Spanish design, and small decorated stones set into the outside walls of houses in Green Street come from this period of Spanish influence.

The Spanish role went beyond trade, for Spanish troops combined with Irish rebel forces against the English in 1580, during what were known as the Desmond Wars. Their intervention was tragically unsuccessful and almost the entire Spanish and Papal Italian force was massacred by the English at Smerwick, west of Dingle. The Irish part of the rebellion was just as ruthlessly put down: the Earl of Ormond, known as the Black Earl, killed men, women and children, took livestock and destroyed crops and houses through the length and breadth of the peninsula. As Edmund Spenser, English poet and secretary to Lord Grey, the commander of the English army, wrote: “In short space there was none almost left and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of man or beast.”

At the end of 1585 Queen Elizabeth announced her intention of granting Dingle a charter, setting up a town corporation, and providing for the building of a wall to enclose the commercial quarter of the town. The charter was finally granted in 1607 and provided an administrative and electoral framework for the life of the town. The corporation was governed by twelve burgesses and a sovereign, who was elected annually. The sovereign was responsible for the administration of justice, he presided over the corporation, collected customs dues and was coroner.

Dingle remained an important port and trading town in spite of the considerable destruction of the Desmond Wars, and from 1584 until the Act of Union in 1800 it returned two representatives to the Irish parliament. With the changes in the English administration of Ireland following the Act of Union, the corporation and sovereign quickly became irrelevant.

The above was taken from 'The Dingle Peninsula' by Steve MacDonogh (p94/95), and published by Brandon books in 2000 (well my version was).

There is an excellent history of the railway on the DoDingle site as well which can be found below, as well as those on several other pages;

An excellent historical site and guide to the rest of the Dingle peninsula

Great pictures of the new line from Ted Polet - very photogenic

An American view

Another tour pics