Qualla: Buttevant

Buttevant: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Towel401, CC BY-SA 4.0. The name is a battle cry. On the coat of arms of the de Barry family, the Norman lords who built Buttevant as their north Cork stronghold in the 13th century, the motto reads Butez en Avant - 'Strike forward,' or, more colloquially, 'Bash your way forward.' Six centuries of Latin scribes, Irish-speaking neighbours, and English officials wore the phrase down into Buttevant. The town the de Barrys built around their keep, their friary, their priory, and their Awbeg bridge has been writing itself into Irish history ever since - in markets and horse fairs, in steeplechases and military barracks, in the train disaster of 1980 and the Cahirmee Horse Fair that still fills the main street every 12 July.

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Image: Towel401 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Buttevant: Norman Blueprint

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chmee2, CC BY-SA 3.0. Henry III granted David Og de Barry a market here on 26 September 1234, to be held on Sundays, plus a fair on the vigil and day of St Luke the Evangelist - 17 and 18 October - and on six days following. The town grew on the pattern Normans repeated all over Munster: a keep on hig...

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Image: Chmee2 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Buttevant: Bash Your Way Forward

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0. It is from one of those friaries that the steeplechase began. In 1752, two local gentlemen - Edmund Blake and Cornelius O'Callaghan - bet on a cross-country horse race from the steeple of the Buttevant Protestant church to the steeple of Doneraile, four and a half miles away. The...

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Image: Andreas F. Borchert | CC BY-SA 4.0

Buttevant: Castle and Barracks

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Henry Craigie Brewster, Public domain. Buttevant Castle, once the Barry stronghold, eventually passed into private hands. In 1812, its owner John Anderson gave 23 acres in the town to the British Army for a military barracks. The barracks took nearly three years to build. Divided into three quadrangles, with a gymnasi...

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Image: Henry Craigie Brewster | Public domain

Buttevant: Cill na Mullach

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dbee01, CC BY-SA 4.0. What the Irish-speakers called Buttevant has been argued over for centuries. The oral tradition consistently said Cill na Mullach - 'Church of the Hillocks' - and that is what John O'Donovan recorded in the Ordnance Survey field books in the early 19th century, when much of the a...

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Image: Dbee01 | CC BY-SA 4.0