Qualla: Dripsey

Dripsey: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathan Thacker, CC BY-SA 2.0. For nine years between 1999 and 2007, the village of Dripsey held the Guinness world record for the shortest Saint Patrick's Day parade. It measured 23.4 metres - the distance between the front doors of the village's two pubs, The Weigh Inn and The Lee Valley. Then The Lee Valley closed, and there was no second pub to walk to, and the record ended. This is the kind of place Dripsey is. The kind that names its parade after the distance to the next pint. But Dripsey is also the kind of place where the IRA waited in winter mud for a British convoy in January 1921, and where a woman called Mary Lindsay walked to Ballincollig Barracks to tell what she knew, and where seven people died as a result. Both things are true. The village holds them at the same time.

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Image: Jonathan Thacker | CC BY-SA 2.0

Dripsey: Muddy river, model village

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Linsdell from St. Andrews, Canada, CC BY 2.0. The name itself is hydrological. Dripsey comes from the Irish Druipseach, meaning muddy river - a literal description of the Dripsey, a tributary of the Lee that runs through a deep, well-wooded glen south of the village. The village has three parts. Lower Dripsey, Dripsey Cross,...

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Image: Robert Linsdell from St. Andrews, Canada | CC BY 2.0

Dripsey: Carrignamuck, and the families who came after

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0. Walk the back road to Coachford and a five-storey tower house rises out of the trees. Carrignamuck was built in the 15th century by the MacCarthy Clan of Munster as an outpost of Blarney Castle, securing the western reach of their lordship. In 1650, Cromwell's general Lord Broghi...

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Image: DeFacto | CC BY-SA 4.0

Dripsey: Godfrey's Cross, 28 January 1921

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hywel Williams, CC BY-SA 2.0. On the afternoon of 28 January 1921, an IRA ambush party was waiting at Godfrey's Cross, halfway between Coachford and Dripsey, for a British convoy that regularly used the road between Ballincollig Barracks and Macroom. News of the ambush had leaked. A local woman, Mrs Mary Lind...

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Image: Hywel Williams | CC BY-SA 2.0

Dripsey: What is left, what continues

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sarah777, Public domain. The woollen mill on the Dripsey River exported blankets, bedspreads and tweeds to Britain, New Zealand, Canada and the United States from 1876 until the early 1980s. When it closed, the Model Village kept its name. The water treatment plant still draws from the river. The Cork of...

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Image: Sarah777 | Public domain