Qualla: Kenmare River

Kenmare River: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mick Garratt, CC BY-SA 2.0. It is not a river. It is a bay - a long, narrow, drowned glacial valley between two peninsulas in south-west Ireland, cut by ice and flooded by the Atlantic when the seas rose. But on every official map and in every guidebook, it is called the Kenmare River. The reason is fishing rights. In the 1600s and 1700s, the Marquess of Lansdowne and his agents found it convenient to call this bay a river because rivers belonged to whoever owned the banks, while the sea belonged to everyone. So the maps were drawn with the word river on them, and the word stuck. The fish - and the salmon especially - became the marquess's. Three centuries later, the salmon are still here, the bay is still called a river, and the great map of Ireland still preserves a quiet act of seventeenth-century property law.

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Image: Mick Garratt | CC BY-SA 2.0

Kenmare River: Between Two Peninsulas

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gerald England, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Kenmare River stretches roughly 35 kilometres from the town of Kenmare at its head to the open Atlantic at its mouth. The Iveragh Peninsula forms the northern shore, with its mountains and stone forts and the towns of Sneem and Waterville. The Beara Peninsula forms the south,...

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Image: Gerald England | CC BY-SA 2.0

Kenmare River: Islands in the Bay

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Podstawko, CC BY-SA 4.0. Scatter a handful of stones into a long puddle and you would get something like Kenmare Bay's geography. The Dunkerron Islands, Rossdohan, Garinish, Inishkeragh, Illaunamadan, Sherky, Inishfarnard, Illaunleagh, Illaunslea - the bay is freckled with them. Some are tiny rocks at lo...

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Image: Podstawko | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kenmare River: The Estuary of Scéine

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Patrick Dunlea, CC BY-SA 4.0. Before it was the Kenmare River it was Inbhear Scéine - the estuary of Scéine - in the old Irish texts. The 11th-century Lebor Gabála Érenn (the Book of Invasions) names this bay as the landing point of Partholón, the mythological ancestor who led one of the earliest peoples to s...

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Image: Patrick Dunlea | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kenmare River: Wild Salmon, Wild Coast

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Espresso Addict, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Kenmare River is one of Ireland's most important habitats for wild salmon and sea trout, and for a long list of less famous creatures - the narrow-mouthed whorl snail, the lesser horseshoe bat, the common seal, the arctic tern, the burrowing anemone. Fishermen on the bay have...

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Image: Espresso Addict | CC BY-SA 2.0

Kenmare River: What the Lord Could Not Own

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Espresso Addict, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Lansdowne lords got the salmon for a while. Their fishing rights and their nominal river survived through the colonial period and into the Irish state. But the bay never stopped being a bay. The Atlantic still pushes its tides in and out twice a day. The seals still arrive wh...

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Image: Espresso Addict | CC BY-SA 2.0