Qualla: Nohoval

Nohoval: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Mr Blanchfield was warned. His landlord, Mr M'Carthy, had told him repeatedly: stop carrying so much money. The schoolteacher was known to keep ten to twelve £10 notes folded in his pocket - in 1919 currency, somewhere between £100 and £120 in cash on his person at all times, when the average weekly wage of a Cork corporation worker was 22 to 30 shillings. He had been robbed once before. He kept doing it. On a Wednesday night in December 1919, around 11pm, villagers in Nohoval heard two shotgun blasts in quick succession. Nobody went to look. The country was at war and the curfew of fear was its own law. The next morning Michael Blanchfield, national schoolteacher in Nohoval since 1899, was found dead on the road outside the derelict house he had just bought. The money was gone. The case was never solved.

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Nohoval: A Cove, A Mill, A Kiln

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Nohoval is a small village on the south Cork coast, roughly 25 km south of Cork city and a few kilometres south of Carrigaline, east of Kinsale. It sits in a townland and a civil parish of the same name. Ordnance Survey Ireland and most modern mapping publishers consistently spel...

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Nohoval: The Famine Mill

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1840, in the lean years just before the Great Famine struck Ireland, a three-storey mill was erected outside Nohoval as part of what local tradition records as a Famine relief project - a public works scheme designed to put hungry men in employment building infrastructure. The...

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Nohoval: Two Churches, One Parish

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Nohoval has two parish churches, reflecting the religious geography of southern Ireland. The Church of Ireland parish church is Nohoval Church, also known as St Peter's, under the jurisdiction of the (Protestant) Diocese of Cork, Cloyne and Ross. The Catholic parish has St Patric...

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Nohoval: December 1919

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Michael Blanchfield was appointed national school teacher in Nohoval in 1899. He taught here for twenty years. Sometime before December 1919 he bought a derelict house about 300 yards outside the village. On a Wednesday night around 11pm, gunshots were heard. The next morning his...

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Nohoval: Quiet Now

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Today Nohoval is one of those Irish villages that exists more on tourist maps than in the daily traffic of Cork - a name, a beautiful cove, a couple of churches, the converted mill. The Wild Atlantic Way signposting routes visitors past Nohoval Cove on their way between Kinsale a...

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