Qualla: Portmagee

Portmagee: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The village is named after Theobald Magee, an 18th-century sea captain who made his living moving spirits, textiles, tea, and tobacco into Ireland without troubling the customs authorities. The southwest coast of Kerry, with its long fingers of land and unmapped inlets, was a smuggler's paradise, and Captain Magee did well enough to give his name to the place locals still sometimes call simply 'the ferry'. The Maurice O'Neill Memorial Bridge, built in 1970 and named for an IRA man executed in 1942, now carries the R565 across to Valentia Island. Magee's pier remains the busiest in the village, but the cargo has changed. These days it's tourists, bound for the rock that has been visible from the harbour mouth since the founding of the monastery on it sometime in the 7th century.

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Portmagee: The Boat to Skellig Michael

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Nine miles out into the Atlantic, the twin peaks of Skellig Michael break the horizon like a stone tooth. A Gaelic Christian monastery clung to the higher of those peaks for six hundred years, beginning around the 7th century, in a cluster of corbelled beehive huts perched on ter...

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Portmagee: The Old Year Walks Through the Village

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On the night of 31 December every year, Portmagee performs a folk drama that has been kept up since 1727. The story behind it begins with a French ship from Nantes, blown into the harbour during a storm three days after Christmas. A few nights later, the villagers heard a strange...

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Portmagee: The Kerry Cliffs to the South

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Just south of the village rise the Kerry Cliffs, a sweep of dark rock standing nearly two hundred metres above the Atlantic. They look across to Skellig Michael in clear weather and back along the south coast of Valentia Island in any weather. The cliffs are easier to reach than ...

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Portmagee: A Working Village

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For all the boat traffic in summer, Portmagee remains a working fishing village. Skellig Rangers, the local GAA team, was founded in 1895 as Portmagee G.A.A. and plays at Pairc Chill Imeallach. The colourful row of houses along the harbour, the same row that appears on a hundred ...

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