Qualla: Skibbereen https://qualla.com/skibbereen en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:11 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Skibbereen https://qualla.com/skibbereen Skibbereen: Introduction https://qualla.com/skibbereen/ The numbers are easier to write than to imagine. Eight to ten thousand people, buried in pits at Abbeystrewery cemetery, just outside this small town on the River Ilen. They were not soldiers. They were not victims of plague in some distant century. They were neighbors, farmhands, children, mothers, and they died of hunger in the 1840s while ships left Irish ports carrying grain to England. Skibbereen, a market town of fewer than three thousand people today, became the place the Victorian world looked at when it wanted to see what famine actually does.

Read more: Skibbereen on Qualla

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/1/m/skibbereen-wp/gc1m-skibbereen-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Skibbereen: The Hunger That Has a Town's Name https://qualla.com/skibbereen/ Between 1841 and 1861, the population of the wider area collapsed from 58,335 to 32,412 - a loss of nearly half. Some of those people emigrated, scattering to Liverpool, Boston, New York, Sydney. Most of the missing did not leave by ship. The Great Hunger, an Gorta Mór, hit West ...

Read more: Skibbereen on Qualla

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/1/m/skibbereen-wp/gc1m-skibbereen-the-hunger-that-has-a-towns-name.mp3 0:06 2 full Skibbereen: Old Chapel Lane and Abbeystrewery https://qualla.com/skibbereen/ The mass burial pits at Abbeystrewery are not a metaphor. They are physical places, a short walk from the town center, and the bodies in them were placed there hurriedly because there was no time, no wood for coffins, and often no surviving relatives to mourn properly. The Herita...

Read more: Skibbereen on Qualla

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/1/m/skibbereen-wp/gc1m-skibbereen-old-chapel-lane-and-abbeystrewery.mp3 0:06 3 full Skibbereen: Defiance Carved in Stone https://qualla.com/skibbereen/ Outside the town, the Maid of Erin stands on her plinth, erected in 1904. The dates carved into the four sides are 1798, 1803, 1848, and 1867 - four failed uprisings against British rule. Skibbereen took its republican politics seriously. The Phoenix Society, founded here in 1856...

Read more: Skibbereen on Qualla

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/1/m/skibbereen-wp/gc1m-skibbereen-defiance-carved-in-stone.mp3 0:06 4 full Skibbereen: An Eye on Everything https://qualla.com/skibbereen/ There is a lighter strand in the story. In 1898, the local paper, the Skibbereen Eagle, ran an editorial telling Lord Palmerston that it had got its eye both upon him and on the Emperor of Russia. The line became a kind of national joke about provincial self-importance, but it st...

Read more: Skibbereen on Qualla

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/1/m/skibbereen-wp/gc1m-skibbereen-an-eye-on-everything.mp3 0:06 5 full Skibbereen: Olympic Sculls and a Quiet River https://qualla.com/skibbereen/ Today, the River Ilen carries something the Famine generation could not have imagined. Skibbereen Rowing Club, on the outskirts of town, has produced some of Ireland's most decorated athletes. Paul and Gary O'Donovan took silver at Rio in 2016 - the first Olympic medal won by Iri...

Read more: Skibbereen on Qualla

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/1/m/skibbereen-wp/gc1m-skibbereen-olympic-sculls-and-a-quiet-river.mp3 0:06 6 full