Skibbereen Tidy Towns

In the 2018 report for Skibbereen in the National Tidy Towns competition the Adjudicator made the following comment under the category Approach Roads, Streets & Lanes / Bóithre Isteach, Sráideanna & Lánaí:

We loved the network of wonderful lanes and ‘porches’ that link the main streets of your town and we commend you on the signage which highlights their eye-catching names like Brewery Porch, Windmill Lane and Norrie Blues Boreen. Has any consideration been given to providing storyboards on how these names came about? These are a wonderfully distinctive feature of your town and they could be very effective in promoting walking and cycling as they greatly improve permeability.

Adjudicator Report, 2018

And so we set about locating the history behind these place names, some of which we share in this blog post. The process took some time but as the saying goes ‘all good things are worth the wait’. Four people were central to this effort and deserve special thanks. Adrian Healy came up trumps with a wonderful manila folder of the oral history of these place names provided by local historians, Gerald O’Brien and the late Patrick Cleary (R.I.P.). More recently, Helen Casey typed up the handwritten notes that form the basis for this post.

Continue reading “Love our laneways: A brief history”