The Curran connection
For a town of just over a thousand people, Newmarket keeps unusual company in the history books. John Philpot Curran, born here in 1750, became the sharpest courtroom orator of his generation and is remembered for the line that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. His daughter Sarah was the beloved of Robert Emmet, the rebel hanged after the failed rising of 1803; after his execution she became the subject of Thomas Moore’s song ‘She Is Far from the Land’. She is buried in Newmarket - by local tradition in the old Protestant graveyard on Main Street.
A market town in Duhallow
Newmarket (Irish: Áth Trasna, ‘the ford of the crossing’) sits in a glen in the barony of Duhallow, in the north-west corner of County Cork, about 175 metres up. The land was once part of Clanawley, the territory of the McAuliffe clan, until the old Gaelic order gave way in the early 1600s; in 1615 Richard Aldworth, an English soldier, was granted the lands and a licence to hold a market, and the town took shape around 1620 along the street leading to the Aldworth walled estate. The family’s seat was Newmarket Court, and they remained the local power until the 1920s.
Two 19th-century churches still frame the streetscape - St Mary’s Catholic church, built in 1840, and the Church of Ireland church of around 1830. IRD Duhallow, the rural-development company that runs training and cultural programmes across the region, is based in the town. And in a quieter modern chapter, swift nest boxes have gone up on the eaves of several buildings, including St Mary’s and the old Protestant church, to give the town’s dwindling summer swifts somewhere to breed - room for as many as fourteen nests.
The Island Wood
A short walk from the square, the Island Wood (Coill an Oileáin) is a small riverside park on the townland between the River Dalua and the Rampart Stream, once part of the Aldworth demesne. Its curiosity is the ‘Twelve Apostles’, a mature tree with twelve separate trunks rising from a single base. Level paths run through the wood and along the water, making it an easy stop for families and dog-walkers. At the west end of town, a park adds a playground, picnic tables, an outdoor gym and tennis courts, with the GAA grounds alongside.
For walkers with more in the legs, the Beara-Breifne Way passes through the district - the long-distance route that traces O’Sullivan Beare’s brutal winter march of 1603 from the Beara Peninsula north to Leitrim.
Music: Sliabh Luachra and Scullysfest
Newmarket sits on the edge of Sliabh Luachra, the border country between Cork, Kerry and Limerick that produced its own distinctive fiddle and accordion tradition, and the music is the best reason to time a visit. The town’s own festival, Scullysfest, runs each year on the weekend after the August bank holiday, with workshops, a market and open sessions. It started in 2004 to mark the 30th anniversary of a Monday-night session that had been going in Scully’s Bar since 1974 - a nice measure of how long the music has held on here. The Newmarket Summer Festival in late June and early July is the broader community week: an opening parade, a family day out in the Island Wood, a poc fada, and a tongue-in-cheek mock mayoral election among the fixtures.
Sessions carry on outside the festivals too, and the Cultúrlann MacAmhlaoibh (McAuliffe Heritage Centre) runs language circles and cultural events through the year.
Getting there and practical
Newmarket lies about 30km north-west of Kanturk, on the road between Banteer and the Kerry and Limerick borders. There is no passenger rail: the nearest active station is Banteer, and Newmarket’s own station - opened in 1889 at the end of an 8.75-mile branch from Banteer, and closed in 1963 - survives as offices rather than a stop. Parking in the centre and at the Island Wood is free and unrestricted. The wood and town park are level and pushchair-friendly; the older graveyard paths and any hill walking are rougher, so bring proper footwear.
The town has a scatter of B&Bs, self-catering cottages and cafés, and pubs that do a plain, decent meal and double as the venue for the music. Check the local noticeboards or the community website for session and festival dates, which shift a little year to year.