Books: Story traces the history of the Kerry-Cork butter road

It started out innocently enough a few years ago.

It was that time of the year when we start thinking about the next issue of our local Lyreacrompane and District Journal in north Kerry.

Having to stay out of the way of covid that year gave us a bit of extra elbow room for the job.

After many years of editing the Journal, was there much left to research and write about in out-of- the-way Lyreacrompane in the Stacks Mountains?

Up until then, we had found stories and heritage in every heap of stones – but were we running out of heaps of stones?

A topic of conversation in Lyre had long been the question of why a steep hill on the road through rural Lyreacrompane was called the Branner.

Might it have got its name when the construction of the Brenner Pass was in the news?

A quick check showed that event was in the 1850s, but surely our road was older than that – or was it?

The truth struck home. We didn’t know a lot about the most important bit of infrastructure in our area – our road to town, to school, to the shop - to the world!

My first thought was to write about childhood memories of the road to school. This was soon on the page, but then it started to take on a life of its own, so to speak.

When was the road built? Why was it so straight? Where did it begin and end? The whole road deserved a closer look.

For a time, I thought about it. After all, it was on part of this road that I first walked to the local national school. It was the road on which I kicked football, travelled to the bog, and cycled to the technical school in Listowel. It was the road that had been part of my journey into exile – and back.

It was on this road that I travelled to work and to City Council meetings in Limerick after weekends ‘back home’ – the road I had driven the mayor’s car along on more than one occasion.

It was the road beside which I helped organise an annual Dan Paddy Andy Festival and where I took on the invasive Japanese Knotweed.

It was the road by which Kay O’Leary and I left each year with our Irish Rambling House show to entertain our exiles in England.

Yes, it is and has definitely been an important part of my everyday life - and so began the trip down what turned out to have been a toll road, the first Butter Road from Kerry, and a road into exile for many people.

The journey took us on a full sweep of Irish history - traced through the prism of a single road. Along the way, we meet whiteboys, freedom fighters, highwaymen, famine victims, the mansions of the gentry and, chillingly, the scaffold at the crossroads.

In real life, we met the ordinary Kerry and Cork people who had enquiring minds and a love of their own place – the local historians.

Many cups of tea and chats later, we count them now among our friends.

The person we came to know best, so to speak, was John Murphy, the man who went to the Parliament in College Green in Dublin in 1747 to secure the Act needed to build a Turnpike/Toll road from Ballyduhig, near Listowel, to what became known as Kerry Pike on what was the boundary of Cork city, with a spur from Shinnagh Cross to Killarney.

He was allowed six toll gates initially and the right to charge at the gates for 61 years.

The rest of the story is in the book, Once Upon A Road, now published by Mercier Press, telling the history of that road and all that happened in its vicinity over its 270 years.

Recently, the Lyreacrompane Heritage Group erected a fine information sign at the Kerry end of the Butter Road, and the Clogheen/Kerry Pike Community Association are doing likewise at their end.

It’s satisfying to see the history of the Road connecting communities.

The recent great fundraising four-day walk by the Millstreet Community College Transition Year students, along the full length of the road, and with the support of so many communities along the way, has given it the title, the Butter Road Camino – and a whole new added purpose.

I did think the man who built the Kerry/Cork Butter Road deserved a song. I called it The Road John Murphy Made, and it won the Sean McCarthy Ballad Competition.

Here are a couple of verses:

The Road John Murphy Made (An Imagined Journey On The Butter Road In The 1750s)

He rode along the highway – the man from long ago

Two firkins on a pack horse on a journey that was slow

Listowel lay there behind him as he moved through Coolnaleen

And up to now that distant place was the furthest he had been.

But a market for his butter was much further on along

And he was ready for the road and on his lips a song

And then at Ballyduhig where steep became the grade

He found there right before him the road John Murphy made.

To the south it took him, with his precious load

That straight and narrow highway that was John Murphy’s Road.

His hand dipped in his pocket his coins to check because

John Murphy built a turnpike and it worked by rule of laws

A shilling for a coach and four, a penny for a mare

At Toornageehea’s turnpike the toll he must pay there.

With pass in hand he headed south into Stack’s mountains slopes

And as he faced that wild terrain he tightened up his ropes

And in the glens he met the streams and through the fords he’d wade

To make his way along through Lyre on the road John Murphy made.

The hills rose up before him and oft his pace was slowed

On that straight and narrow highway that was John Murphy’s Road...