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Ardfert

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Ardfert

Ardfert (Irish: Ard Fhearta, meaning 'the hill of miracles') is a village and civil parish in County Kerry, Ireland. Historically a religious centre, the economy of the locality is driven by agriculture and its position as a dormitory town, being only 8 km (5 mi) from Tralee. The population of the village was 749 at the 2016 census.

The village's name signifies, according to Sir James Ware, "a wonderful place on an eminence", or as some interpret it, "the hill of miracles." Ardfert has also been considered a corruption of Ard Ert, "the high place of Ert or Erc", so called after the fifth century Irish Bishop Saint Erc, who made the place a bishop's seat. Ardfert was written by the Four Masters as Ard-ferta, the height of the grave.

Ardfert is a parish in the Barony of Clanmaurice, County Kerry, Ireland, anciently in the territory of Ui Fearba/Hy Ferba, of which the O'Laeghain (O'Leyne, Leen or Lane) were once the Gaelic Lords, until Norman invasion of Ireland.

Ardfert is the home of St. Brendan's Ardfert Cathedral, which was destroyed in the Irish Rebellion of 1641, and the birthplace of St. Brendan the Navigator, who was educated about the year 500 AD. He founded a monastery there in the sixth century, but both town and monastery were destroyed by fire in 1089, and again in 1151.

The Norman influence can still be seen not only in the architecture, but also in local family surnames such as the Cantillons (Barons de Ballyheigue), and Fitzmaurices,[citation needed] and in place names, such as Ballintobeenig, a nearby townland below Mt. Crusline called after St. Aubin. Thomas FitzMaurice, 1st Baron Kerry founded a Franciscan friary there in 1253, and Nicholas, the 2nd Lord Kerry, built a leper house there in 1312. It was the seat of a bishopric until 1660.

The Crusader Knights Hospitaller of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem (later known as Knights of Malta), also had some rights in Ardfert, although there is a record of a dispute between them and the Franciscans in 1325 about the market cross and pillory. They had already been established in the area in c. 1200 when Meiler FitzHenry, grandson of King Henry I of England, and Justiciar of Ireland under King John, established a preceptory at Rattoo under a Fra' William from Dublin. Under the terms of a royal grant in letters patent of James I of England on 6 July 1612, the Lord of Kerry (FitzMaurice) could hold courts baron and leet.

The Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland, recount how in 1601, Prince Hugh Roe O'Donnell, on his way to the Battle of Kinsale, sent some of his kinsmen troops there to reconquer Ardfert, Lixnaw, and Ballykeally for his ally FitzMaurice. En route, he visited and venerated a relic of the True Cross (Holy rood) on the Feast of St. Andrew, on 30 November 1601, at Holy Cross Abbey, near Thurles, County Tipperary, which was a rallying point for the defence of religious freedom and for Irish sovereignty. From there he sent an expedition to Ardfert, to win a quick victory and recover the territory of his ally, Fitzmaurice, Lord of Kerry, who had lost it and his 9-year-old son, to Sir Charles Wilmot. The expedition captured Caislean Gearr (Short Castle, of which no trace remains), adjacent to the Cathedral in Ardfert. An O'Donnell from Tyrconnell remained behind in stewardship to hold it, according to "The Life of Hugh Roe O'Donnell, Prince of Tyrconnell"written by Lughaidh O'Cléirigh, circa 1603 in Gaelic.

A large tomb in the grounds of the cathedral was built much later by John O'Donnell (1803–1879), the most prominent descendant two centuries later, and whose own direct male descendant was the late Patrick Denis O'Donnell (1922–2005), the Irish military historian. He owned the summit overlooking Ardfert (Mt. Crusline, Ballintobeenig, from where his ancestral O'Donnell of Tyrconnell, under authority of Prince Hugh Roe O'Donnell would have launched the battle to regain Ardfert for Lord Kerry in 1601). The family seat of John O'Donnell, at Tubrid mentioned by Samuel Lewis in his 1837 Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, passed through a female line to the O'Carrolls. The house expanded by John O'Donnell in Tubridmore was listed as an intended "protected structure" in the archaeological monuments section of the draft Kerry County Development Plan 2015–2021.

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