Time Travellers Guide

Time-travel back to the very birth of Dunmanway to meet a wig-wearing lord who battled a flooding river , and discover a roaring linen empire where top-speed spinners competed to win a completely rent-free house.

Discover how a smelly old market building made from a recycled medieval castle went from hosting rowdy, chaotic cattle fairs to housing a secret boxing gym, an upstairs cinema, and Dunmanway’s very own mini-Paris.

Discover how one incredible Dunmanway family went from tanning Colorado animal hides using oak bark in the 1800s to producing a world-famous scientist who co-invented the word ‘Recoding’ and discovered how to fight modern pandemics.

Discover how Dunmanway became a legendary launching pad for history, producing a brave, artistic famine orphan who grew up inside a real Victorian prison before painting America , and two world-famous NASA Collins families who blasted off from West Cork to command space shuttles and pilot the first-ever Moon landing.

Roll up, roll up! Step inside the magical, action-packed world of Duffy’s Circus to meet fearless performers, exotic animals, and the characters who brought the big top to town.

Discover how Dunmanway’s famous “religious crossroads” went from dark, high-stakes spy operations and dramatic Black and Tan raids in the 1920s to becoming a bustling hub of fancy cake-baking nuns, top-secret schools, and a bright new hospital beginning.

Find out how a vanished railway station platform where emotional families once said goodbye transformed into a modern powerhouse – complete with a secret hat factory, a mystery stamp collection, and a special rug woven for President John F. Kennedy by a local hero who went on to run the American NBA.

Uncover the ultimate school of superstars where the secret-agent football legend Sam Maguire learned his history alongside a bee-keeping headmaster’s brilliant rugby sons who grew up to become the daredevil WWII “Flying Beamishes” piloting Spitfires in the sky.

Explore the medieval mystery of two “sister castles” built by a legendary feast-loving chieftain and see how they connect to Ireland’s spectacular, ancient horse fair where over 2,000 horses once filled the town.

Explore a lake haunted by spooky legends and sunken carriages, discover a massive anti-alcohol rally packed with 2,000 people, and meet a secret novelist who inherited a castle after one of Ireland’s last ever pistol duels.

Discover what life was really like behind the spooky walls of the old Dunmanway Workhouse – from a secret, freezing solitary confinement room called the ‘black hole’ to fourteen brave local orphan girls who packed up oak trunks and sailed clear across the world on a massive clipper ship to Australia.

Solve the amazing historical mystery of how the real-life uncles of Christopher Robin  – Winnie the Pooh’s very best friend – retired to Dunmanway alongside a brave World War One ambulance inventor whose family helped create the pneumatic air-filled tyre.