Join Mercier Press in the Cork Butter Museum to launch Joe Harrington's 'Once Upon A Road: The History and Times of an Irish Butter Road.'

Book Launch: Once Upon A Road: The History and Times of an Irish Butter Road. The 1747 Turnpike from Listowel to Cork, as the opening event of the Butter Roads Festival.

Mercier Press, Joe Harrington and Cork Butter Museum invite you to celebrate the launch of Joe Harrington's 'Once Upon A Road: The History and Times of an Irish Butter Road. The 1747 Turnpike from Listowel to Cork'

Join us at 7pm on Thursday 8 Oct, the book will be launched by Councillor Gary O'Brien, Deputy Lord Mayor of Cork.

All are welcome. Please RSVP as the venue has limited capacity. Refreshments served.

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In 1747, a Castleisland man named John Murphy undertook a

remarkable project: to build a turnpike road connecting the

butter-producing lands of North Kerry to the great Cork Butter Market.

For the next two and a half centuries, that road carried the commerce

and conflict of Irish life – the clatter of laden carts, the grievances of

Whiteboys and Moonlighters, the silences of Famine.

Once Upon a Road is the story of that road and the people who lived

and died along it. Drawing on Acts of Parliament, estate records, local

folklore and decades of dedicated research, Joe Harrington traces the

full sweep of Irish history through the prism of a single route: from the

Penal Laws and the Desmond Rebellions to hedge schools, the slave

trade, Land League agitation, and the War of Independence. Along the

way, the Butter Road becomes something more than a thoroughfare – it becomes a living record of the resilience, resistance, and ordinary

humanity of those who travelled it.

Part local history, part journey of personal discovery, Once Upon a

Road invites readers to see a familiar landscape with new eyes – and to remember all the ghosts of all the years gone by.

Joe Harrington is a County Kerry native and former Mayor of Limerick

'The Old Butter Roads Festival is generously supported by Cork City Council, Failte Ireland and Ireland's Ancient East'

Description supplied by the event organiser.