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Reproduced from the original article in the Boston newspaper | 
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 Youghal is a small, walled seaport with Ireland's best beaches By Judy Enright
Part of the charm of Ireland – at once endearing and irritating – is that no matter how often you visit or how long you stay, it is never enough. You think you've seen and heard everything, and then you hear about one attraction after another that you've missed. Take the town of Youghal, in the south of Ireland, about 30 minutes from Cork City and three hours from Dublin. It's name is pronounced "y'all," just like a well-known phrase in the southern United States, but it's derived from old
Gaelic "eochaill," means yew wood, and refers to the yew forests that once grew nearby. The trees were depleted over the years, but the name stuck. This small, walled seaport at the mouth of the Blackwater River in East Cork is a lively town, boasting what may be the best beaches in Ireland. It's also full of history. Sir Walter Raleigh owned an estate here, where he planted the first potatoes
in Ireland and smoked the first tobacco known to have been used there. Raleigh also brought cherry trees from the Canary Islands and domesticated them on his estate. Algerian pirates used the town as a base from which to raid the nearby coast; Oliver Cromwell used it as a headquarters when he brought the English Civil War to Ireland. And the English poet Edmund Spenser is said to have been inspired to write his epic poem, "The Faerie Queen," by the view from a window at Raleigh's estate.
Today, however, Youghal is best known as the South Coast's leading resort town, with the only Irish beaches to win several prestigious Blue Flag awards from the European Union. The town also offers numerous leisure activities including golf, tennis, hunting, shooting, sea and river fishing, sailing, horseback riding and nightlife. The town is also a destination for fine dining, which we found the night we spent at Aherne's, an inn
and restaurant run by the Fitzgibbon family since 1923. My spotless bedroom was immense – seemingly just inches short of a ballroom – and furnished with every amenity including closets, color TV, a couch, private bathroom with a shower and hairdryer and a grand view out the front windows, of the brightly colored buildings and activity along Main Street. I was dining in the famed restaurant at Aherne's that night, but I happened to read the bar menu (available to 10 p.m.), and even it made my mouth water. Here are some excerpts: soup of the day with brown bread; a half dozen rock oysters; baked goat cheese wrapped in Parma ham and
served with salad, black olives and warm herb toast; a chargrilled 10-ounce sirloin steak with garlic butter, mushrooms, onions and potatoes. It certainly didn't sound like the bill of fare that was standard in Irish pubs just a few short years ago. Dinner that night was amazing, and I was ready. In addition to an extensive wine list, the restaurant offers local fare that is as fresh as can be and deliciously prepared. From the a la carte
menu, I chose Youghal Bay smoked salmon as a starter and roast monkfish with peppercorns and red pepper relish for my main course, accompanied by fresh vegetables. Everything was fresh and delicious, and my full Irish breakfast the next morning did not disappoint, either. After breakfast, I set off for for a 90-minute walking tour of Youghal's medieval streets, the Red House, Tyntes Castle, the Priory Passageway, St. Mary's Collegiate Church and its fascinating
cemetery, and Raleigh's former home, Myrtle Grove. The tour was led by a guide from the Youghal Chamber of Tourism and Commerce. The tour started in Market Square, which may look oddly familiar to fans of classic movies. It's where director John Huston recreated the 1840s New Bedford harbor scenes for "Moby Dick" (which was released in 1956.) Huston rebuilt an old ship he found in England to match Herman
Melville's description of the Pequod and made Youghal into the Massachusetts' whaling center. Other scenes were shot off Wales, in the Azores and around the Canary Islands. The walk began a with a stop at the Heritage Centre, which presents, in capsule form, fascinating information about the town's history. The Celts, who arrived about 2,500 years ago, built fortified enclosures called raths, many of which survive today in the countryside around Youghal. There is
evidence of contact with Roman Britain, but no evidence has been found yet of any Roman presence in Youghal. Christianity appears to have arrived in the 5th and 6th centuries. Three centuries later, the Vikings used Youghal as a base from which to raid wealthy monastic settlements along the south coast. Youghal's written history begins with the Vikings. In 1202, Youghal received its first charter, from King John,and in the 13th century the city was
second only to Bristol as the busiest port in the British Isles. In 1275, Edward I levied a tax for stone walls to replace the Norman walls. The walls surrounded the town on the shoreline as well as inland; most of the inland portion still survives and can be seen from St. Mary's Collegiate Church. In the 15th century, Algerian pirates noticed that Youghal was gaining wealth and influence. One famous corsair, with the interesting name of "Nut," commanded three heavily armed ships and was
reputed to have buried kegs of gold coins and other booty on Capel Island and on headlands along the coast. He was said to have sacrificed a male slave with each buried treasure so the slave's spirit would guard the loot. Today, Youghal's wags have a gardening tip: If you find a skeleton, keep on digging. It was an (unusually for Ireland) bright, dry morning, and we admired the shimmering waters of
the harbor and the small boats moored by the tidy pier. It was eerie to walk under the Water Gate, the same one Oliver Cromwell walked under when he left Ireland on May 29, 1650, after the military campaign that established Anglo-Protestant rule in the country. The gate is sometimes referred to as Cromwell's Arch, though it was built four centuries earlier. The Clock Gate, built in 1777, straddles the main street and was the jail and public gallows
(prisoners were executed by hanging them from the windows) until 1837. It was a grim place where prisoners were tortured for information, beaten and often deported, and it became a symbol of terror and tyranny. We walked along busy Main Street, where the fronts of the buildings are stepped to follow the curve of the original shorelines. Many fine examples of 19th century shopfronts still survive.
The door arch and a small window of St. John's Priory, founded in 1350, still survive on North Main Street. Cromwell wintered there in 1649 and inspected his troops every morning from the Priory; 10,000 foot and horse soldiers were lined up three deep from one end of town to the other. We passed the so-called Red House and learned that the Dutch red brick building, the finest example of a Queen Anne style house in Ireland, was built in 1710 by a Dutch architect and builder
named Leuventhan for the Uniackes, a merchant family. We continued along North Main Street, passing Tynte's Castle, a 15th-century Norman tower that is unusual because it's a fortified dwelling inside the town walls. Sir Robert Tynte owned the tower in the early 17th century and married the widow of poet Edmund Spenser. Perhaps the most interesting part of the walk for me was catching a glimpse of Myrtle Grove, a
great example of Elizabethan domestic architecture, on the other side of stone walls at St. Mary's Collegiate Church. The house was once the residence of Sir Walter Raleigh. It was at Myrtle Grove that Raleigh planted potatoes in 1585 and domesticated cherry trees. It was also there that he reportedly shocked his servants by lighting up tobacco for the first time in Ireland. And, the story goes that Spenser got his inspiration for "The Faerie Queene" while looking out the
window of Myrtle Grove. The home is privately owned now and was not open to the public.
Published 04-14-01
Copyright 2001 The Patriot Ledger
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