placenamesBlennerville
Cathair Uí Mhóráin
The windmill marks a former port of Tralee, where grain milling, Atlantic shipping and the houses of merchants and workers shaped the village.
The name
These Irish name elements are associated with this record in the Logainm glossary.
An element’s translation is a clue, rather than a complete explanation of the name. Its form and meaning depend on local history and the full Irish name.
Recorded forms
- Cathair Uí Mhóráin · Irish · main form · validated name
- Blennerville · English · main form
Place & story
The windmill restored
Blennerville Windmill was built around 1800 by Sir Rowland Blennerhassett, who developed the village and port. After wind-powered milling ended in the late 1820s, the building served as a store; steam power briefly returned its millstones to work in the 1880s. Later abandonment left an empty shell. Tralee Urban District Council bought it in 1981, and a volunteer restoration committee worked with FÁS assistance between 1984 and 1989 under industrial archaeologist Fred Hamond. The visitor centre opened in 1992, giving the recovered mill a new role in explaining the village’s industrial past. [2]
A departure port for emigrants
The Jeanie Johnston began her first emigrant voyage from Blennerville in 1848, carrying 193 passengers to Quebec. Built there the previous year by John Munn, she had been bought by Kerry merchants John Donovan and Sons. Across sixteen transatlantic voyages she carried approximately 2,500 emigrants without a passenger death. Her later fate was dramatic: waterlogged during an Atlantic crossing in 1858, she sank after the crew survived nine days in the rigging and were rescued. The vessel displayed in Dublin today is a replica. [3]
Merchant houses and slate-hung walls
Blennerville’s architectural character extends along the main street, into Back Lane and through the terrace south of the village. Kerry County Council’s conservation appraisal identifies merchant houses alongside industrial and maritime structures and later single-storey workers’ houses. Decorative corner stones, hood mouldings above openings and substantial chimneys distinguish individual buildings. Several walls are hung with vertical slate, a characteristic feature of the southwest. This mixture of large houses and modest terraces preserves the different scales of life around the port. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Kerry
- Barony
- Trughanacmy
- Civil parish
- Annagh
- Within
- Blennerville
- Within
- Curragraigue
- Coordinates
- 52.25594, -9.74292 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 127091 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Blennerville. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- History of Blennerville Windmill · Blennerville Windmill Visitor Centre
- History of the Jeanie Johnston · Jeanie Johnston museum
- Blennerville Architectural Conservation Area, page 97 · Kerry County Council, Draft County Development Plan 2022–2028, Volume 3
- Blennerville Windmill, County Kerry illustration: based on a Blennerville Windmill by Gareth James. AI-assisted watercolour and ink adaptation; cream paper margins added, incidental clutter omitted and fine details simplified. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.