Valentia Island facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Valentia Island

Native name: Dairbhre
Knightstown Town clock
Valentia Island Location in island of Ireland Valentia Island
Geography
Location	Atlantic Ocean
Coordinates	51°54′N 10°21′W / 51.9°N 10.35°W / 51.9; -10.35
Area	25.7 km2 (9.9 sq mi)
Length	11 km (6.8 mi)
Width	3 km (1.9 mi)
Administration
Ireland
Province	Munster
County	Kerry
Largest settlement	Knightstown (pop. 156)
Demographics
Population	665 (2011)

Valentia Island (Irish: Dairbhre, meaning "The Oak Wood") is one of Ireland's most westerly points. It lies off the Iveragh Peninsula in the southwest of County Kerry. It is linked to the mainland by the Maurice O'Neill Memorial Bridge at Portmagee. A car ferry also departs from Reenard Point to Knightstown, the island's main settlement, from April to October. A second, smaller village named Chapeltown is located at roughly the midpoint of the island, 3 kilometres (2 miles) from the bridge. The permanent population of the island is 665 (as of the 2011 CSO Census^[update]). It is approximately 11 kilometres (7 miles) long by almost 3 kilometres (2 miles) wide.

Name

The English name Valentia Island (also spelled Valencia Island) doesn't come exactly from the Spanish city of Valencia, but from a settlement on the island called An Bhaile Inse or Beal Inse ("mouth of the island" or "island in the mouth of the sound"), which in turn could have been reinterpreted as similar to the Spanish town by Englishmen and Spaniards sailors and settlers alike (there is a grave marker to Spanish sailors lost at sea in the Catholic cemetery at Kylemore).

History

Telegraph Field, Valentia Island: Foilhommerum is the site of the first permanent communications link between Europe and the Americas. In October 2002, a memorial to mark the laying of the transatlantic cable to Heart's Content, Newfoundland was unveiled atop Foilhommerum Cliff. Made of Valentia slate and designed by local sculptor Alan Ryan Hall, the memorial marks the importance of the site to telegraph communications with North America from 1857 forward and to accurately linking longitude measurements in North America to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich in 1866.

Valentia was the eastern terminus of the first commercially viable transatlantic telegraph cable. The first attempt in 1857 to land a cable from Ballycarbery Strand on the mainland just east of Valentia Island ended in disappointment. After subsequent failures of cables landed at Knightstown in 1858 and Foilhommerum Bay in 1865, the vast endeavor finally resulted in commercially viable transatlantic telegraph communications from Foilhommerum Bay to Heart's Content, Newfoundland in 1866. Transatlantic telegraph cables operated from Valentia Island for one hundred years, ending with Western Union International terminating its cable operations in 1966.

Prior to the transatlantic telegraph, American longitude measurements had a 2,800-foot (850 m) uncertainty with respect to European longitudes. Because of the importance of accurate longitudes to safe navigation, the U.S. Coast Survey mounted a longitude expedition in 1866 to link longitudes in the United States accurately to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Benjamin Gould and his partner A. T. Mosman reached Valentia on 2 October 1866. They built a temporary longitude observatory beside the Foilhommerum Cable Station to support synchronized longitude observations with Heart's Content, Newfoundland. After many rainy and cloudy days, the first transatlantic longitude signals were exchanged between Foilhommerum and Heart's Content on October 24, 1866.

On May 21, 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh made his first landfall in Europe over Dingle Bay and Valentia Island on his solo flight from New York to Paris. On the 1927 Mercator chart used by the famous pilot, it was labeled Valencia.

In 1993 an undergraduate geology student discovered fossilised tetrapod trackways, footprints preserved in Devonian rocks, on the north coast of the island at Dohilla (51°55′51″N 10°20′38″W / 51.930868°N 10.343849°W / 51.930868; -10.343849). About 385 million years ago, a primitive vertebrate passed near a river margin in the sub-equatorial river basin that is now southwestern Ireland and left prints in the damp sand. The prints were preserved by silt and sand overlying them, and were converted to rock over geological time. The Valentia Island trackways are among the oldest signs of vertebrate life on land.

On March 14, 2021, Valentia Island was the site of the first walrus sighting in Ireland.

Places of interest

Valentia Harbour from the north shore of Valentia Island (Photo taken at the top of the Catholic cemetery at Kylemore)

The combined features and history of the island make it an attractive tourist destination, easily accessible from the popular Ring of Kerry route.

• Geokaun Mountain and Fogher Cliffs : the highest mountain on Valentia Island and the sea cliffs of 600 feet (180 m) on its northern face.
• On the northeast of the island stands Glanleam House amid sub-tropical gardens. Protected by windbreaks from Atlantic gales and never touched by frost, these gardens provide the mildest microclimate in Ireland. Starting in the 1830s, Sir Peter George Fitzgerald, the 19th Knight of Kerry (1808–1880), planted these gardens and stocked them with a unique collection of rare and tender plants from the southern hemisphere, normally grown under glass in Ireland. The gardens are laid out in a naturalistic style as a series of walks. There are plants from South America, Australia, New Zealand (the tallest tree ferns in Europe), Chile and Japan. The gardens are memorialized in a selected golden-variegated Luma apiculata "Glanleam Gold" that originated as a sport in the garden. The gardens are open to the public.
• The slate quarry which reopened in 1998 provided slates for the British Houses of Parliament.
• The island also hosts a heritage centre which tells the story of the geology, human, natural and industrial history of the island, with exhibits on the Cable Station, the Marine Radio Station and the RNLI's Valentia Lifeboat Station.
• The Telegraph Field (or Longitude Field) is the site of the first permanent communications link between Europe and North America Transatlantic telegraph cables operated from Valentia Island from 1866.

Gallery

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  Dolmen Rock, western slope of Mt. Geokaun

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  Balleyhearney House, Balleyhearney East. 'Famine Era' hospital adjacent to the Knights' Wood.

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  Rare snowy day, Main Road, Valentia Island looking toward Knightstown, Valentia Harbour and Cahersiveen

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  Portion of the view from the summit of Mt. Geokaun ("yo-kawn"). Valentia Harbour and Cahersiveen are in the background

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  Portion of the view from the summit of Mt. Geokaun ("yo-kawn"). Valentia Harbour and Letter are in the background

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  View from Culloo Rock. Dingle Peninsula, Dingle Bay and the north shore of Valentia Island (including Fogher Cliffs) are in the background.

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  Bray Head view looking west with Skellig Islands in distance

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  View of Portmagee Channel looking south-east from Bray Head

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  Valentia lighthouse and surrounding fortifications

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  Knightstown

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  Glanleam House

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  Valentia Slate Quarry

Climate

Valentia Island has an oceanic climate (Cfb). Valentia Island is, on average, the wettest weather station in Ireland. Valentia Island sits on the eastern edge of the Atlantic Ocean. Despite it being on the same latitude as St. Anthony in Newfoundland on the opposite side of the Atlantic Ocean, it enjoys much milder winters thanks to the moderating effect of prevailing west or south west winds, and the effects of the warming Gulf Stream current. Snow and frost are rare, and because of this the island can support many sub-tropical varieties of plants.

Sport

Valentia Young Islanders GAA is the local Gaelic Athletic Association club.

Valentia is a popular fishing location, and Valentia waters hold the Irish records for conger eel, red sea bream, Ray's bream and lesser spotted dogfish.

See also

In Spanish: Isla de Valentia para niños