Fenit

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Fenit Marina & Harbour
Fenit Marina & Harbour

Fenit (Irish: An Fhianait, meaning "The Wild Place") is a village with a mixed function sea port, close to Tralee Town in County Kerry, in the South West of Ireland. Fishing, freight import and export, and a 130 berth marina account for the main areas of business. Fenit Harbour, located in Tralee Bay, includes Fenit pier and marina, and is connected to the land by a causeway and viaduct, totalling 0.5 mile in length. A railway once serviced Fenit and freight trains traveled over the viaduct which allowed transfer of freight between ship and train. By the 1970s this had fully ceased. Fenit has a population of 433 (CSO 2002).

Ships of up to 17,000 tonnes regularly dock in the port. The oil industry has also used Fenit as a base for their supply boats on several occasions when exploring off the West and Southwest coast of Ireland. The port is also a major port for landing fish. Recreational angling is a popular activity in Fenit where many visitors fish from the viaduct. Tralee Bay Sea Angling Club, the largest angling club in Ireland, have their clubhouse on the marina breakwater, in the harbour. Tralee Bay Sailing Club have a slipway and fine clubhouse building on a prominanent point overlooking the harbour and bay.

The Tralee Harbour Board was established in 1840. Commercial shipping started to use Blennerville, at the head of Tralee Bay, as the access point for the town of Tralee. Prior to this cargo for Tralee was transported through Barrow Harbour, a natural sea inlet, just North of Fenit. Barrow was, historically, the port used to service Ardfert, now a village but, in the monastic era, it was a major ecclesiastical centre with students and monks from many parts of Europe.

In the year 1880, the harbour at Fenit was built and the Harbour Board took on the name "Tralee and Fenit Pier and Harbour Board"

In 1887 the railway line was built.

In 1851 a lighthouse was built on the little Samphire Rock, located a few hunderd meters west of Fenit Pier.

On the 8th of August, 1922, during the Irish Civil War, Fenit was the scene of a major seabourne landing by over 1000 Free State troops, as part of an offensive to re-take Kerry and the Republican held province of Munster.

A large bronze sculpture of Saint Brendan, the Navigator, was erected in 2004 on Great Samphire Island, the rock around which the harbour was built. Saint Brendan was probably born on Fenit Island just north west of the village.[citation needed] Fenit Castle, a tower house, was built in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries to protect the entrance to Barrow Harbour.

The current Harbour Master is Mr Michael O Carroll, a man of great knowledge and experience.

Fenit is about 10km West of Tralee town, on the North side of Tralee Bay. Roads R551 & R558 from Tralee Town. Kerry Regional Airport is approximately thirty minutes away by car. Both Shannon and Cork Airports are two hours away by car.

Coordinates: 52°17′N, 9°52′W

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