Honouring the humble spud—and remembering the Great Irish Famine

Founded in 2009, the Potato Festival (Féile an Phráta) celebrates the importance of the humble potato or ‘spud’ in the diet and lives of the people of West Kerry. The programme of events for the 2019 festival will include an important retrospective on the Great Irish Famine in collaboration with the UCC School of History particularly focussing on how the Famine affected the area. In West Kerry, as in the rest of Ireland, the Great Famine led to untold human misery and death but also created a huge wave of emigration to North America and Britain. The Féile an Phráta programme invites the descendants of those who braved emigration to come and walk in their footsteps. A lecture series will fascinate students of Irish History and you can experience an old Famine Village near Ballyferriter.

Book a stay in one of our West Kerry holiday houses here.