There can be no doubt that you are in the heart of dairy country when entering the north Cork town of Charleville. While many towns have monuments to historical figures and events – and Charleville is no exception here – the public space at the top of Main Street is dedicated to a fountain celebrating, according to the adjoining plaque, the town’s “long-standing connection with the development of the dairy industry”.
The farmland surrounding the town is almost legendary for the quality of the grass it grows, and for the quality of milk that can be produced. Long known as the Golden Vale, the area gave its name to the milk-processing plant in the heart of the town (now Kerry Group).
That Kerry facility dominates the town. While the company has sponsored the horse-drawn cart filled with milk churns that make up the feature fountain on Main Street, that picture is light years away from the iPhone-app, data powered interaction between farmer and processor that exists in the town these days.
\ Donal O’Leary
Charleville town is far from just a dairy-processing unit. It is a thriving urban centre with a huge variety of independent traders all through the town centre. It also has the full range of multiples, with Dunnes, SuperValu, Aldi and Lidl all having a presence.
\ Donal O’Leary
The town has branches of both of Ireland’s pillar banks, but those facilities are dwarfed by the size of the local credit union, a branch of the Mallow Credit Union which according to its latest accounts holds €172 million in deposits (or “members’ shares”).
\ Donal O’Leary
Charleville is on the main Cork to Limerick road and is served by the Cork-Dublin rail line, making it very well connected to the rest of the country. There are plans to bypass the town as part of upgrade works on the N20, a route notorious for traffic delays. For Charleville, a bypass would likely further improve the town as much of the traffic on Main Street never stops.
Expansion
Being so well connected also means Charleville is seen as a town ripe for expansion. In 2015, the head of the School of Spatial Planning at DIT, Henk van der Kamp, suggested that the town was an ideal location for vastly increased size. He suggested that forward-looking planning and key investments could see the town with a population in the hundreds of thousands.
\ Donal O’Leary
This may seem fanciful, but stop for a second and look at the difference between the horse-drawn cart at the top of the town, and the multi-billion industry that is today’s Kerry Group. Rather than being fanciful, the history of Charleville shows than anything can be possible.
There can be no doubt that you are in the heart of dairy country when entering the north Cork town of Charleville. While many towns have monuments to historical figures and events – and Charleville is no exception here – the public space at the top of Main Street is dedicated to a fountain celebrating, according to the adjoining plaque, the town’s “long-standing connection with the development of the dairy industry”.
The farmland surrounding the town is almost legendary for the quality of the grass it grows, and for the quality of milk that can be produced. Long known as the Golden Vale, the area gave its name to the milk-processing plant in the heart of the town (now Kerry Group).
That Kerry facility dominates the town. While the company has sponsored the horse-drawn cart filled with milk churns that make up the feature fountain on Main Street, that picture is light years away from the iPhone-app, data powered interaction between farmer and processor that exists in the town these days.
\ Donal O’Leary
Charleville town is far from just a dairy-processing unit. It is a thriving urban centre with a huge variety of independent traders all through the town centre. It also has the full range of multiples, with Dunnes, SuperValu, Aldi and Lidl all having a presence.
\ Donal O’Leary
The town has branches of both of Ireland’s pillar banks, but those facilities are dwarfed by the size of the local credit union, a branch of the Mallow Credit Union which according to its latest accounts holds €172 million in deposits (or “members’ shares”).
\ Donal O’Leary
Charleville is on the main Cork to Limerick road and is served by the Cork-Dublin rail line, making it very well connected to the rest of the country. There are plans to bypass the town as part of upgrade works on the N20, a route notorious for traffic delays. For Charleville, a bypass would likely further improve the town as much of the traffic on Main Street never stops.
Expansion
Being so well connected also means Charleville is seen as a town ripe for expansion. In 2015, the head of the School of Spatial Planning at DIT, Henk van der Kamp, suggested that the town was an ideal location for vastly increased size. He suggested that forward-looking planning and key investments could see the town with a population in the hundreds of thousands.
\ Donal O’Leary
This may seem fanciful, but stop for a second and look at the difference between the horse-drawn cart at the top of the town, and the multi-billion industry that is today’s Kerry Group. Rather than being fanciful, the history of Charleville shows than anything can be possible.
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