Fáilte and welcome to the Barryroe Community Website
This website offers to:
- List Local Events
- List Local Organisations and Businesses in the Directory
- Publish Community News
- Build a library of interesting local History
- Share the local Nature
Please do Add an Event or Add Your Listing
Panoramic views of the Atlantic, Broadstrand, Dunworley, Ballinglanna and Inchydoney Island
100% of proceeds to Courtmacsherry RNLI
Saving Lives at Sea
by Denis O'Regan
Fascinating facts about the Gannet
I am privileged to regularly observe Gannets from our home on the Atlantic here in West Cork. They are a remarkable bird that capture my curiosity.
The Northern Gannet (Morus bassana) to give it its full name, is a large white seabird with black tipped wings that span 2 meters (6 feet). They often fly for miles out at sea in convoy and seem to relish windy days climbing up and rushing down to the surface of the ocean like riding an invisible roller coaster. They are particularly adept at finding fish and diving from a height can hit the water at 100km per hour (62mph). Normally this would knock out or even kill most birds but the Gannet has some astounding adaptions for this method of hunting.
The Amazing Gannet
In December 1701 the slave ship, “Amity”, owned by the Royal African Company and bound from Guinea to London was blown off course in a severe Atlantic storm and ended up being wrecked off the Seven Heads at Dunworley
The “Amity” was a large ship, believed to have been ninety-feet in length. She was carrying a cargo of ivory and a hardwood from the African Padauk tree known as camm-wood. She struck a reef in Dunworley Bay, the ship was pounded by the relentless Atlantic storm until she broke up and all hands on board, bar one negro cabin boy, were lost.
It is not know how many crew were on board the vessel, but a ship of that size would normally have had fifty crew to man the vessel. The only name known was that of the captain whose surname was Phaxton.
Amity wreck
How did the Barryroe Community Website begin?
Denis O'Regan, founder of Faithful.ie has been developing websites since 1998. To put that into perspective four years earlier at the beginning of 1994 the total number of websites on planet earth was 623! In 2003 based in the UK, Denis formed the IT company Easykey. Denis and Carol and two dogs Benny and Chloe arrived in 2015 to Barryroe. During the COVID pandemic he developed a website for the parish of Barryroe with the initial service of providing livestream Mass for the local community. In the following months the company Faithful.ie was established specifically providing smart website solutions for Faith Communities.
See Faithful.ie
On Sunday 26 April 2026 the Barryroe Community website was launched. Initially the purpose was to List Local Events. This quickly expanded to:
- Building a library of interesting local History
- Listing Local Organisations and Businesses in the Directory
- Sharing the local Wildlife and Nature
Denis O'Regan
How is the website funded?
All costs for this website are sponsored by Faithful.ie and is provided for free to the local community.