Clonakilty

Clonakilty (; ), sometimes shortened to Clon, is a town in County Cork, Ireland. The town is at the head of the tidal Clonakilty Bay. The rural hinterland is used mainly for dairy farming. The town's population was 5,112 at the 2022 census. The town is a tourism hub in West Cork, and was recognised as the "Best Town in Europe" in 2017, and "Best Place of the Year" in 2017 by the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland. Clonakilty is in the Dáil constituency of Cork South-West, which has three seats. Clonakilty became Ireland's first Autism-friendly town in 2018.

==History== thumb|upright|left|A statue in Clonakilty commemorating the Battle of the Big Cross The Clonakilty area has a number of ancient and pre-Celtic sites, including Lios na gCon ringfort. Norman settlers built castles around Clonakilty, and a number of Norman surnames survive in the West Cork area to the present day. In 1292, Thomas De Roach received a charter to hold a market every Monday at Kilgarriffe (then called Kyle Cofthy or Cowhig's Wood), close to where the present town now stands. In the 14th century, a ten-mile strip of fallow woodland called (the land of the woods) divided the barony of Ibane (Ardfield) and Barryroe and reached the sea at Clonakilty Bay. Here a castle called Coyltes Castell was recorded in a 1378 plea roll. This was subsequently referred to as Cloghnykyltye, one of the many phonetic spellings for (meaning the castle of the woods, from , the Irish for stone or stone building, and meaning woods).