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Blennerville Visitor Centre Other Attractions
Emigration Display
Blennerville was the main port of emigration from Co. Kerry during the Great Famine (1845 to 1848) and was, during those years, the home port of the famous emigrant barque “Jeanie Johnston”. The visitor centre houses a fascinating display on Irish emigration including models of the infamous coffin ships.
Bird Watching
Come and view Tralee Bay Nature Reserve, where pale-bellied brent geese spend from October to April in Ireland feeding on the eelgrass and green seaweeds on the mudflats, and grazing in nearby fields and saltmarshes when this food is scarce. Birds of the Bay include turnstone, ringed plover, dunlin, redshank, bar-tailed godwit, golden plover and curlew. |
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The Jeanie Johnston Commemorative Quilt : The Jeanie Johnston Commemorative Quilt was designed and made by the Jeanie Johnston Quilting Circle, a group of women involved in quilting in the Tralee area for a number of years. The Quilt commemorates the emigrant barque Jeanie Johnston that made sixteen Trans-Atlantic trips and never lost a crewmember or passenger.
The design incorporates the Jeanie Johnston in Blennerville with a group of emigrants on the quay waiting to board it. Close by are the Blennerville Windmill and Workhouse, and dotted on the hills in the background are the abandoned homes of famine victims. The Quilt’s lower border has famine scenes of women digging in search of potatoes and of a mother holding her dying child; a picture of the Fever Shed in Grosse Ile is a reminder of the sufferings of the famine emigrants. There are also crests of some of the seaports associated with the ship; Quebec, New York, Boston, Belfast, Dublin and Tralee. |
