Ballyhoura Palatine Trail

Covering ten locations in south Limerick this trail will take you across 10 km of space and over 300 tumultuous years in the history of Ireland.
The process of competition and cooperation between Catholic and Protestant neighbours in Ballyhoura can be traced from Ballyorgan in the Keale valley to nearby Kilfinnane.
The German Palatine people, refugees of a 1708/09 European war, who settled near Kilfinnane from the 1740s onwards link this pocket of south Limerick with the Rhineland in Germany and the various Pennsylvania/New York Dutch of North America. Oft-times the best of neighbours, sometimes staunch Protestant militia the interplay between rural families in Ballyhoura is traced through the headstones of four burial grounds.