Baile Mhóntáin, 'town of the moorland'
How a bog became a fountain
Fountainstown is a mistranslation that stuck. The Irish name Baile Mhóntáin means the townland of the moorland or bog - móinteán being a stretch of marshy ground. In the local Cork pronunciation the word slid toward something like 'vountáin', and an English-speaking cartographer wrote down what the ear heard: Fountainstown. The form Ballymontane appears in records as far back as 1575, in the civil parish of Kilpatrick, barony of Kinalea. So the elegant English name promises a spring that was never there. What was there was bog, and behind the dunes some of it still is.
Fountainstown club, 1936
The first pitch and putt course
The bold claim on the noticeboard is true enough to repeat: the pitch and putt club laid out at Fountainstown in 1936 is widely regarded as the first organised course of its kind in the world, and the European Pitch and Putt Association names it as the origin of the modern competitive sport. The club came with tennis courts, a playground and a clubhouse in the same 1930s push that turned the village into a small resort. It declined by mid-century and was revived in 1973. From this strip of south Cork ground a game spread to clubs all over the country. Not bad for a village this size.
Roche lands, Hodder house, 1699
Fountainstown House
On the rise behind the village stands Fountainstown House. The land was held by the Roches, a Norman family, possibly from the 15th or 16th century; in the early 1600s the Hodders, a Dorset family, acquired large holdings here, and Samuel Hodder and his wife Elizabeth completed the present house in 1699. The older rear section is said to preserve the original Roche farmhouse. It was restored in the 1990s and is still a private family home - not a visitor attraction, so admire it from the road and leave the family in peace.