Eight medals and a pub
Páidí Ó Sé
Páidí Ó Sé won eight All-Ireland senior football medals with Kerry as a wing-back in the great team of the 1970s and 80s. He came home to Ventry, opened a pub across from the church, and ran it for the rest of his life. As manager he brought Kerry to two more All-Irelands. He died in 2012, suddenly, at fifty-seven. The Comórtas Peile Páidí Ó Sé runs every February — county teams, club teams, women's teams, all in Ventry for a long weekend in his memory. The pub is still in the family.
The Battle of Ventry
Cath Fionntrá
In the medieval Fenian Cycle, an army led by Daire Donn, King of the World, lands on this beach to conquer Ireland. Fionn Mac Cumhaill and the Fianna meet them on the strand and the fighting goes on for a year and a day. Daire Donn is killed. The bones, says the saga, are still under the sand. The story was written down in the fifteenth century from oral tradition that was already old. The beach has not changed much since.
Ceann Trá, ní Ventry
An Ghaeltacht
Ventry is in the Corca Dhuibhne Gaeltacht and Irish is the working language of the parish. Caitlín Maude — poet, sean-nós singer, activist — taught here in the 1960s before she died young in 1982. The signs are in Irish, the school is a Gaelscoil, and a quiet ear in Páidí's on a Sunday will catch as much Irish as English. Speaking a few words back is welcomed. Everyone here has English. Almost nobody chooses to use it first.
Skellig week on Slea Head
Star Wars
When the Force Awakens and Last Jedi crews came to film the Skellig Michael scenes, they used the cliffs and slopes around Slea Head and Mount Eagle as a backup location and for additional shots. The road was closed for a week. The locals were paid to keep their sheep off the camera lines. The X-wing did not in fact land in Ventry. A film unit did, briefly, and the parish has been telling the story ever since.
October 1939
U-35 and the Greek sailors
On 4 October 1939, weeks into the war, the German submarine U-35 surfaced in Ventry Bay and put 28 Greek sailors ashore. They were the crew of the MV Diamantis, sunk by the same submarine the day before. The captain, in violation of orders, had decided to land them rather than leave them at sea. They were fed in the village and sent on to Dublin. A plaque on the harbour wall, unveiled in 2009, remembers it.