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The town and its environs, however, were severely devastated by the Great Famine of the 1840′s. Thousands of its inhabitants starved to death due to the lack of nutrition brought about by failure of their staple diet – the potato crop – and the effects of cruel landlordism which saw to it that the native Irish were left to die for want of food and money. Skibbereen’s famine victims were wheeled by the cartload into a communal grave in the Abbey Cemetery west of the town where today the visitor can see the Famine Plot. Visit the Great Famine Commemoration Exhibition at the Skibbereen Heritage Centre for an insight into Famine times and how it affected the area.
The sufferings and hardship of that era seemed however to instill a passion and fire in the minds of local people and the area was to emerge to the forefront in all the great movements towards national freedom and separate identity for Ireland.