Islands of Ireland: How Miss Plummer’s Island in Kerry got its name

Miss Plummer’s Island is garlanded with a kaleidoscope of wildflowers and dominated by a fine twisting conifer

Miss Plummer’s Island attracted many visitors over the years, some of whom wrote accounts of their impressions. Picture: Dan MacCarthy

Sounding like a piece from a game of Cluedo or a destination in an Agatha Christie adventure, this is in fact a very real island near Killarney, Co Kerry. It is situated on that amazing channel of water known as the Long Range which meanders for about 2km between the Upper Lake and Lake Muckross, which is itself an interlude before the largest of the trio, Lough Leane. The channel has numerous inlets and bays that tempt the eye and the imagination towards discovery.

Miss Plummer’s Island is a minute island, heavily overgrown, or put another way, garlanded with a kaleidoscope of wildflowers and dominated by a fine twisting conifer.

Its naming (it almost definitely did not have an Irish name which was Anglicised) dates from the Victorian period when peculiar follies decorated the countryside and numerous geographical features were named for the wealthy occupants of adjacent mansions.

Upstream at the Upper Lake are numerous small islands including McCarthy’s Island, Ronayne’s Island overlooked by the MacGillycuddy’s Reeks. The largest of the three lakes, Lough Lean (Lough Léin) or Lake of Learning, is named for the time when its largest island, Innisfallen, was home to a community of monks who created one of the masterpieces of early Medieval Ireland, the Annals of Innisfallen.

The naming of the islands was attributed to one Father Murphy, according to the 19th century antiquarian Thomas Crofton Croker. On one lakeside excursion, a touring party sought to have an island named after one of its members, the writer and mineralogist Anne Plumtre, he writes. However, she feared that this would be corrupted to ‘Plum Tree’ and a myth might grow how plum trees were once grown on the island. Croker records Ms Plumtre’s unhappiness at the christening and instead desired it be named after the well-known actor of the time, Kean: 

I therefore declined being godmother at least so far as giving my own name to it was concerned.

The members of the party including a clergyman and a bugle player, alighted on the island, a bottle of whiskey was produced and the island duly christened 'Kean’s Island'. However, mythmaking is a powerful force and the original idea was not to be countenanced. And so, Miss Plummer’s Island was born.

Possibly by virtue of its naming Miss Plummer’s Island attracted many other visitors over the years, some of whom wrote accounts of their impressions.

One such account was written by a Peg Plunkett, aka Margaret Leeson, one of Dublin’s most infamous brothel-keepers of the 18th century. The good Peg wrote how she was landed on Miss Plummer’s Island with her lover Purcell and was promptly enveloped in arbutus, geranium, and jasmine. And not being of a shy disposition she described what ensued.

“And here, just when the sun was in its highest meridian, did we refine upon ecstatic luxuries, like our first parents in the Garden of Eden; we sauntered through this beautiful paradise, where the charming Plummer, once left her fragrant stream, from whence it borrowed its name”.

As might be suspected of such a tryst, a name or two might have been carved in a tree to mark the occasion. The lovers finally left “with great regret, after spending upwards of three hours in this divine place, we left the island, but not until Purcell carved upon a venerable oak, with his pen-knife, the following inscription, being determined to leave Killarney the next morning”.

Time, being unsentimental, has appeared to have erased all traces of this etching from the tree of Peg’s encounter with Purcell. However, last word goes to the playful memoirist: “Be it remembered, that on the third day of June 1789, the divine Margaret Leeson of Pitt-street, in the city of Dublin, with her lover, enjoyed every pleasure the most refined love could imagine, in this luxurious spot, with her own Purcell; her enraptured lover, humbly presumes to alter the name of this enchanting island from Plummer to that of Leeson.” 

• How to get there: gapofdunloetraditionalboattours.com/boat-tours; killarneylaketours.ie. Or kayak from the Upper Lake. Permits available from www.killarneynationalpark.ie 
• Other: The Memoirs of Mrs Leeson, Madam, 1727-1797, Mary Lyons, Lilliput Press; Legends of the Lakes: Or, Sayings and Doings at Killarney, Volume 2. Thomas Crofton Croker