Bandon’s hidden Protestant history revealed in new book

Did you know that Bandon once had seven Orange lodges?

Or that if present-day residents of the West Cork town went back in time 70 years, all the street names would be different? Streets in the historic town, formerly a Protestant stronghold dating from the 1580s, were renamed in the decades following the War of Independence.

Protestant street names, some hundreds of years old, were effectively written out of history, according to author and schoolteacher Kieran Doyle, who has just published a book on Bandon.