In 1747, a Castleisland man named John Murphy undertook a remarkable project: to build a turnpike road connecting the butter-producing lands of North Kerry to the great Cork Butter Market. For the next two and a half centuries, that road carried the commerce and conflict of Irish life – the clatter of laden carts, the grievances of Whiteboys and Moonlighters, the silences of Famine.

Once Upon a Road is the story of that road and the people who lived and died along it. Drawing on Acts of Parliament, estate records, local folklore and decades of dedicated research, Joe Harrington traces the full sweep of Irish history through the prism of a single route: from the Penal Laws and the Desmond Rebellions to hedge schools, the slave trade, Land League agitation, and the War of Independence. Along the way, the Butter Road becomes something more than a thoroughfare – it becomes a living record of the resilience, resistance, and ordinary humanity of those who travelled it.

Part local history, part journey of personal discovery, Once Upon a Road invites readers to see a familiar landscape with new eyes – and to remember all the ghosts of all the years gone by.