WATERVILLE

Waterville beach and promenade is located in south west Kerry, overlooking stunning Ballinskelligs Bay. The beach is ideal beach for surfing the waves and Beachcombing and is a good area for fishing.

It has received the Green Coast Award for 2017, which recognizes beaches for their clean environment, excellent water quality and natural beauty.

CHARLIE CHAPLIN IN WATERVILLE

Charlie Chaplin and his family made Waterville their second home for many years due to the friendly Hospitality offered by the Huggard family in the Butler Arms Hotel and all the local people in the Village. It was an annual event when a big car carrying the whole Chaplin family would arrive, the excitement especially for the children of the village meeting our friends again, it became part of life and we expected it would go on forever. When the troubles broke out in 1970 Charlie Chaplin and his family stopped coming due to fears it would spread south but today Waterville is still enjoyed by the Chaplin children and the next generations.

Today the Waterville people, don’t think of what it was like here as a man once regarded as the most famous people in the world in the quiet village in the south west of Ireland. He was treated like a local and he loved the atmosphere in and around the Butler Arms Hotel and became great friends with Billy and Mary Huggard and Martin and Mary Billy’s parents. Billy’s children still keep in touch with some of the Chaplin’s today it was a time of something special not because they were famous but because how quick they could fit in the local community. They tell us it was one of the happiest times in their childhood coming to Waterville each year. Billy would have the Chaplin family out Fishing, Horse riding, Swimming, and Sand Yachting.  In the evenings all the residents of the Butler Arms would gather around the snooker table and play a game called “Roll the Red” and would entertain everyone and they would all get involved. Table Tennis was also a popular game for residents, so it’s no wonder in earlier times when Hilda, Billy’s sister moved to the Lake Hotel in Killarney in 1940, shortly after she became the table tennis champion of Killarney beating Teddy Clifford in the final in the old Muckross Hotel.

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