Fermoy (Mainistir Fhear Maigh in Irish) in County Cork, Republic of Ireland is a town of some 4,800 inhabitants, environs included (2002 census), situated on the River Blackwater in the south of Ireland. The name of the town comes from the Irish, and refers to a Cistercian abbey founded in the 12th century and a ford on the Blackwater, around which the town grew up. At the dissolution of the monasteries during the Tudor period the abbey and its lands passed through various hands. A military town with a substantial British barracks, by the 1830s this was the largest military establishment on the island of Ireland.