Descriptions of Kilkee during the Irish Famine can be found in John Manners's travel narrative "Notes of an Irish Tour, in 1846" and Sidney Godolphin Osborne's "Gleanings in the West of Ireland" published in 1850. Manners emphasises Kilkee's popularity as a seaside resort and comments on its overcrowded beach and dangerous waves:"Kilkee itself is the quaintest collection of little whitewashed cottages, some distinguished by the name of 'lodges,' that ever aspired to the dignity of a bathing-place. . . .The lodges are built round a little sandy creek, and here . . . plies the one bathing-machine which the decent liberality of Lady Chatterton presented to this Clare Herne Bay; and if you don't choose to wade a quarter of a mile among a hundred fellow-bathers over the said sands, you must do as I did, look out for some cranny among the black rocks, and trust to the mercifulness of the Atlantic waves, or to your own strength and skill, to avoid being knocked up against those scarifiers of sides and shins: may you fare better than I did this morning!" (Manners, 1849, pp. 55–61).