Author and historian Roy Foster, along with a specialist in historic Irish demesnes, is urging Kerry County Council to wake up to one of the country's classic 18th-century model estate villages and to desist from plans which would lead to further insensitive development and the destruction of its rare linked demesne lands.
Milltown in mid-Kerry is now seen as a cheaper housing alternative to Killarney and Tralee and has seen enormous growth in the past two years, with the number of houses there quadrupling, some overshadowing ancient structures and the historic landscape.
A draft council plan calls for yet more houses and for a road throughout the historic demesne.
The submissions by Prof Foster and historian John Knightly will not be made public until October 6th at a special planning meeting to decide on the future of villages and towns in the Killarney-Tralee hub. It is understood they are set against those submitted by a number by landowners and agents urging even greater rezonings than envisaged by the planners for housing development.
The author of Modern Ireland and professor of Irish history in Hertford College, Oxford, said a bypass proposed by the council would cut through the "sensitive" Kilcolman Estate which the plan declares to protect from inappropriate development.
The council plan's basic thrust was to "cram new housing estates" around Milltown's already fragile nucleus and ecosystem and into an ancient greenfield site, Prof Foster said. Some of the historic sites had not even been listed by the council in its draft public plan for the village. It should take a closer look at its plans and cancel them, he suggested.
The former Kilcolman demesne around which Milltown was built was one of the few surviving examples of a planned landscape when most such estates were being turned into golf courses, said Mr Knightly, who specialises in historic houses and demesnes.
He argued that the planners had failed to recognise the architectural importance of the town and had already allowed much that was unique to be destroyed and they had also failed to appreciate the integral links between the demesne and the town.
"With the exception of Killarney, no other town in Kerry is surrounded by such spectacular parkland," he said. "The current draft plan will basically result in two Milltowns, an undervalued historic core and a modern circumference, the latter little relevance to the setting of the former."
The demesne was divided by the land commission among local farmers in the 1960s but it remained largely as it was and was a rare example when most such demesnes had been turned into golf courses, he said.
The Irish Georgian Society has also expressed its concern. It said because of the rarity of such demesnes in Kerry, alternative bypass routes should be sought.