Richard Martin and Alexander Nimmo
Roundstone was laid out by a Scottish engineer on land leased from the son of the man who founded the world's first animal welfare society. Richard Martin, Humanity Dick, owned Connemara from Ballynahinch; Alexander Nimmo, who built harbours from Dunmore East to Valentia, took a lease from Thomas Martin in August 1826 on the White House at Letterdife and made a fishing village here.
Checked against the source on 2026-09-19.
Humanity Dick
Born at Dangan on the Corrib four miles above Galway on 15 January 1754, the only son of Robert Martin of Birch Hall and Bridget Barnewall of the Trimlestown family, Martin sat in the Irish Commons for Jamestown from 1776 and for Lanesborough from 1798, promoting Catholic emancipation, and then at Westminster. He was a colonel of the Galway Volunteers, survived two shipwrecks, fought more than a hundred duels with sword and pistol, and was in New England when the American war began. His Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act of 1822, Martin's Act, was the first law against cruelty to animals, and he fought bear-baiting and dog-fighting; George IV called him Humanity Dick. A petition alleging voter intimidation cost him his seat in 1826, and, a heavy gambler, he fled to Boulogne beyond the reach of his creditors and died there on 6 January 1834. Of nine children by Elizabeth Vesey only three survived childhood.
Nimmo
Born in Cupar in 1783 to a watchmaker and raised in Kirkcaldy, Nimmo was rector of Inverness Royal Academy at nineteen, came to Ireland in 1811 on Thomas Telford's recommendation to work for the Bog Commission, designed the harbour at Dunmore East from 1814 and ran the western district from a Dublin office. In Connemara he built roads and piers, Roundstone among them, and never married. He reported on the Dee and Mersey with Telford and Robert Stevenson in 1828 and designed a new village on Valentia in 1830. He died at 78 Marlborough Street on 20 January 1832, aged 49, of dropsy after long rheumatic illness. The model on this page pins the harbour he built; the Ballynahinch guide has the Martins' castle.
Questions people ask
Who was Humanity Dick?
Who built Roundstone?
Written from Wikipedia, "Richard Martin (Irish politician)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), read on 2026-09-19, and from the OpenStreetMap places on the model. Nothing has been added from memory; follow the source for its footnotes.