Béal Átha an Spidéil · Co. Cork
The village that watched a statue move in 1985 - and is still a quiet Courceys parish eight kilometres southwest of Kinsale, with two beaches behind it.
For most people Ballinspittle is one word - statue. In the summer of 1985 a local woman said the Virgin Mary at the roadside grotto moved, and within weeks the country emptied itself onto the hillside above the village. By the Feast of the Assumption gardaí were counting crowds in the tens of thousands. It was the start of Ireland's Year of the Moving Statues, with sightings reported from Sligo to Waterford. Cork University College psychologists set up cameras and motion sensors and recorded nothing. The Bishop of Cork asked everyone to approach it with prudence and caution. The crowds eventually went home.
What gets forgotten is that there was a village here before the statue and there is one here still. Ballinspittle - Béal Átha an Spidéil, the ford-mouth of the hospital - sits in the barony of Courceys, about eight kilometres southwest of Kinsale on the R600. The 2022 census counted 369 people. On its edge is Ballycatten, a three-ringed earthen fort that goes back to the sixth century, and the parish has the usual quiet inventory of a south Cork farming district: a church, a couple of shops, a pub, a GAA club shared with the next village over.
The reason to come now is not the grotto - it is the coast behind it. Garrettstown and Garrylucas, two Blue Flag strands, are a couple of minutes south, with the Old Head of Kinsale and its lighthouse and famous golf links closing off the view. Surfers work the break at Garrettstown most of the year. It is honest, breezy, end-of-the-road West Cork, and Kinsale with all its restaurants is fifteen minutes back up the road if the village runs out of things to feed you.
