← County Cork Ireland · Co. Cork · Ballylickey Save · Share
POSTED FROM
BALLYLICKEY
CO. CORK · IE

Ballylickey
Béal Átha Leice, Co. Cork

The Wild Atlantic Way
STOP 08 / 08
Béal Átha Leice · Co. Cork

Not a town, barely a village - a bend on the Bantry road where the Ouvane meets the bay, two good beds, and the home of Ireland's first female botanist.

Ballylickey is not a town and barely a village. It is a bend on the N71 about five kilometres north of Bantry, where the Ouvane River comes down off the mountains and spreads into the head of Bantry Bay. The name in Irish, Béal Átha Leice, means the mouth of the ford of the flagstone - a river crossing, long before there was a road. Most people pass through it on the way to Glengarriff and the Beara and never stop. That is the usual mistake.

What there is here is the setting and two good places to stay. The Beara Peninsula, the Sheep's Head and the Mizen all fan out from this corner of the bay, so Ballylickey works as a base for the whole of West Cork's far west. The Seaview House Hotel has been feeding and bedding people since the 1940s, and the Ouvane Falls Inn sits on the river with a bar, a restaurant and rooms. That is the village, more or less.

The thing worth knowing is that Ballylickey produced a scientist of the first rank. Ellen Hutchins was born at Ballylickey House in 1785 and spent her short life botanising the shore and the rocks of this bay - seaweeds, mosses, liverworts, lichens - and identifying species new to science. She is remembered as Ireland's first female botanist. There is no museum, no statue, no visitor centre. There is the bay she worked, which is the same bay, and that is the memorial.

Bantry is five kilometres south for everything you need - shops, fuel, the bigger harbour, the Friday market. Glengarriff is fifteen minutes north. But the point of Ballylickey is to stop here, eat well, sleep with the water in front of you, and use it as the door to the peninsulas.

Population
~400
Coords
51.7250° N, 9.4369° W
01 / 08

At a glance.

Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.

01 The setting

The head of Bantry Bay, where the Ouvane comes down.

Ballylickey sits where the Ouvane River drops off the mountains and spreads into the top of Bantry Bay. The Irish, Béal Átha Leice, means the mouth of the ford of the flagstone. The Beara, the Sheep's Head and the Mizen all radiate out from here.

Walks & outings → 02 The botanist

Ellen Hutchins was born here in 1785.

Ireland's first recognised female botanist grew up at Ballylickey House, catalogued over a thousand species of seaweed, lichen and moss around this bay, and had a whole genus named after her. She died at twenty-nine. Most people who pass through have never heard of her.

Stories & lore → 03 The beds

Two good places to stop, and a reason to.

The Seaview House Hotel and the Ouvane Falls Inn are why you pull off the road here. One is a long-running country house with serious food, the other a riverside inn with a proper bar. Between them they are the whole village.

Where to stay →
02 / 08

Where to eat.

PlaceType€Local note
Seaview House Hotel Hotel restaurant €€€ The dining room is the reason to come. Country-house cooking that has held a reputation for decades, local meat and West Cork seafood, a wine list built over years. Dinner, breakfast, or a drink in the bar. Book ahead, especially in summer.
Ouvane Falls Inn Bar food & restaurant, riverside €€ Pub food in the bar through the day and an evening restaurant, on the river between Bantry and Glengarriff. The reliable mid-range plate in Ballylickey, with the water going past the window.
03 / 08

Where to sleep.

PlaceTypeLocal note
Seaview House Hotel Country house hotel The proper place to stay. An Edwardian house built in the late 1800s for the sea view, opened as a hotel in the 1940s, and run by the O'Sullivan family for three generations - long under Kathleen O'Sullivan, now her nephew Ronan. Quietly extended over the decades, good food, gardens running down toward the water, dogs welcome in the garden suites. Book the dinner, not just the bed.
Ouvane Falls Inn Inn & B&B, riverside on the N71 A family-run inn on the Ouvane between Bantry and Glengarriff, with around thirteen rooms, a traditional bar that does food, and an evening restaurant. River and bay views, walking on the doorstep, and Sunday entertainment. The more informal of the two stops.
Eagle Point Camping Caravan & camping park, on the bay A long-established caravan and camping park on its own peninsula sticking out into Bantry Bay, a couple of minutes from the village. Pitches with the water on three sides, well placed for touring the Beara, the Sheep's Head and the Mizen. Seasonal - check before you arrive out of summer.
04 / 08

Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

1785 to 1815, born at Ballylickey House

Ellen Hutchins, botanist of Bantry Bay

Ellen Hutchins was born at Ballylickey House on 17 March 1785, one of a large family on a small estate at the head of Bantry Bay. Sent to Dublin as a sickly girl, she was advised to take up natural history as a healthy hobby, and from about 1805 she botanised the shore and rocks around her home with an intensity that astonished the men she corresponded with. She specialised in the hard, unglamorous end of botany - seaweeds, mosses, liverworts and lichens, the non-flowering plants - and in roughly eight years catalogued more than a thousand species, several of them new to science, drawing them with real skill. She never published under her own name; her finds went into other men's books. The English botanist Dawson Turner exchanged over a hundred letters with her without ever meeting her, and Robert Brown named the genus Hutchinsia after her. She died in 1815, aged twenty-nine, having spent her last years nursing her mother and a disabled brother. She is now reckoned Ireland's first female botanist, and the bay she worked is the only monument she has.

Philip Graves of Ballylickey, 1876 to 1953

The man who exposed a forgery

The Graves family held Ballylickey House for generations, and one of them, Philip Graves, became a journalist of consequence. As a correspondent for The Times he is credited with proving, in 1921, that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion - the antisemitic forgery that has done so much harm - was plagiarised from an earlier French satire. He set the two texts side by side and showed the copying line by line. It is a strange thing to trace back to a shooting lodge at the head of Bantry Bay, but that is where the family was rooted. Ballylickey House was badly damaged by fire in 1976 and later ran as a hotel and restaurant.

05 / 08

Things to do outside.

Wear waterproofs. Bring a sandwich. Tell someone where you're going if it's the mountain.

The bridge over the Ouvane Stand on the road bridge where the Ouvane comes down and spreads into the top of the bay. At flood, or when the salmon are running, this is the whole landscape in one view - mountains behind, water in front.
A few minutesdistance
10 mintime
Eagle Point shore Walk out along the Eagle Point peninsula with Bantry Bay on three sides and the Beara stacked across the water. Big sky, clean water, and on a clear evening the best light at the head of the bay.
2 km loopdistance
40 mintime
Ouvane River upstream Follow the river back toward the mountains from the village. The Ouvane is a serious salmon river, and this is the country Ellen Hutchins botanised two hundred years ago. Boots after rain.
3 kmdistance
45 mintime
06 / 08

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring
Mar-May

The mountains green up, the bay light is at its best, and the road to the peninsulas is quiet before the summer traffic. The good month to have the place to yourself.

◉ Go
Summer
Jun-Aug

Long evenings on the bay, both places open and busy, Eagle Point full of campers. Book the Seaview House dinner ahead - West Cork is busy in July and August.

◉ Go
Autumn
Sep-Oct

Salmon on the Ouvane, autumn colour on the hills, the tourist rush gone. A good, quiet time on the bay.

◉ Go
Winter
Nov-Feb

Short days and wet weather off the Atlantic, and the campsite shut. The hotel and inn keep going, and a fire and a window over the bay is no bad way to spend a wet evening - but check what is open first.

◐ Mind yourself
07 / 08

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.

×
Expecting a village centre

There is no square, no main street, no cluster of shops. Ballylickey is a scatter of houses, two places to stay and a bridge. The setting and the beds are the whole offer. For shops and services, Bantry is five kilometres south.

×
Driving straight through to Glengarriff

Most people do, doing 80 on the N71 with the Beara in their sights. The head of the bay, the Ouvane bridge and the Hutchins story are all worth ten minutes off the accelerator.

+

Getting there.

By car

On the N71 about 5 km north of Bantry and roughly 15 km south of Glengarriff. Cork city is about 90 minutes east via Bandon. Easy to drive past if you are not watching for it.

By bus

Bus Éireann route 236 (Cork to Bantry, on to Glengarriff and Castletownbere) stops in Ballylickey, with a stop opposite the Ouvane Falls Inn and another at Eagle Point. Bantry is the nearest town with full services.

By train

No railway in West Cork. The nearest train station is Cork city (Kent Station), about 90 minutes away by road, with onward bus to Bantry.

Next on the tour

Co. Cork
Bantry
Five kilometres south. The harbour town - Bantry House and gardens, the Friday market, the 1796 French expedition story, and all the services Ballylickey lacks.
Co. Cork
Glengarriff
Fifteen minutes north. Wooded mountain village at the foot of the Caha Pass, with boat trips out to the gardens of Garinish Island.
Co. Cork
Kealkill
A few kilometres up the Ouvane valley. A small village with a stone circle and standing stones, and the back road into the Borlin valley.
Co. Cork
Durrus
South-west, at the head of Dunmanus Bay. The gateway to the Sheep's Head Peninsula and the home of the famous farmhouse cheese.