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CULLEN

CO. CORK · IE

Cullen
Cuileann, Co. Cork

The North Cork / Sliabh Luachra
STOP 07 / 07

Cuileann · Co. Cork

A small Duhallow village four miles short of the Kerry border, built around a holy well and a saint's curse.

Cullen is small and it is honest about it. A parish village in the barony of Duhallow, three and a half miles northwest of Millstreet, four miles short of Rathmore and the Kerry border. Dairy herds, sheep, a church, a graveyard, a GAA and handball club, and a community that knows what is happening three parishes over. The kind of place you reach because you meant to, not because you were passing.

It sits on the eastern edge of Sliabh Luachra, the rushy upland that straddles the Cork-Kerry-Limerick borders and gave Ireland one of its great traditions of fiddle and polka music. Cullen is not the centre of that world - Scartaglen and Gneeveguilla and Knocknagree have stronger claims - but it shares the same ground and the same tunes.

The thing that makes Cullen Cullen is the well. St Latiaran's holy well sits by an old graveyard, and the saint who is buried there left the village a story darker and better than most. People still walk the rounds in late July. Beyond that, this is a working farming village, not a visitor town - come for the heritage and the quiet, and do not expect a row of pubs.

Population

~429 (2011, parish)

Coords

52.1150° N, 9.1228° W

01 / 07

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 well

St Latiaran's well, and a curse that silenced the forge.

The pattern is paid on the Sunday nearest 25 July - Latiaran Day, the old start of harvest. The legend says she cursed the blacksmith so no smith's hammer would ever sound in Cullen again. A heart-shaped stone by the well marks where she went into the ground.

Stories & lore → 02 The place

Duhallow farming country on the lip of Sliabh Luachra.

Three and a half miles northwest of Millstreet, four miles east of Rathmore and the Kerry line. Dairy and sheep, a pipe band since the 1940s, and a handball alley the locals will tell you is the only 60-by-30 court in the county.

Walks & outings →

02 / 07

The pubs.

None of these are themed Irish pubs, because they don't need to be. A few that earn the trip:

Bring your expectations down

Village, not a destination

Honest note, not a listing

Cullen is a tiny farming parish and the social life runs through the community centre, the GAA and the church rather than a strip of bars. Research turns up no pub worth sending you to by name. For a proper night - a pint, a session, a feed - Millstreet is three and a half miles away and Rathmore is just over the Kerry line. Drink there, sleep there, and come to Cullen for the well and the quiet.

03 / 07

Stories & lore.

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

The curse that ended the forge

St Latiaran and the blacksmith

Latiaran was the youngest of three saintly sisters of the Duhallow country - Lasair at Kilmeen, Inghean Bhuí at Drishane, and Latiaran here at Cullen. The story goes that every morning she walked to the village forge and carried home a seed of fire in her apron to light her cell, and the fire never burned the cloth. One day the blacksmith complimented her - that she had a fine pair of feet - and she glanced down in vanity. The spell broke, the apron caught, and in her anger she cursed him: that the sound of a smith's hammer would never again be heard in Cullen. Then she went into the ground. A heart-shaped stone by the well is said to mark the spot. Whether you believe a word of it, it is a better origin story than most Irish villages get.

Latiaran Day, 25 July

The holy well and the pattern

St Latiaran's well sits beside the old graveyard, with the ruins of an early church nearby and a whitethorn the saint is said to have planted. The pattern - the rounds, the prayers, the gathering - is paid on the Sunday nearest her feast day on 25 July, which in the old calendar marked the beginning of harvest. The well was reconstructed in 2008 and is well kept. Cures have long been claimed there. It is the reason the village exists in the imagination at all, and it is free, open and quiet for most of the year.

St James, 1847

Two churches and a parish

The old church at Cullen, dedicated to St James, was built in 1847 by Fr Fitzpatrick, then parish priest of Millstreet - put up in the worst years of the Great Famine, replacing a thatched chapel by the graveyard. It served until 1907, when Canon O'Sullivan, later Bishop of Kerry, decided it was time to modernise and built a new church for the people of Cullen. The parish has always been tied to Millstreet, the larger town down the road, for both church and market.

A poet and a minister

Cullen people

For a village this size, Cullen has sent a couple of notable names out into the world. Bernard O'Donoghue, the poet, was born here in 1945; he went on to teach medieval English and Irish poetry at Wadham College, Oxford, and won the Whitbread Prize for Poetry in 1995 for his collection Gunpowder. Batt O'Keeffe, the Fianna Fáil TD who served as Minister for Education and later Minister for Enterprise, is also from the parish. Not bad for a place of a few hundred people.

04 / 07

Things to do outside.

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

St Latiaran's well and the old graveyard The reason to stop. The well, the heart-shaped stone, the whitethorn and the ruins of the early church sit together by the old burial ground. Quiet, kept, and worth the few minutes it takes to read the story into the place. Boots if it has been wet.

Short strolldistance

30 minutestime

Sliabh Luachra back roads Cullen is the eastern doorstep of Sliabh Luachra, the upland that runs west into Kerry toward Gneeveguilla, Scartaglen and Knocknagree. The reward is rushy farmland, big skies, polka-music country and almost no traffic. There is no waymarked trail here - this is a roam-the-lanes outing, not a signposted loop.

As far as you likedistance

Half a day by car or biketime

05 / 07

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

Duhallow turns green and the lanes are at their best. Quiet, lambing country, nobody about. A fine time for the well and a roam of the back roads.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

The one time the village has a date in the diary: the Latiaran pattern on the Sunday nearest 25 July. Long evenings, the best light on the uplands, and Sliabh Luachra within easy reach.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

Harvest country after the harvest. Soft light, empty roads, the colours coming in over the hills toward Kerry. A good month for a slow drive.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

Short days and wet uplands. The well keeps, but there is little else to bring you out this far in the dark months. Base yourself in Millstreet or Killarney and day-trip if you must.

◐ Mind yourself

06 / 07

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

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

Arriving expecting a tourist village

Cullen is a working Duhallow parish of a few hundred people, not a visitor town. There is no main street of shops and pubs, no heritage centre, no car park full of coaches. The well, the graveyard, the story and the quiet are the whole offer. Come for that and it delivers; come for a day out with amenities and you will be in the car again in twenty minutes.

Confusing this Cullen with the others

There is a second Cullen in Co. Cork down in the Barony of Kinalea near the coast, and another Cullen in Co. Tipperary. This is the Duhallow one, up near the Kerry border by Millstreet. Set the satnav for Rathmore or Millstreet and feel your way in.

Getting there.

By car

Cullen sits in the lanes between Millstreet and Rathmore, just off the N72 Mallow-Killarney road. From Millstreet town it is three and a half miles northwest; from Rathmore and the Kerry border about four miles west. Roughly 40 miles from both Cork city and Tralee. You will be on narrow roads for the last stretch - take it handy.

By bus

No direct service to the village. Bus Éireann route 270 (Mallow-Killarney via Millstreet and Rathmore) runs along the N72 nearby, and Local Link Cork covers the rural Duhallow routes. In practice you need a car to reach Cullen itself.

By train

The nearest station is Millstreet, three and a half miles away on the Mallow-Killarney line, with onward connections to Cork and Dublin at Mallow. Rathmore station, just over the Kerry side, is a similar distance on the same line.

By air

Kerry Airport (KIR) at Farranfore is about 30 minutes west. Cork Airport (ORK) is roughly an hour southeast. Kerry has limited routes; Cork is the busier option for most visitors.