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NEW INN

CO. GALWAY · IE

New Inn
An Cnoc Breac, Co. Galway

The Ireland's Ancient East
STOP 06 / 06

An Cnoc Breac · Co. Galway

A village on the old esker road between Loughrea and Ballinasloe. Quiet eleven months of the year. Then the Mummers come the first weekend of January.

New Inn is a small parish village in east Galway, fourteen kilometres northeast of Loughrea and about the same southwest of Ballinasloe. The Irish name is An Cnoc Breac - the speckled hill - and the village proper sits in the townland of Knockbrack. The land here is the Eiscir Riada, a ridge of sand and gravel dropped by glacial meltwater that runs across the middle of Ireland. It carried the Slighe Mor, the great western road from Dublin through Clonmacnoise to Galway. New Inn exists because the road went over the high dry ground here, and a coaching inn once stood where the road crossed.

It is farming country, and quiet country. The Dunkellin River rises near Woodlawn to the north and runs down through the parish. The fields around the village are thick with ancient ring forts - raths - whose names survive in the townlands: Rathally, Rathglass. West of the village, in the townland of Grange, a graveyard holds the ruins of a Cistercian monastery. None of it is interpreted or fenced or signposted. It is the kind of place where the history is in the ground and the placenames and not on a board in a car park.

Do not come expecting a destination. There is a church, a school - Scoil Bhride - a community and leisure centre, and the ordinary fabric of a rural Irish parish. Come for the back roads, the esker walking, and if you can time it, the Mummers Festival on the first weekend of January, which is the one moment the village turns the lights on for visitors. The market towns of Loughrea and Ballinasloe, both worth a day, are a short drive either side.

Population

A rural parish village, a few hundred people

Coords

53.3022° N, 8.4875° W

01 / 06

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 ridge

On the Eiscir Riada, the gravel spine that carried the Slighe Mor across Ireland.

An Cnoc Breac, the speckled hill. The village sits on the esker, a ridge of glacial sand and gravel that ran the ancient western highway from Dublin to Galway through Clonmacnoise. Higher ground than the plain around it. That is the whole reason there is a village here.

Stories & lore → 02 The festival

The New Inn Mummers Festival, the first weekend of January.

Going since the mid-1970s, when it started as a fundraiser to build the community centre. Music, song, dance and storytelling competitions in the leisure centre. It is the one weekend the place fills up, and it is a local thing, not a tourist thing.

Stories & lore →

02 / 06

Stories & lore.

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

Eiscir Riada / Slighe Mor

The speckled hill on the great road

The Eiscir Riada is a chain of eskers - ridges of sand and gravel left where rivers ran under the melting ice age glaciers - that stretches across the waist of Ireland. For thousands of years it gave travellers a dry, raised causeway through a country of bog and lake, and the Slighe Mor, one of the five great roads of ancient Ireland, ran along it from Dublin through Clonmacnoise and Ballinasloe to Galway. New Inn, An Cnoc Breac, the speckled hill, sits on that ridge. The high ground is the whole story: this is why the road came, why the inn was built, and why the village is where it is.

A monastery in a field

The Cistercian ruins at Grange

In the townland of Grange, west of the village, a graveyard holds the ruins of a small Cistercian monastery. There is no visitor centre and no interpretation. The Cistercians liked to settle on good farmland away from towns, and east Galway gave them that. What survives is fragmentary and overgrown, the kind of ruin you find by asking a local rather than following a brown sign. The whole parish - civil parishes of Bullaun, Grange and Killaan - is dense with this older landscape: ring forts, holy wells and field names that carry the memory of things long gone.

First weekend of January, since c.1976

The Mummers Festival

Mumming is old: travelling performers in straw and disguise who marked the turning of the year. New Inn keeps the tradition alive with a festival that began in the mid-1970s as a fundraiser to build the community centre, and has run every January since. Held in the New Inn Leisure Centre on the first weekend of the new year, it is a competition of music, song, dance and storytelling - a senior section on the Saturday night, juniors on the Sunday. Groups travel in to compete for prizes like the Peter J Donohue Perpetual Trophy. The proceeds still go back into the centre and local charities. It is a community event run by the parish, not a packaged tourist attraction, which is exactly why it is worth seeing.

03 / 06

Things to do outside.

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

The esker back roads There is no waymarked trail here. What there is is a web of quiet boreens running along and off the Eiscir Riada, between farms and the old ring-fort fields. Walk out of the village in any direction on the higher ground and you get the long flat east-Galway views the esker gives you. Boots, a sense of where the main roads are, and no expectation of a coffee at the end.

Pick your distancedistance

1 hour plustime

Grange graveyard and monastery ruins West of the village in the townland of Grange, the old burial ground holds the Cistercian ruins. It is not signposted and not maintained as a heritage site - ask locally for directions. A quiet, overgrown, genuinely uncommercial bit of monastic Ireland.

Shortdistance

30 minutestime

04 / 06

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Winter

Jan

The first weekend of January is the one to aim for - the Mummers Festival is the village at its liveliest. The rest of winter is dark, wet and very quiet.

◉ Go

Spring

Mar-May

The fields green up and the back roads are pleasant for walking. The market towns either side are at their best for a day out.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Long evenings and dry esker roads. Use New Inn as a quiet base between Loughrea and Ballinasloe rather than a destination in itself.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

Fine when the weather holds, but there is little laid on for visitors and the days are shortening. Bring your own plan.

◐ Mind yourself

05 / 06

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

New Inn is a working rural parish, not a heritage town. There is no high street of craft shops or a row of pubs. If you want a postcard village, Kinvara or Loughrea will serve you better. Come here for quiet and back roads, or come for the Mummers.

The Grange ruins as a managed site

They are unmarked, overgrown and on no official trail. Treat them as a find, not an attraction, and respect that it is a working graveyard.

Counting on a meal or a bed in the village

Eating and sleeping are realistically done in Loughrea or Ballinasloe, both a short drive away. Plan your food and accommodation around those towns, not around New Inn.

Getting there.

By car

New Inn lies between the N6 corridor to the north and the R446/R348 roads. From Loughrea it is about 14 km northeast on regional and local roads; from Ballinasloe a similar run southwest; Athenry is roughly 10 km northwest. The M6 (Galway to Dublin) passes a short drive north - junction for Loughrea or Ballinasloe depending on direction.

By bus

TFI Local Link route 548 (Loughrea - Ballinasloe Train Station - Athlone) stops at New Inn Community Centre. It is a rural timetable with limited daily runs, so check times before relying on it.

By train

Nearest station is Ballinasloe on the Dublin-Galway line; Athenry is the other option. From either, finish the journey by Local Link bus, taxi or car.