Calverstown, Baile an Chalbhaigh, Co. Kildare

Baile an Chalbhaigh · Co. Kildare

A south-Kildare crossroads the motorway forgot, and the better for it.

Calverstown is a small village six kilometres south of Kilcullen, on the old N9 road that used to carry every car between Dublin and Waterford and now carries almost none. The M9 motorway was driven through a few fields east of here in 2010, and the through-traffic vanished overnight. The village got its quiet back. Whether that is a good thing depends on whether you ran the petrol station.

The name is older than it looks. The le Veele family - Norman incomers - held the manor here from the 1200s, and Walter le Veele became Bishop of Kildare in 1299. "Calverstown" is an English flattening of Baile an Chalbhaigh, and the village was Ballinchalwey on old maps before the spelling settled. Calverstown Castle, a 17th-century manor house wrapped around an earlier tower house, still stands south of the village in the demesne of Calverstown House.

The thing worth knowing happened in 1903. The Gordon Bennett Cup - the first international motor race ever held in these islands - started a mile up the road at Ballyshannon crossroads. Camille Jenatzy won it for Belgium in a Mercedes painted German white. The British team painted theirs shamrock green as a courtesy to the host country, and that is where British racing green comes from. A road through a Kildare village changed the colour of Aston Martins forever. There is no plaque. There rarely is.

Bring a reason. There is a pub, a shop, a church, and the long flat road south to Athy. That is the village. The interest is the layers underneath it.

Population

699 (2016)

Pubs

2and counting

Walk score

Crossroads, a terrace, and you are out the other side

Founded

Manor recorded 1212 (le Veele family)

Coords

53.0206° N, 6.7878° W

01 / 04

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 race

British racing green starts a mile from here.

The 1903 Gordon Bennett Cup launched at Ballyshannon crossroads. Belgium won. The British team's shamrock green became the colour every Aston Martin and Jaguar would race in for a century.

Stories & lore → 02 The bypass

The motorway took the traffic and left the village.

The M9 opened in 2010 and the old N9 through Calverstown went quiet inside a week. Locals will tell you which version they preferred. The answer depends on the door they answer it from.

About Calverstown → 03 The castle

A 17th-century manor with a tower house inside it.

Calverstown Castle sits south of the village in private grounds. Built around an older tower, held by the Dixons until 1730, then the Borrowes Baronets. Not open. Visible from the road.

Stories & lore →

02 / 04

The pubs.

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

Hickey's

Local, unfussy

Village pub

The pub at the crossroads. A pint, a fire, conversation if you bring it. Check hours before you drive - small village, irregular evenings.

The Bush

Locals-first

Pub & lounge

The other one. Between them they cover the village's social life. Neither is a destination; both are real.

03 / 04

Stories & lore.

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

2 July 1903

The Gordon Bennett Cup

Racing on public roads was illegal in Britain. Ireland said yes. So the first international motor race in these islands started at Ballyshannon crossroads, a mile from Calverstown, on a 328-mile figure-eight through Kildare and Queen's County. Camille Jenatzy won for Belgium in a 60-horsepower Mercedes. Seven thousand police and soldiers held the spectators back. The British team had painted their cars shamrock green out of courtesy to the host nation, and the colour stuck. That is why Aston Martins and Jaguars are green. Because of a Thursday in July, in a Kildare field, in 1903.

Tower wrapped in a manor

Calverstown Castle

South of the village, in the grounds of Calverstown House, stands a 17th-century manor house built around an earlier medieval tower. The 1656 Civil Survey recorded "one castle and a stone quarry" on 760 Irish acres held by Sir Robert Dixon. The Dixons kept it until 1730; it passed by inheritance to the Borrowes Baronets. Private now. You can see it from the road if you know where to look.

Hitler’s commando in a Kildare field

Otto Skorzeny next door

From 1959 to 1971, Martinstown House - a couple of fields from Calverstown - was owned by Otto Skorzeny, the SS officer who rescued Mussolini in 1943 and was acquitted at Nuremberg. He bought the place under Charles Haughey's land scheme for foreign investors. Locals remember him drinking in Naas. The house has changed hands many times since; the story sits in the soil, not on a sign.

Quiet has costs

The bypass and the village

Until 2010, the N9 funnelled Dublin-Waterford traffic straight through Calverstown. Then the M9 opened a few fields east, and the village went silent. Houses got their evenings back. The shop and the pubs lost the passing trade that had paid bills for fifty years. Every Irish village on a former main road tells some version of this story. Calverstown's version is recent enough that people remember both.

Getting there.

By car

Dublin to Calverstown is 50 minutes on the M9, exit 3 (Kilcullen) and south on the R448 for six kilometres. From Carlow, 30 minutes north on the same road.

By bus

No direct service. Bus Éireann routes between Dublin and Waterford stop at Kilcullen; taxi or local lift the last six kilometres.

By train

Nearest station is Kildare town (20 minutes by car) on the Dublin-Waterford line. Athy station is closer but has fewer services.

By air

Dublin Airport (DUB) is 1 hour by car via the M50 and M9.