Eadestown, Baile Éide, Co. Kildare

Baile Éide · Co. Kildare

Quiet Kildare crossroads with one of Ireland's great racecourses in the back field.

Eadestown sits on the R410 south of Naas, at the point where the county starts tilting toward Wicklow. The plain flattens out behind you; the foothills are starting to appear ahead. The village itself is small - a church, a GAA pitch, a disused Victorian fountain, and the roads out. Punchestown Racecourse is inside the parish boundary, which is the fact most people who know the name Eadestown know it by.

The Irish name is Baile Éide - the settlement of a person named Éide, someone significant enough to have a place named after them and then forgotten by everyone except the map. That pattern is everywhere in Kildare: the land remembers the name, the record doesn't. The parish takes in Rathmore, Kilteel, Tipper, and Haynestown - a wide area for a quiet crossroads - and was constituted from Blessington in 1884. The Church of the Immaculate Conception had its renovation in 1923 under John Joseph Robinson, an architect who went on to work at Galway Cathedral.

What the village has quietly produced is athletes. The GAA club won the Kildare Senior Football Championship in 1970. Then, decades later, the underage football sides of that same club were producing players who ended up winning Grand Slams with Ireland. Tadhg Beirne - born in Eadestown in 1992, and one of the best lineout operators in European rugby - played GAA here to under-16 level before Naas RFC took over. Jimmy O'Brien came through the same club. That is a small GAA field doing a disproportionate amount of work.

Founded

Parish constituted 1884; cast-iron fountain 1899

Coords

53°12′10″N, 6°34′40″W

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At a glance.

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

01 Punchestown

The national hunt festival is in the village.

Punchestown Racecourse sits 5 km south of Naas, inside the parish boundary. Four days in late April, it draws more people than the village has seen since the last time it drew that many people.

Stories & lore → 02 The GAA

County champions in 1970, internationals since.

Eadestown GAA won the Kildare Senior Football Championship in 1970. The club has since produced Tadhg Beirne and Jimmy O'Brien, both capped for Ireland at rugby. Small village, long reach.

Stories & lore → 03 The road

Between Naas and Blessington, on the edge of Wicklow.

The R410 runs south from Naas and the gradient rises. Fifteen minutes from the county town and you are watching the Wicklow hills come into range. This is the outer edge of the Kildare plain.

Walks & outings →

02 / 03

Stories & lore.

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

A cast-iron thanks from the tenantry, 1899

The Tickell fountain

The fountain at the centre of the village was erected in 1899 by the County Kildare tenantry of Captain Thomas Tickell of Cheltenham, who died the year before aged 81. It was designed for drinking at three levels - lion-head spouts for people, a circular trough for horses, quarter-circle dishes at ground level for hounds. Cast by Tonge and Taggart of Dublin to designs by John Joseph O'Callaghan. It no longer runs. Memorials raised by tenants in memory of a landlord were unusual in 19th-century Ireland; that this one exists, and is this elaborate, says something about the man, even if the record doesn't say much else.

Ireland's national hunt festival, in a field outside the village

Punchestown

Punchestown Racecourse is 5 km south of Naas and inside the parish of Eadestown. The national hunt festival runs across four days in late April and is the largest horse-racing event in Ireland by attendance. For four days the roads around the village change character entirely. The rest of the year Punchestown holds a quieter schedule of meets. The racecourse is historically tied to the wider Kildare racing landscape - the Curragh is twenty minutes north - but Punchestown is specifically a jumps track, and the April festival is the reason people come.

How an underage GAA side produced two Test players

The rugby club that never was

Tadhg Beirne was born in Eadestown in 1992. He played Gaelic football for Eadestown GAA to under-16 level, then switched codes at Naas RFC at the age of 11 and never looked back. His mother was the 1983 Rose of Tralee. He became one of the best forwards in European rugby, earned a Grand Slam medal with Ireland, and played Lions rugby. Jimmy O'Brien - another Ireland international - came through the same underage football sides. The club didn't produce them as rugby players; it produced them as athletes with the ball in their hands. The rest followed.

The man who won All-Irelands for Cork and grew up in Kildare

Larry Tompkins

Larry Tompkins was born in Greenmount, just outside Naas, and played his early club football with Eadestown, winning junior and intermediate county titles with them in the early 1980s. A transfer dispute that hinged on the county board refusing to pay his flight tickets from New York ended his Kildare senior career before it had properly started. He transferred to Cork, won All-Ireland senior medals in 1989 and 1990 - captaining the 1990 team - and later managed the county from 1996 to 2003. Inducted into the Munster GAA Football Hall of Fame in 2024. Eadestown's name is on his early career; Cork's name is on everything after.

Getting there.

By car

Naas to Eadestown is 6 km south on the R410, around 10 minutes. Dublin city centre is 40 minutes via the M7/N7. Blessington is 10 minutes south along the same road, across the Wicklow border.

By bus

Bus Éireann route 65 runs Dublin-Blessington via Naas several times daily and passes through the area. Local connections from Naas are the most practical option for the village itself.

By train

No station in Eadestown. Sallins is the nearest commuter station, connecting to Heuston on the Dublin-Cork/Waterford line - about 20 minutes by car from the village.

By air

Dublin Airport is 50 minutes via the M50 and M7.

Next on the tour

Co. Kildare

Ballymore Eustace

Ten minutes south. Liffey village, the seven-arch bridge, and the reservoir that drowned a valley in 1940.

Co. Kildare

Kilcullen

Fifteen minutes west on the Liffey. The Curragh is in range. Dan Donnelly's arm is in a glass case.

Co. Kildare

Calverstown

Small south Kildare village off the R418. Racing country through and through.