Kilcock, Cill Choca, Co. Kildare

Cill Choca · Co. Kildare

Named for a female saint. Most Irish towns weren't.

Kilcock sits where Kildare meets Meath, on a Rye Water crossing that has mattered since the 6th century. The Royal Canal runs through the middle of town, restored and reopened to boats in 2010, and the towpath east to Maynooth is the best flat walk in north Kildare. The M4 bypassed the town in 1994. The train stopped in 1963, came back in 1998. The canal never left.

The Irish name is Cill Choca - church of Coca. Saint Coca was a woman, which is unusual enough that it's worth saying twice. She set up her Christian settlement beside the Rye Water sometime in the 6th century, embroidering vestments for Colmcille and maintaining connections with Glendalough. The circular street system around the old graveyard still traces the outer wall of her original enclosure. Walk around it and you are walking around a 1,400-year-old boundary.

What Kilcock is now is a commuter town that knows it. Ireland's youngest average age - 32, against the national 38.8 - tells you something about who moved here and why. The train to Dublin Connolly takes under an hour. The M4 is two minutes from the square. The canal is five minutes from the square. The locals who run the GAA club and the canoe polo squad and the bakery and the pub have been here longer than any of that, and they are not leaving.

Come for the canal walk. Stay for a meal at one of the three pubs that have been feeding this town for longer than the motorway has existed. Drive out to Larchill if you want to see a landscape that the rest of Europe forgot to preserve. The town is not trying to be a destination. That is part of what makes it one.

Population

~8,700

Pubs

3and counting

Walk score

Canal to town and back in 45 minutes

Founded

Saint Coca - 6th century

Coords

53.4004° N, 6.6681° W

01 / 09

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 Royal Canal

Six kilometres of flat towpath to Maynooth.

The canal arrived in 1796, went bankrupt at £118,000, and kept going anyway. The towpath from Kilcock harbour west to Maynooth is smooth, flat, and traffic-free. Do it by bike. Do it on foot. Either way you'll finish at a pub.

Walks & outings → 02 Saint Coca's church

A 6th-century woman gave this town its name.

Cill Choca - church of Coca. She was an embroiderer of vestments for Saint Colmcille, traditionally called a sister of Saint Kevin of Glendalough, and she chose this Rye Water crossing to build her settlement. That is not common. Most Irish places are named for male saints. Kilcock is not.

Stories & lore → 03 The 1798 Rebellion

Colonel Aylmer took the town. The British took it back.

On June 1st 1798 William Aylmer led rebel forces into Kilcock - the only time in seven centuries this crossing had been captured. Four miles west at Ovidstown, 200 rebels died in the last field battle fought near Dublin. The canal had opened two years earlier. History and commerce arrived together.

Stories & lore →

02 / 09

The pubs.

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

O'Keeffe's Bar & Restaurant

Canal side, proper food

Pub & restaurant, family-run since 1875

Thomas and Bernie O'Keeffe have been running this since the family took it on a hundred and fifty years ago. Traditional bar on one side, restaurant on the other, open fire in between. The canal is just outside. Book ahead for the restaurant at weekends - locals have worked this out.

The Gregory Tavern

The Square, community heart

Town pub, live music venue

Right on the square. Refurbished upstairs makes a genuine music venue - it hosts live acts rather than trad sessions, but it does the community-gathering thing that squares in Irish towns used to do. The kind of place you end up in after the canal walk when you only meant to stop for one.

Murphy's Pub

No fuss, local

Traditional pub on the Meath border

Sits on the county boundary between Kildare and Meath, which means it has regulars from both. A traditional pub without a menu or a mission statement. The kind of pint that tastes of exactly what it is.

03 / 09

Where to eat.

Place	Type	€	Local note
O'Keeffe's Restaurant	Pub restaurant, Irish and European	€€	The restaurant side of the family pub. Canal views, proper mains, lunch and dinner. Local reputation for Sunday lunch that fills the place. Booking recommended at weekends; you will understand why when you arrive.
Hattons Cafe Bistro	Bistro & hotel restaurant	€€	Attached to Hattons Hotel on the edge of town. Full à la carte at weekends, gastro bar food daily from noon. The refurbished function room above has hosted every christening and communion in a twenty-kilometre radius. Reliable rather than remarkable, but reliable counts.
Blackforest Bakery	Bakery, breakfast and lunch	€	Artisan bread, fresh sandwiches, proper coffee. The brown loaf is worth buying to take with you. The kind of bakery that makes canal-towpath picnic lunches significantly better.
Timeless Cafe	Cafe, breakfast and lunch	€	Local breakfast and lunch spot. Good coffee, nothing overthought. The sort of place the canal walkers find their way to before setting off.

04 / 09

Where to sleep.

Place	Type	Local note
Hattons Hotel & Bistro	Hotel	The main hotel in Kilcock. Forty minutes from Dublin, twenty from Maynooth, half an hour from Intel in Leixlip if you are here on business. Comfortable rooms, decent breakfast, gastro bar for the evenings. Not a destination in itself but a sound base for north Kildare.
Gardener's Cottage	B&B	Central Kilcock B&B. Small, personal, free parking. Close enough to walk to the canal in the morning and back from the pub in the evening.

05 / 09

Stories & lore.

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

The woman who named a town

Saint Coca

In the 6th century a woman called Coca - or Cocca - set up a Christian settlement beside the Rye Water at what is now Kilcock. She was, according to tradition, a sister of Saint Kevin of Glendalough and an embroiderer of vestments for Saint Colmcille. Her feast day is June 6th. Most Irish place names beginning with 'Cill' (church) are followed by a male saint's name. Kilcock is not. The circular street system around Saint Coca's graveyard still follows the outer enclosure boundary of her original 6th-century settlement. Modern urban planning arranged itself around a woman's decision made 1,400 years ago.

Built bankrupt, still standing

The Royal Canal

The Royal Canal reached Kilcock in 1796. By then the company behind it had already gone bankrupt once - construction costs hit £118,000 and the canal was not finished. It kept going anyway, eventually connecting Dublin to the Shannon. Commercial traffic died off in the 19th century when the railway arrived. The canal fell into disrepair through most of the 20th. Kilcock Harbour was restored in 1982, reopened to boats in 2010, and the Kilcock Canoe Polo Club - which has hosted national and European championships - has been based here since. The towpath is now part of the 130-kilometre Royal Canal Greenway. The canal outlasted the railway, the company that built it, and every canal boat family that worked it.

The emigrant's poet from Kilbrook

Teresa Brayton

Teresa Brayton was born in 1868 in Kilbrook, a townland just outside Kilcock, and emigrated to the United States as a young woman. She spent thirty years writing poetry about Irish emigrant longing, the most famous being 'The Old Bog Road' - a poem about dying far from home that became one of the most recorded Irish songs of the 20th century, covered by Daniel O'Donnell among many others. She came back to Ireland in 1932 and died in 1943 in the same room in Kilbrook where she was born. Kilcock library holds mementos of her. Most people who can sing 'The Old Bog Road' have never heard of the town it came from.

The only one of its kind left in Europe

Larchill

Four kilometres from Kilcock, in the townland of Phepotstown, sits Larchill - an 18th-century ferme ornée, or ornamental farm, built by Quaker merchants called the Prentice family between 1740 and 1780. A ferme ornée is a working farm designed as landscape art: fields, follies, beech avenues, a lake, a gothicised farmyard, classical garden buildings. Larchill's claim is that it is the only surviving near-complete example of its type in Europe. The rest were remodelled, built over, or left to decay. Larchill nearly went the same way in the 1970s and 1980s but was restored in the 1990s. You can walk it now. The Gibraltar folly sits in the middle of the lake. It is not what you expect to find in north Kildare.

06 / 09

Things to do outside.

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

Royal Canal Towpath - Kilcock to Maynooth Flat, traffic-free, good surface. Start at Kilcock Harbour and follow the towpath east through open countryside into Maynooth. The canal locks are worth stopping at. Cycling it is the obvious move - hire a bike or bring your own. The Maynooth end drops you near the university and a choice of cafes. Come back by train if you don't fancy the return leg.

6 km one waydistance

1.5 hours each way / 45 min by biketime

Donadea Forest Park - Aylmer Walk Eight kilometres south of Kilcock. The Aylmer Walk loops through mixed woodland past the ruins of Donadea Castle (the Aylmer family seat until 1935), a walled garden, Saint Peter's church, and the 9/11 Memorial - a limestone-carved replica of the Twin Towers, built in memory of Sean Tallon, a Kilcock-area family's son who died as a firefighter in New York. The memorial is unexpected and genuinely moving. Shorter loops also available. Café on site.

5.7 km loopdistance

1.5 hourstime

Larchill Circuit A guided or self-guided circuit of the ornamental farm. Follies, beech avenues, lake, the Gibraltar fortress in the water. Open seasonally - check ahead. The kind of walk that takes longer than it should because you keep stopping.

2 km garden walkdistance

1 hourtime

Saint Coca's Graveyard Loop The short walk around the old graveyard and church ruins in the centre of Kilcock. The near-circular layout follows the outer enclosure of the original 6th-century settlement. Medieval church ruins, continuous Christian use for 1,400 years, ten minutes from the canal. Worth doing before or after the towpath walk.

1 kmdistance

20 mintime

07 / 09

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

The canal towpath is at its best in late April and May. Larchill opens for the season. Donadea woodland is worth it for the bluebells alone.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Long evenings on the canal. Larchill's Heritage Week events in August. Kilcock is not a summer-crowd destination - it's comfortable year-round.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

Donadea in October is the best reason to come. Mixed woodland at its most dramatic. The canal is quieter. Pub evenings start to earn their keep.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

Larchill closes. Canal walks are fine if the weather holds but mud is part of the deal. The pubs are themselves. If that's the point, winter is fine.

◐ Mind yourself

08 / 09

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

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

Driving to Maynooth

Six kilometres of flat towpath, traffic-free. If you drove, you missed the whole point of Kilcock's geography.

Treating Saint Coca's graveyard as a footnote

It is the oldest thing in Kilcock and it is still standing in the middle of the modern town. Walk around it. Read what it is. Ten minutes.

Skipping Larchill because it sounds minor

It is the only surviving near-complete ferme ornée in Europe. That is not a small claim. Drive the four kilometres.

Coming for a day trip from Dublin and leaving by 4pm

The canal walk, Larchill, and Donadea together need a proper day. The pub at the end of it needs an evening. Stay the night.

Getting there.

By car

Dublin city centre to Kilcock is 40 minutes on the M4/M7. Exit at Junction 7. Maynooth is 15 minutes east. The M4 bypassed the town in 1994 so the centre is quiet by main-road standards.

By bus

Bus Éireann route 115 and 115A run between Dublin and Kilcock. Journey time around 55 minutes. Stops at the town centre near the square.

By train

Kilcock station is on the Dublin Heuston-Sligo line. Current services are limited - the station operates on the commuter line via Maynooth, with trains to Dublin Connolly in under an hour. Check Irish Rail for current timetable.

By air

Dublin Airport is 45 minutes by car via the M4 and M50. The nearest trains out of the airport connect via Dublin city centre.

Next on the tour

Co. Kildare

Maynooth

Six kilometres east along the canal. University town, Carton House demesne, and the seminary that trained most of Catholic Ireland's priests for 200 years.

Co. Kildare

Clane

Eight kilometres south. Quiet Kildare village with a Norman motte and the Franciscan ruins at Clongowes Wood nearby.

Co. Kildare

Johnstown Bridge

West along the canal toward the Shannon. The waterway gets quieter and more itself the further you go from Dublin.