Arkle went through this ring
Goffs
Robert J. Goff was appointed Official Auctioneer to the Turf Club in 1866, and the company has been trading thoroughbreds ever since. Goffs moved its sales complex to Kill in the 1960s, building a purpose-built ring in the heart of east Kildare's breeding country. Arkle — the horse that became a deity in Ireland — sold here as a store. Golden Miller, five-time Cheltenham Gold Cup winner, sold here as a yearling. The company now holds eight sales a year and has put more Grand National, Gold Cup and Champion Hurdle winners through its ring than any other bloodstock house on earth. The Arkle Sale in June is named in his honour. The November Breeding Stock Sale draws international buyers in numbers the village never expected and the local pubs enjoy enormously.
Born here. Changed America. Helped free Ireland.
John Devoy
John Devoy was born in Kill on 3 September 1842, son of a labourer. The family moved to Dublin after the Famine, and Devoy joined the Fenian Brotherhood, eventually becoming the British Army's most-wanted organiser in Ireland. Arrested in 1866, sentenced to fifteen years, released five years later and shipped into exile as one of the 'Cuba Five'. In America, Devoy built Clan na Gael into the central force in Irish republican politics abroad. He fundraised for the Rising of 1916, supported the War of Independence, and outlived most of his generation. He died in 1928, having spent sixty years working toward the thing he'd been imprisoned for at twenty-three. Kill has a commemorative plaque. It is the least it could do.
The greatest pipes player of his century
Liam O'Flynn
Liam O'Flynn was born in Kill on 15 September 1945, to a teacher father who played fiddle and a mother who came from a Clare family of musicians. He went on to become, by wide consensus, the foremost uilleann piper of the twentieth century — a founding member of Planxty alongside Christy Moore, Dónal Lunny and Andy Irvine, and a solo musician whose collaborations ran from Seamus Heaney to the National Symphony Orchestra. He died in 2018. There is a sculpture of him in Kill village, commissioned after his death. The instrument in his hands on that bronze is the one that carried tunes from a Kildare living room to every concert hall in the world.
The circuit they built on farmland
Mondello Park
Mondello Park opened in 1968 on farmland near Caragh, about fifteen minutes from Kill. In 1982, a young Ayrton Senna won the Leinster Trophy there. The circuit expanded to international standard in 1998, hosted the British Touring Cars and British Superbikes through the 2000s, and still runs Irish championship events, track days, and a karting circuit. The motorsport museum inside has Jordan F1 cars. It is not the Monaco circuit, but it is the closest thing in Ireland, and on a clear day with a decent grid, it is worth your time.