Cill Seanchua · Co. Kildare
A crossroads named for a church, out where north Kildare runs into the bog.
Cill Seanchua, the church of Seanchua, is the name that stuck. Who exactly Seanchua was, the records do not say with any confidence - an old personal name, worn smooth by centuries of speaking. What remains is a modern Catholic church on the R402, the townland it names, and about a square kilometre of north Kildare farmland in the old parish of Dunfierth, Barony of Carbury.
This is bog-edge country: flat, wide, given over to grazing and tillage. The Bog of Allen is the backdrop to the west; the Royal Canal runs through Enfield a few kilometres east, just over the Meath line. Kilshanchoe itself is a crossroads - the kind of place you pass through on the way to somewhere else and remember, later, that you passed through it. That is not a failing. Most of the island is made of places like this, and they are worth knowing by name.
Do not come to Kilshanchoe expecting a village to spend an afternoon in. There is no pub, no shop, no street. What there is, is a position - on the road between Enfield and Carbury, a few minutes from one of the quiet wonders of Leinster. Three kilometres west, near Carbury, a spring at the foot of Carbury Hill is held to be the source of the River Boyne. Treat Kilshanchoe as the turn you take on the way there.
