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CROAGH

CO. LIMERICK · IE

Croagh
Cruach, Co. Limerick

The Ireland's Ancient East
STOP 07 / 07

Cruach · Co. Limerick

A wide quiet street between Rathkeale and Adare, an Augustinian abbey ruin, and a castle where James II reputedly slept the night he ran from the Boyne.

Croagh is a small village in mid-Limerick, in the rich dairy country of the Golden Vale, set just off the N21 about twenty-two kilometres southwest of Limerick city. Two hundred-odd people, a church, a school, a garden centre, a pub. It is the kind of place you would drive past without noticing - which is more or less what happened to it in 1986, when the Croagh bypass pulled the Limerick-Tralee traffic off the main street and left the village to itself.

What that left is a street unusually wide for its size - reckoned to be one of the broadest of any village in Ireland - and an unexpected amount of history for so few houses. There was a rich abbey here by the early 1100s, a corporation, and two castles. The records call the place by a string of names down the years: Moycro in 1239, Croch in 1416, Croth, Croghe, Cruach. The land was worth fighting over and worth praying over, and both happened here long before the road did.

Come for the abbey ruin at the edge of the village and the graveyard around it, the holy well out at Ballynakill, and the quiet. Do not come expecting much else - this is a working farming village, not a day out. The pub is the social centre and the church is the landmark. The rest is fields, and the rest is the point.

Population

~216 (2016)

Pubs

1and counting

Walk score

One wide street, abbey ruin at the edge, farmland beyond

Founded

Augustinian abbey site, said to predate 1109; church 1830

Coords

52.5342° N, 8.8706° W

01 / 07

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 abbey ruin

An Augustinian house in Adamswood, older than the records that name it.

The ruins of a medieval church and its enclosure sit at the edge of the village in Adamswood townland - once a house of the Canons Regular of St Augustine, said locally to go back to the tenth century. Cruciform once, transepts gone now, but the round-arched doorway and a two-light window survive.

Stories & lore → 02 The street

One of the widest main streets of any village in Ireland - and almost no traffic on it.

Croagh sat on the Limerick-Tralee road until the bypass took the through-traffic away in 1986. What it left behind is an unusually broad, quiet street in the middle of the Golden Vale, off the N21 between Rathkeale and Adare.

How to get there →

02 / 07

The pubs.

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

Croke Park Bar

Old-style, open fire, conversation

Traditional bar, on the N21

The pub in Croagh, an old-style traditional Irish bar a few kilometres up the N21 from Adare. Open fire, a warm welcome, the kind of place that runs on talk rather than gimmicks. It is the social centre of a small village, so the night depends on who is in.

03 / 07

Stories & lore.

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

Augustinian canons, then a collegiate church

The abbey at Adamswood

The ruin at the edge of the village, in the townland of Adamswood, is what is left of a medieval church that began as a house of the Canons Regular of St Augustine - local tradition puts a foundation here as early as the tenth century, and the parish had a rich abbey and a corporation by 1109. A plaque on the wall claims it served as a seminary, a school of some standing; in 1678 the bishop is recorded ordaining priests from the school at Croagh. The church was cruciform once - chancel, nave, transepts and a tower - but the transepts were knocked, the arches blocked, and a crossing wall thrown in around the seventeenth or eighteenth century. The chancel was still roofed and in use when the antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp came through in the early 1900s. Look for the round-arched doorway, the single lancet, the piscina, and a two-light window. The graveyard around it has its oldest dated stone from 1802 - Denis Smith, aged twenty-eight.

A castle, and a king in retreat

The night James II slept at Amigan

Croagh had two castles by 1109, and one of them - Amigan Castle - carries the story that James II stayed there a single night in 1690, in the days after his defeat at the Battle of the Boyne, as he made his way south and west toward the coast and exile in France. It is the kind of one-night-stand history that small Irish places keep carefully: not a battle, not a siege, just a beaten king passing through and a roof over his head. Whether the stone he slept under still stands is another question - west Limerick is not short of vanished castles - but the name and the night have outlasted the building.

A cure for sore eyes, on the ninth of September

St Ciarán's well at Ballynakill

The parish keeps the feast of St Ciarán on 9 September, and his holy well sits out at Ballynakill beside an old church ruin, with steps cut down to the water. The well was held to cure sore eyes, and pilgrims made the rounds there, chiefly on the saint's day. It is the quiet, local kind of holy place - no car park, no signage to speak of - that you find by asking rather than by following a brown sign.

04 / 07

Things to do outside.

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

The abbey and graveyard A short walk out to the medieval church ruin and the enclosure around it at the edge of the village. Read the headstones, find the round-arched doorway and the piscina, and take the measure of how old the place is. Boots after rain - the ground is soft.

1 kmdistance

30 minutestime

The wide street Walk the length of the village street, which is the reason to slow down here at all - genuinely one of the broadest village streets in the country, emptied of its through-traffic by the 1986 bypass. Quiet, low, and easy on the eye.

1 km returndistance

20 minutestime

05 / 07

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

The Golden Vale at its greenest, lambs in the fields, the abbey ruin dry enough to walk. Adare ten minutes up the road for anything you cannot get here.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Long evenings and warm farmland. Quiet - this is not a tourist village - which is either the appeal or the problem depending on what you came for.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

St Ciarán's feast falls on 9 September. The light is good on the old stone and the harvest is in across the Vale.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

Short days, soft ground, little open. The pub and the church keep going; not much else does. Fine as a quiet stop off the N21, not a destination in itself.

◐ Mind yourself

06 / 07

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

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

Confusing it with Croagh Patrick

This is Croagh in west Limerick, a flat Golden Vale village - not Croagh Patrick, the pilgrimage mountain in Co. Mayo. No mountain, no pilgrim path. Easy mistake on a map, a long way off in person.

Expecting a day out

Croagh is two hundred people, one pub, a church, a school and a ruin. It is a real, lived-in farming village, not an attraction. Worth twenty minutes for the abbey and the street on the way between Rathkeale and Adare - not an afternoon.

Getting there.

By car

Just off the N21 between Rathkeale and Adare, about 22 km southwest of Limerick city - roughly 25 minutes from the city, 10 minutes from Adare. The N21 bypasses the village; follow the slip into the old street.

By bus

Bus Éireann Expressway Route 13 (Limerick - Adare - Listowel - Tralee) runs the N21 corridor through Adare and Rathkeale either side of Croagh; check the timetable for the nearest set-down. Local Link covers the wider west-Limerick rural routes.

By train

No station. Nearest is Limerick (Colbert), about 25 minutes by car, with services to Dublin Heuston via Limerick Junction.

By air

Shannon Airport (SNN) is about 45 minutes north by road, the most convenient airport for this part of Limerick.