POSTED FROM

EFFIN

CO. LIMERICK · IE

Effin
Eimhín, Co. Limerick

The Ballyhoura
STOP 07 / 07

Eimhín · Co. Limerick

Yes, that is the name. It is named after a saint, and the locals had to fight Facebook to prove it.

Effin is a townland and parish in south Limerick, sitting on the R515 midway between Kilmallock and Charleville, with a parish population of around a thousand spread thinly across farmland. The name is the thing everyone knows it for, and it is not a joke at the village's expense. Effin is the anglicisation of Eimhín, after Saint Eimhin, who tradition holds founded the first church here before moving on to Kildare and giving his name to Monasterevin. The Irish is pronounced EF-in. The English spelling simply landed where it landed.

There is genuine charm in the accident. The first written record, from 1240, calls the place Effyng. By 1287 it was a prebend of the Church of Limerick - a clerical living attached to the cathedral - and one of the men who later held that prebend was Edmund Spenser, the Elizabethan poet who wrote The Faerie Queene while planted on confiscated Munster land. He is unlikely to have spent much time in the parish. The living was a salary, not a home.

The village proper is small: the church that Father David Nagle built in 1835 to 1836, a GAA ground, a scatter of houses, and Davy's Bar. The parish around it is dairy country, the Golden Vale, the kind of intensively farmed land that does not photograph but does feed the country. The Ballyhoura Mountains rise at the southern edge, the border with Cork. Around thirty ringforts survive on the maps, the fortified farmsteads of families who lived here before the 12th century.

In 2011 Effin had its fifteen minutes. Facebook blocked residents from listing it as their home town, having decided the name was offensive. A local campaign, a deal of press, and a good deal of laughter later, the company relented by Christmas. The Effin GAA jersey and the parish road sign have been quietly popular souvenirs ever since. If you stop here, you will have stopped in a place so quiet you will hear the wind, in a parish that had to argue with a tech giant to be allowed to exist under its own name.

Population

Civil parish around 1,400 (2006)

Founded

Early medieval church of St Eimhin; recorded as Effyng in 1240; prebend of Limerick from 1287

Coords

52.3197° N, 8.6394° 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 name

Named for a saint, pronounced exactly the way you fear.

Eimhín, anglicised to Effin, comes from Saint Eimhin who founded the first church here. The English spelling reads like a word you would not use in front of your grandmother. The village does not apologise, and neither should you.

Stories & lore → 02 The Golden Vale

Dairy country under the Ballyhoura.

The parish sits in the Golden Vale, Munster's richest dairyland, with the Ballyhoura Mountains marking the Cork border to the south. Around 30 ringforts dot the Ordnance maps. This is worked land, farmed for centuries.

Walks & outings → 03 The pub

Davy's Bar, and that is the village social life.

Effin has a parish church, a GAA pitch, scattered houses and farms, and Davy's Bar out toward the edge of the village. That is the whole show. Come for the name and the quiet; do not expect a high street.

Pubs →

02 / 07

The pubs.

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

Davy's Bar

Warm local, the village social hub

Country pub, edge of Effin village

The village pub, out toward the edge of Effin in open countryside between Kilmallock and Charleville. A proper warm local with a lounge, a snug, a games room and pool, and the unofficial motto of country Limerick on the door - craic, ceol, spórt agus ól. It is the place the parish gathers, GAA results and all. There is a mural here marking the famous hurling save by the late Tommy Quaid, the Limerick and Effin goalkeeper whose family the parish still claims with pride. In a village this size, the pub is effectively the whole of the social life, and it does the job well.

03 / 07

Stories & lore.

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

Eimhín becomes Effyng becomes Effin

Saint Eimhin and the name

Local tradition names the founder of the first church here as Saint Eimhin, said to be a son of Eoghan McMurchad of Munster, who built a church at Effin before moving to County Kildare and founding the monastery that became Monasterevin. The parish name follows the saint: Eimhín in Irish, pronounced EF-in, recorded as Effyng in 1240 and settled into Effin in English. There is no irony in it and no apology required. Ireland's place names were given by the people who lived in them, and they are often gloriously indifferent to how they sound in another language. Effin is simply the most quotable example.

A poet's salary, not his address

Edmund Spenser, prebendary of Effin

In 1287 Effin became a prebend of the Church of Limerick, a clerical living that paid an income to whoever held it. Clergy records of the Elizabethan period list Edmund Spenser - the English poet of The Faerie Queene, who held a confiscated estate at Kilcolman in north Cork not far south of here - among those granted the prebend of Effin. It was a stipend rather than a residence; there is no reason to think Spenser ever preached in the parish. But it is a strange small thread: one of the most celebrated poets in the English language, and his name turning up in the parish records of a Limerick village best known today for sounding like a curse.

2011, and the village won

The day Effin took on Facebook

In 2011 residents found they could not list Effin as their place of origin on Facebook. The platform had flagged the name as offensive and blocked it. What followed was the kind of story Irish local radio lives for: a campaign by Effin people to be allowed to be from Effin, a wave of national and international press, and by December of that year Facebook backing down and unblocking the name. The episode gave the local GAA club and parish an enduring line in souvenirs - the jersey, the road sign, the T-shirt - and gave the village a second claim to fame to sit alongside the first. Effin had to formally prove to a Silicon Valley company that it was a real place. It is.

Coshlea and Coshma, worked for a thousand years

Ringforts and a vanished manor

The parish spans parts of the old baronies of Coshlea and Coshma and carries roughly thirty ringforts on the Ordnance Survey maps - the earthen ring-banks of family farmsteads occupied up to the 12th century, the most common ancient monument in rural Ireland and easy to miss in a field of cattle. Medieval Effin also held a manor at Tobernea, granted to Gerard de Prendergast in 1240, with a weekly market and a yearly fair recorded by the mid-13th century. The market is long gone and the manor with it. What is left is the land itself, the holy wells - Lady's Well among them, north of the Ballyhea to Ardpatrick road - and the ring-banks in the grass.

Club founded 1887, county and Munster in 2010 to 2011

A hurling parish, and the Quaids

For a parish this small the GAA record is the thing the locals will actually bring up before the name. The club dates to 1887, and the modern high point came in 2010 and 2011, when Effin took the county Intermediate Hurling Championship and a Munster club title to go with it. The parish also bred goalkeepers: the Quaid family from here gave Limerick the late Tommy Quaid, one of the great shot-stoppers of his generation, and his son Nicky Quaid, whose own save in the closing minutes of the 2018 All-Ireland semi-final has its own small place in Limerick lore. In Effin the church, the school and the pitch are the three points that hold the parish together, and the pitch is where the talk is loudest.

04 / 07

Things to do outside.

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

Lady's Well and the parish lanes There is no waymarked trail in Effin itself. What there is is a network of quiet farm roads through the Golden Vale, the parish church, the holy wells - Lady's Well lies in the townland of Ballyshanedehy, north of the Ballyhea to Ardpatrick road - and ringforts in the surrounding fields for those who know where to look. Bring an Ordnance map and good manners about private land. This is a walk for the quiet of it, not the views.

Short, on quiet roadsdistance

30-60 minutestime

The Ballyhoura on the horizon The Ballyhoura Mountains close the parish on its southern side and mark the Cork border. The serious walking - the waymarked Ballyhoura trails, among the best mountain-bike and hill routes in Munster - is a short drive south around Ardpatrick and Kilfinane. Effin is a quiet base on the northern edge of that country rather than a trailhead in its own right.

Drive south, then walkdistance

Half a daytime

05 / 07

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

The Golden Vale at its greenest and the Ballyhoura clear to the south. Quiet roads, lambing and calving country, mild light. A good time to pass through slowly.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Long evenings, the GAA season in full swing at the local pitch, and the Ballyhoura trails a short drive away. The pub is at its liveliest around match days.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

Harvest light across the dairy fields and the hurling championship reaching its end. Calm and unhurried.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

Short days and little to do outdoors in the wet. The church and Davy's Bar carry on. Fine if you want genuine quiet, thin if you want activity.

◐ 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.

Expecting a village to wander

Effin is a parish, not a town. There is a church, a GAA ground, a pub and farms. There is no high street, no cluster of shops, no day's worth of sights. Come for the name, the quiet and the story, not for an afternoon of strolling.

Hunting for a grand St Eimhin monastery

The saint gave the parish its name and, by tradition, its first church, but he moved on to Kildare. There is no great monastic ruin to visit here. The present church dates from the 1830s. The deep history is in the records and the ringforts, not in a standing site.

The name as the only reason to slow down

Yes, the sign is worth a photo, and yes, the GAA jersey is a good souvenir. But treat Effin as one quiet stop on a Ballyhoura and Kilmallock loop rather than a destination in itself, and it earns its place. Treat it as a theme park built on a rude word and you will be disappointed in about four minutes.

Getting there.

By car

On the R515 midway between Kilmallock (about 8 km north) and Charleville (about 8 km south). From Limerick city, roughly 40 minutes via Kilmallock. From Cork, about an hour north through Charleville.

By bus

No regular village service. Charleville, on the main Dublin to Cork line, is the nearest rail and intercity bus town; Local Link routes serve the wider Kilmallock and Charleville area. Realistically you arrive by car.

By train

No station in the village. Charleville railway station, about 8 km south, is on the Dublin Heuston to Cork line with regular Irish Rail services.