Kilmaine, Cill Mheáin, Co. Mayo

Cill Mheáin · Co. Mayo

A south Mayo crossroads village on the N84 - the 'Middle Church', a ruined medieval church at its heart, and a 16th-century Burke tower house out the road.

Kilmaine sits on the N84 between Shrule and Ballinrobe, in the flat limestone farming country where south Mayo starts to feel like Galway. The name is Cill Mheáin, the Middle Church, and the church it is named for - a ruin now - stands right in the middle of the village. Galway city is forty minutes south. Ballinrobe, the nearest town, is ten minutes north.

This is a small place and it does not pretend otherwise. The 2016 census counted 147 people in the village itself, with the wider rural parish bringing it nearer a thousand. What is here: a shop, two pubs, a church, a school, a Garda station, and a GAA pitch that the parish has kept going since 1937. The story is older than any of that. Local tradition has St Patrick founding three churches in the parish - at Kill, Kilmaine and Kilquire - and the church on its own continuous ground in the village is mentioned in a papal document of 1216.

Most visitors here are passing through, or are coming for one specific thing - the medieval church ruin in the village, or Turin Castle a few minutes out the road, a restored Burke tower house that now takes private bookings. There is no hotel, no restaurant of note. Bring an appetite for landscape and a tolerance for quiet and the place gives back more than its size suggests.

Population

147 (2016 census)

Pubs

2and counting

Founded

Early Christian church site, traditionally St Patrick; church recorded in a papal document of 1216

Coords

53.5814° N, 9.1224° W

01 / 06

The pubs.

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

Maloney's Bar

Local

Village pub

One of the village's two pubs, in the centre of Kilmaine. A small country bar of the kind that does the social work of a place this size. Hours follow the parish more than the clock - if the door is open, the welcome is genuine.

02 / 06

Stories & lore.

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

Cill Mheáin, mentioned in 1216

The Middle Church

The ruin in the centre of the village is the church the place is named for - Cill Mheáin, the Middle Church, traditionally one of three founded in the parish by St Patrick. The site kept a continuous ecclesiastical purpose from its early-Christian beginnings and was recorded in a papal document of 1216; it later became a prebendary church of the archdiocese of Tuam. What survives is fragmentary and under-documented. The east wall carries a twin ogee-headed window, 16th-century tracery work; the south wall has more openings, one of them lighting a lost first floor, and a stretch of the masonry reads as the south-east corner of a cloister arcade. There is no interpretive panel and very little written about it. You stand in the graveyard and read the stones.

A Burke tower house, built 1574

Turin Castle

A few minutes out from the village, in the townland of Turin, stands a square medieval tower house built in 1574 by Walter Mac Redmond Burke - the Mac Redmonds being a branch of the de Burgo (Burke) family who held this country for centuries. The castle was abandoned for some 250 years before being restored from a ruin in 1997, with a further refurbishment from 2008. It is now private luxury holiday accommodation - four floors, five bedrooms, sleeps ten, with its own chapel - and is not open to the public. You can see it from the road. If you want to sleep inside a real Burke tower, this is one of the very few in Ireland where you can.

An inauguration site of the Burkes

Rausakeera ringfort

On the land around Kilmaine are the usual scatter of ringforts and field monuments, but Rausakeera is the one worth knowing about. It was an inauguration site - the place where the de Burgo / Burke chieftains were proclaimed from the 12th century onward. Smaller than nearby Lisanestreanduff but important enough to be chosen for the ritual that made a lord. There is nothing built up around it. It is a green earthwork in farming country, and you would walk past it without a local to point.

03 / 06

Things to do outside.

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

The church and graveyard The medieval ruin sits in the middle of the village in its graveyard. Roofless, fragmentary, no admission and no signage worth the name. Look for the twin ogee-headed window on the east wall. Twenty minutes and you have seen the thing the village is named for.

In-villagedistance

20 mintime

Country road loop toward Shrule Quiet lanes south and east through limestone farmland and stone walls. Flat, low traffic, and no purpose beyond the walk itself. This is south Mayo at its plainest - which, on a bright day, is a lot.

4-5 kmdistance

50-60 mintime

04 / 06

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

Lambs in the fields, the limestone country bright and green, the roads empty.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Long evenings, dry days, the GAA pitch in use. The best window for the country walks.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

Gold light over the stone walls and a quietness on the roads that suits the church ruin.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

Wet and grey. The fields turn heavy. Beautiful if you like a low sky; bring a coat and low expectations.

◐ Mind yourself

05 / 06

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 full day out

This is a small farming village - a shop, two pubs, a ruined church, a castle you cannot enter. An hour or two covers it. Pair it with Ballinrobe ten minutes north for food, beds and the racecourse.

Trying to visit Turin Castle

It is a private holiday rental, not a visitor attraction. You can admire it from the road, and you can book the whole castle if your group has the budget, but you cannot just walk in.

Looking for the church to be grand

It is a fragmentary ruin in a graveyard, scantily documented, with no centre and no tour. The reward is the ogee window and the quiet, not the scale.

Getting there.

By car

On the N84, ten minutes south of Ballinrobe and about forty minutes north of Galway city via Headford and Shrule.

By bus

Bus Éireann route 419 (Galway to Ballina via Headford, Ballinrobe and Castlebar) passes through Kilmaine; services run several days a week rather than daily, so check the timetable.

By train

No station. Nearest is Castlebar (about 45 min by road) on the Dublin to Westport line.

Next on the tour

Co. Mayo

Ballinrobe

Ten minutes north on the N84. The market town with Connacht's only racecourse and the field where the word 'boycott' was coined. The base for this corner of Mayo.

Co. Mayo

The Neale

North-west toward Cong. A tiny village with a very long footnote - the parish where the boycott of Captain Boycott was actually organised.

Co. Mayo

Cong

About twenty minutes north. Ashford Castle, the Quiet Man village and the abbey ruin. The headline destination of south Mayo.

Co. Galway

Shrule

South on the N84, just over the Galway border. A village built around its own ruined castle on the river.

Co. Mayo

Hollymount

Nine kilometres south, an old estate village whose GAA club outpunches its size.