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BALLIVOR

CO. MEATH · IE

Ballivor
Baile Íomhair, Co. Meath

The Ireland's Ancient East
STOP 07 / 07

Baile Íomhair · Co. Meath

A working bog-country village between Mullingar and Trim that turned out an Iron Age murder victim and a Michelin chef.

Ballivor sits on the R156 in mid-Meath, halfway between Mullingar and Trim, about fifty kilometres north-west of Dublin. The Irish is Baile Íomhair, the town of Íomhar. It is a working village of around 1,870 people that exists because two roads cross here and because there is bog and farmland on every side of it. The population has sat between 1,800 and 1,900 for the best part of a decade. That is a village that knows itself.

There is not a great deal to see on the Main Street - a church, a school, the shops, two pubs - and the village is honest about that. What is interesting about Ballivor is in the ground and in the records. The parish was once called Killaconnigan, with roots in early Christian monasticism. The Catholic church is dedicated to St Columbanus, the sixth-century missionary who founded monasteries across Europe. And the bog to the south has given up more than turf.

In March 2003 a peat harvester at Clonycavan, just outside the village, turned up a human head and torso. Clonycavan Man, as he became known, is an Iron Age bog body more than two thousand years old, murdered by blows to the head, his hair held up with a resin gel imported from the continent. He is in the National Museum in Dublin now. The village has also had a Confederate battle fought on its edge, a Nazi spy parachute into it, and a two-Michelin-star chef born on a farm down the road. For a place this small, that is a deep hand of cards.

Do not come to Ballivor expecting a destination. Come if you are passing on the road between Mullingar and Trim, if you want a pint in a genuine country pub with nobody performing for you, or if the bog and the bog body are the kind of thing that pulls you. Otherwise Trim, half an hour east, is where the postcards are.

Population

~1,870 (2022)

Pubs

2and counting

Walk score

Main Street end to end in five minutes; bog and forestry beyond

Founded

Parish of Killaconnigan, early Christian; the modern village grew on the R156 crossroads

Coords

53.5328° N, 6.9648° 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 bog body

Clonycavan Man came out of the bog here in 2003.

An Iron Age body, radiocarbon dated to between 392 and 201 BC, found in a peat harvester in Clonycavan bog just outside the village. Murdered, hair styled with imported resin gel. He is in the National Museum on Kildare Street now, in the Kingship and Sacrifice exhibition. The ground around Ballivor keeps things.

Stories & lore → 02 The village

Two pubs, a Main Street, and the road to somewhere else.

About 1,870 people on the R156 halfway between Mullingar and Trim, 50km north-west of Dublin. A church to St Columbanus, a national school, the shops and the pubs. It does not perform for visitors. It does not need to.

Pubs → 03 The export

Richard Corrigan grew up on a farm outside the village.

The Michelin-starred chef of Corrigan's Mayfair was born in Ballivor in 1964, one of seven, on a small farm with no electricity until he was nine. He cooks for London now, but he is a Ballivor man, and he says so.

Stories & lore →

02 / 07

The pubs.

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

McLaughlin's Pub

Cosy local, fast pints, the heart of the village

Village pub, Main Street

On the Main Street. The pub the locals send you to - well kept, friendly, a good pint and live music on the right night. The kind of village bar that does not need to try because it has been getting it right for years. If you are stopping in Ballivor for one thing, stop here.

Byrnes Bar

Local pub that also feeds you

Bar & food, Main Street

Also on the Main Street, and the one that does food - a Sunday lunch with a proper roast beef, set-price menus, live music, and a beer garden out the back with an open-air pool table. Friendly with staff and regulars both. The closest thing the village has to a night out without leaving it.

03 / 07

Stories & lore.

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

An Iron Age murder, kept by the bog

Clonycavan Man

In March 2003 a peat-harvesting machine in Clonycavan bog, just outside Ballivor, threw up a human head and upper torso. The body was that of a young man, radiocarbon dated to between 392 and 201 BC - the late Iron Age. He had been killed by three heavy blows to the head, probably from an axe, and his abdomen had been opened. The bog had preserved him for over two thousand years, down to his hair, which was held up off the scalp with a gel made of plant oil and pine resin sourced from the south of France or Spain. That import marks him as someone of rank, and ties a midlands bog to a trade network running the length of western Europe. He is now in the National Museum of Ireland on Kildare Street, in the Kingship and Sacrifice exhibition, alongside the other great Irish bog bodies. He came out of the ground a few minutes from the Main Street.

Owen Roe O'Neill, and a cannonball

The Battle of Portlester, 1643

On 7 August 1643, during the Irish Confederate Wars, a battle was fought at Portlester, a small settlement east of Ballivor and south-west of Trim. Owen Roe O'Neill, having moved his Ulster army south into Meath to raid and to threaten Dublin, besieged Portlester Castle with artillery. He drew the Protestant royalist force under Lord Moore onto bad ground near a ford and a mill, where musketeers caught them in crossfire. The battle was settled by the guns: Moore was killed by a cannon shot - by legend, one aimed by O'Neill himself - and his army was driven off. A cessation of arms followed soon after. It is one of the few set-piece battles of that war fought in this corner of Meath, and the ground that saw it is the same quiet farmland you drive through today.

Hermann Görtz, summer 1940

The spy who landed in Ballivor

In the summer of 1940, with the war on and Ireland neutral, the German agent Hermann Görtz parachuted into the countryside around Ballivor. He had been sent to make contact with the IRA. He landed in the wrong place, lost his radio and money, and walked a long way across Meath before the operation unravelled. He was eventually caught and interned. It is the kind of footnote that small Irish villages collect and never quite let go of - the night the Second World War, briefly and absurdly, came down out of the sky over the bog.

From a farm with no electricity to two Michelin stars

Richard Corrigan's Ballivor

The chef Richard Corrigan was born in Ballivor in 1964, one of seven children, on a small farm that had no electricity until he was nine. He left, cooked his way through London, won a Michelin star at Fulham Road in 1994 and a second at his own Lindsay House in 1997, and now runs the Corrigan Collection including Corrigan's Mayfair. He has never been quiet about where he is from. His cooking - game, offal, the honest produce of a farm - is rooted in the Meath he grew up in. The village claims him, and he lets it.

04 / 07

Things to do outside.

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

Main Street and the village The Main Street end to end takes five minutes. Walk it for the church to St Columbanus, the school, the two pubs, and the feel of a working mid-Meath village. This is not a heritage trail. It is a village going about its day.

Under 1 kmdistance

15 minutestime

Ballivor bog and forestry South of the R156 lies Ballivor bog, around 630 hectares, with Coillte forestry planted across much of the cutaway. This is the country that gave up Clonycavan Man. The tracks through the forestry are walkable but unwaymarked and can be wet underfoot - wear boots, watch for active peat workings, and do not expect signage or a car park to greet you. Quiet, flat, big skies, and almost nobody about.

Variabledistance

1 hour plustime

05 / 07

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

The countryside greens up and the bog tracks dry out. Mild walking weather and a quiet village.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Long evenings, the pubs busier, the annual Ballivor Horse Show in the calendar. The best stretch for the bog and forestry walks.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

Clear, honest light over the flat bog country. The village reverts fully to itself once summer is gone.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

Cold, wet and dark, and the bog is no place to be. The pubs keep going. Unless you live here or have business here, this is not the season.

◐ 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.

Treating Ballivor as a destination in itself

It is not one, and it does not pretend to be. It is a village that works for the people who live in it. Pass through, have a pint, look at the bog if it interests you, then point yourself at Trim or the Boyne Valley for the day proper.

Going looking for Clonycavan Man in the village

He is not here. He came out of the bog at Clonycavan in 2003 and went straight to the National Museum of Ireland on Kildare Street in Dublin, where you can actually see him. There is nothing to view at the find site - it is a working bog.

Getting there.

By car

Dublin to Ballivor is about 1 hour 10 minutes, west on the M4 then north on the R158 and R156, or via Trim. The village is small and parking on or near the Main Street is straightforward.

By bus

Bus Éireann route 115C runs to Dublin via Summerhill and Maynooth; route 115D serves Trim via Kildalkey; and route 190 between Athlone and Drogheda passes through Trim, Navan and Mullingar. Services are infrequent - check timetables before relying on them.

By train

No train station. The nearest rail is at Enfield on the Dublin-Sligo line, about 20 minutes south, or Maynooth further on. Most people arrive by car.