POSTED FROM

KILBERRY

CO. CO. MEATH · IE

Kilberry
Cill Bhearaigh, Co. Co. Meath

The Ireland's Ancient East
STOP 07 / 07

Cill Bhearaigh · Co. Co. Meath

A crossroads on the Kingscourt road with one very good thatched pub and a greenway running through the back of it.

Kilberry is a crossroads in the barony of Morgallion, about six and a half kilometres north of Navan on the R162 - the road that runs up to Nobber, Kingscourt and the Cavan lakes. The name is Cill Bhearaigh, the church of Bearach, and the church it remembers is long gone. What is at the cross today is a few houses, a parish church, and one thatched pub that does most of the work of holding the place together.

The parish was once a good deal busier than the crossroads suggests. In 1841 it held over two thousand people; by 1891 it held 796, the Famine and the emigration that followed having done to Kilberry what they did to most of rural Meath. The land is good - meadow and pasture, a hundred acres of bog at the edge, the Yellow River turning a corn mill in the 1800s. The railway came through at Wilkinstown a mile north, and went again in the 1940s, and the line lay quiet for the best part of eighty years.

Then in May 2024 the old railway reopened as the Boyne Valley to Lakelands Greenway, and Kilberry found itself on a thirty-kilometre walking and cycling route from Navan to Kingscourt. It is the best reason to come on purpose rather than pass through. The other reason is the pub on the cross, which was restored and reopened in 2021 and is genuinely worth the five-minute drive out from Navan.

Do not come expecting a village in the postcard sense. There is no main street, no shops to speak of, no square. There is a crossroads, a greenway, a church, a motte in a field a mile off, and a fire going in a thatched bar most evenings. For a place this size that is a fair haul.

Population

Parish 796 (1891); a few hundred today

Founded

Medieval parish; church of St Mary recorded with a perpetual chantry

Coords

53.7128° N, 6.6925° 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 cross

Kilberry Cross on the R162, five minutes north of Navan.

The village is essentially a crossroads with a thatched pub on the corner. The R162 carries you north toward Nobber and Kingscourt, the old Slane to Kells road crosses east to west. Most of what people stop for is the one corner.

Pubs → 02 The greenway

The Boyne Valley to Lakelands Greenway runs through.

Thirty kilometres of old railway line from Navan to Kingscourt, opened in May 2024, passing Kilberry on the way to Wilkinstown, Nobber and the Cavan border. Flat, traffic-free, on the bed of the line that closed in the 1940s.

Walks → 03 The old parish

A medieval church of St Mary and a Norman motte at Castletown.

The parish is older than the crossroads. St Mary of Kilberry had a perpetual chantry of two chaplains. A mile away the flat-topped mound at Castletown Kilberry is a rath the Normans raised into a motte.

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:

The Kilberry Pub & Kitchen

Restored thatched bar, live music at weekends

Thatched pub & restaurant, Kilberry Cross

The reason most people turn off the R162. A thatched pub that has stood on Kilberry Cross for decades, taken on by new owners and reopened in 2021 after a full restoration. Several rooms - a main bar in the original thatched building, a whiskey bar, a garden bar - and a kitchen doing breakfast, lunch and à la carte. Live music every weekend, sport through the week, a big car park with room for a bus and bike storage for greenway traffic. Five minutes out from Navan and worth the drive.

03 / 07

Where to eat.

Place	Type	€	Local note
The Kilberry Pub & Kitchen	Pub kitchen, Kilberry Cross	€€	The only kitchen at the cross, and a good one. Breakfast, lunch and a full à la carte across the restaurant and bars in the thatched building. Indoor and outdoor dining. If you are walking the greenway it is the obvious feed; if you are driving out from Navan for dinner it earns the trip.

04 / 07

Stories & lore.

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

A medieval parish church and a perpetual chantry

St Mary of Kilberry

The parish takes its name from an early church - Cill Bhearaigh, the church of Bearach - but the documented one is the medieval parish church of St Mary of Kilberry, which the antiquarian Archdall recorded as having a perpetual chantry of two chaplains: an endowment that paid two priests to say Mass for the souls of the founders in perpetuity. That tells you the parish once had money and standing. The medieval church is gone. The present Catholic church at the cross is the Church of St John the Baptist, built in 1839 to replace an older L-shaped chapel that appears on Larkin's map of 1812. The parish today is joined with Oristown, whose own church to the north-west dates from 1970.

A rath the Normans raised, around the corner

The motte at Castletown Kilberry

About a mile from the cross, at Castletown Kilberry, there is a flat-topped circular mound - roughly thirty-nine metres across the base, nineteen across the top, and five metres high - with traces of a fosse around it. A section cut through it showed it began life as a ring-fort, a rath, and was later heightened with re-deposited earth into a Norman motte: the standard earthwork castle the Normans threw up across Meath in the decades after 1170. It sits on private farmland and there is nothing built on top, but the townland name (Castletown) and the mound itself are the fossil of the place's Norman manor.

05 / 07

Things to do outside.

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

Boyne Valley to Lakelands Greenway (Kilberry section) The old Navan to Kingscourt railway, reopened as a greenway in May 2024. Flat, surfaced, traffic-free, on the bed of a line that closed in the 1940s. Kilberry is near the Navan end - walk or cycle north toward Wilkinstown (the Park Beo services hub is about nine kilometres out from Navan by greenway, beside the Mace), Castletown Kilpatrick, Nobber and on to Kingscourt over the Cavan border. Bike storage and a big car park at the pub on the cross make Kilberry a sensible start point.

30 km full route; a few km localdistance

As long as you liketime

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.

Looking for a village centre

There isn't one in the usual sense. Kilberry is a crossroads, a church, a pub and a scatter of houses. The shops and the town are in Navan, five minutes south. Come for the pub or the greenway, not for a stroll down a main street that does not exist.

The Castletown motte as a visitor attraction

It is a grass mound on private farmland with no path, no signage and nothing built on top. It matters to archaeologists and to the story of Norman Meath, but there is nothing to tour. Admire it from the road and move on.

Getting there.

By car

On the R162 Navan to Kingscourt road, about six and a half kilometres (a five-minute drive) north of Navan. Navan is off the M3 from Dublin, roughly 50 minutes from the city. Kilberry Cross is signposted; the thatched pub marks the corner.

By bus

No regular village bus service. Navan is the transport hub - Bus Éireann route 109/109X links Navan to Dublin (about an hour), and Local Link covers the rural roads around Morgallion. From Navan it is a short taxi or the greenway on foot or bike.