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KILGLASS

CO. ROSCOMMON · IE

Kilglass
Cill Ghlais, Co. Roscommon

The Ireland's Hidden Heartlands
STOP 06 / 06

Cill Ghlais · Co. Roscommon

A scattered lakeside parish between Strokestown and Rooskey, and the ground that one of the best-documented famine evictions was cleared from.

Kilglass is not a village you arrive in. It is a parish - a spread of townlands across low ground between Strokestown and Rooskey in north-east Roscommon, with the long shallow Kilglass Lough at the centre of it and the bog and the Shannon never far off. There is no main street, no square. There is a church on a hill, a GAA pitch, a lake full of fish, and a great deal of quiet.

The church is the Sacred Heart, built in 1897 on rising ground that looks out over the lakes, replacing a plain T-shaped chapel that had stood on the same site for a century before it. Today Kilglass shares its priest with Rooskey and Slatta - three churches, one parish, the kind of arrangement rural Roscommon has long since made its peace with. If you want a pint or a shop, you go down to Rooskey on the Shannon.

What pulls people here is the water and the weight of what happened on it. Kilglass Lough is a premier coarse-angling water, run by the Rinn & Shannon District Angling Club, and on a still morning the only sound is a fish moving in the reeds. But the eastern shore holds the townland of Ballykilcline, and Ballykilcline is the reason historians know Kilglass at all.

Come for the lake and the silence, not for amenities. This is Hidden Heartlands in the most literal sense - few visitors, fewer signposts, and a landscape that gives up its story only if you go looking. The story it gives up is a hard one.

Population

A scattered rural parish of a few hundred; no village centre as such

Walk score

No street to walk - this is a parish of townlands, lakes and bog

Founded

Ancient ecclesiastical parish; Sacred Heart church 1897 on the site of an older one

Coords

53.7806° N, 8.0050° W

01 / 06

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 lake

Kilglass Lough - five kilometres of water in the Shannon corridor.

A long shallow lough between Strokestown and Rooskey, reed-fringed and quiet, run for angling by the Rinn & Shannon club. Bream, tench, roach, rudd and a serious head of pike. The Sacred Heart church sits on high ground looking down over it.

Walks & outings → 02 The clearance

Ballykilcline - a Crown townland emptied in 1847-48.

Around 500 people lived on the Crown estate at Ballykilcline by the eastern shore of the lough. After a twelve-year rent strike they were evicted and shipped to New York. It is one of the most thoroughly recorded famine evictions in Ireland.

Stories & lore → 03 The walk

The National Famine Way passes the parish.

The 167 km waymarked trail from Strokestown Park to Dublin's quays runs through this corner of the Shannon, marked by bronze children's shoes. The story of the 1,490 who walked it starts a few miles west at the National Famine Museum.

Stories & lore →

02 / 06

Stories & lore.

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

A Crown estate cleared, 1847-48

Ballykilcline

Ballykilcline was a townland of around 160 acres on the eastern shore of Kilglass Lough. By 1841 close to 500 people lived there as tenant farmers. The land was Crown property, sub-let through the Mahons of Strokestown, and from 1835 the tenants ran a twelve-year rent strike against what they saw as unjust rents. The Crown's answer, when it came, was eviction: roughly 370 people were cleared off the land in 1847 and 1848 and put on ships to New York under a scheme of assisted emigration. Because it was a Crown estate, the paperwork survived in unusual completeness - rent rolls, names, ages, the lot - which is why Ballykilcline became one of the most studied famine evictions in the country, the subject of books and an archaeological dig. The fields are quiet now. The people are scattered across the eastern seaboard of America.

Strokestown, 1847

Denis Mahon and the year the parish halved

At the same time the Crown was clearing Ballykilcline, Denis Mahon - who had inherited the heavily indebted Strokestown estate next door - was evicting hundreds of his own tenants and paying their passage to Quebec on what became known as coffin ships. Many died on the crossing or soon after of famine-related disease. In November 1847 Mahon was shot dead on the road near his own gates, one of the most notorious landlord assassinations of the Famine. The population of Kilglass parish was very nearly halved in that one decade. The whole grim machinery of it - landlord, tenant, eviction, emigration, the road to the ships - is laid out at the National Famine Museum at Strokestown Park, five and a half miles west.

1,490 walked from here to Dublin

The National Famine Way

In 1847 the Strokestown estate marched 1,490 of its tenants the 165 km to Dublin to be put on boats. The route they walked is now the National Famine Way, a 167 km waymarked trail from the gates of Strokestown Park to the famine memorial on Dublin's Custom House Quay, mostly along the Royal Canal towpath once it reaches the midlands. It is marked the whole way by more than thirty pairs of children's shoes cast in bronze - a count of the children who walked it. A free app tells the story shoe by shoe. The first leg, Strokestown to Tarmonbarry, runs through this stretch of the Shannon.

03 / 06

Things to do outside.

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

Kilglass Lough shore There is no formal lakeshore loop and most of the shoreline is heavily reeded, but the high ground around the Sacred Heart church gives the view down over the water that the building was sited for. Quiet, exposed, worth a slow half hour. Boots after rain.

Short, informaldistance

30-60 minutestime

National Famine Way (Roscommon leg) Start at Strokestown Park and walk the first, mostly off-road, section toward Tarmonbarry on the Shannon. Bronze children's shoes mark the route. You can do a short out-and-back rather than the whole leg; the app carries the history. The hardest walk in Ireland to do without thinking.

18 km to Tarmonbarrydistance

Half a day on foottime

Ballykilcline townland The cleared townland sits on the eastern shore of the lough. There is little to see in the conventional sense - fields, a graveyard, the absence of the 500 people who once lived here - but if you have read the story it is a place worth standing in. Respect that it is working farmland and private ground.

Drive plus a short walkdistance

1 hourtime

04 / 06

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

The angling water comes alive, tench and bream feeding, and the parish is green and empty. Good light over the lough. The Famine Way is at its best underfoot before the summer growth.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Long evenings on the lake, the coarse fishing at its peak, and the Shannon at Rooskey busy with cruisers. Still nobody here in any touristed sense. Bring midge protection for dusk by the reeds.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

Pike season builds toward the winter leagues. The bog and the lakeshore turn copper. Quiet, low light, the right season for the Famine Way and its story.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

Short days, wet ground, the lakeshore miserable in a westerly. The pike anglers keep coming for the winter leagues, but there is nothing here to shelter in - drive to Strokestown or Rooskey for a roof.

◐ 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.

Looking for a Kilglass village

There isn't one in the postcard sense - no main street, no centre, no pub at a crossroads. Kilglass is a church, a GAA club and a lake spread across farmland. Adjust your expectations to a parish, not a town, and you'll get it right.

Confusing it with Kilglass on Lough Gara

There is more than one Kilglass in the north Connacht borderlands. This one is the Ballintober parish between Strokestown and Rooskey, on Kilglass Lough in the Shannon system - not the Lough Gara one over toward Sligo. Mind the satnav.

Fishing without sorting access first

The lough is club water with heavily reeded banks and few launch points - a boat is more or less a must and the good access is far between. Buy a day ticket from a local tackle shop and ask where to put in before you haul gear to the shore.

Getting there.

By car

About 20 minutes north-east of Roscommon town, and five and a half miles east of Strokestown on the road toward Rooskey. The R368 carries you up from the N5 at Strokestown. North-east Roscommon is back-roads country - allow time, and trust the townland signs over the satnav.

By bus

No direct service to Kilglass itself. TFI Local Link Longford Westmeath Roscommon runs buses through Strokestown a few times a day, with onward connections to Roscommon town. From there you need a car or a lift for the last few miles.

By train

Nearest station is Longford on the Dublin Connolly to Sligo line, roughly half an hour east. From Longford it is Local Link or taxi the rest of the way; there is no rail anywhere near the parish.

By air

Dublin Airport (DUB) is about 2 hours by car via the N4/N5. Ireland West Knock (NOC) is closer at roughly an hour and is the handier option if the flights suit.