Ardcroney, Ard Croine, Co. Tipperary

Ard Croine · Co. Tipperary

A crossroads village whose church left for Tyrone and never came back.

Ardcroney is a crossroads in north Tipperary - a church, a scattering of houses, and a road that carries you through before you've quite decided to stop. The name comes from the Irish Ard Croine, the height of Croine, referencing the early Christian monastic figure Saint Croine whose foundation once gave this place its reason to exist. The monastery is long gone. The crossroads remains.

The village sits between two places that have more to offer in the conventional sense: Nenagh fifteen kilometres south with its cylindrical Norman keep and Country Choice deli, Borrisokane five kilometres north with its pub-restaurant and Barry Lyndon associations. Ardcroney asks nothing of you except to slow down on the N52 and notice that something happened here - even if the most striking evidence of it is now 350 kilometres away in Co. Tyrone.

That evidence is a Church of Ireland church. The building that once stood here was dismantled stone by stone and re-erected at the Ulster American Folk Park near Omagh - an open-air museum that preserves Irish vernacular and period buildings as part of the story of Irish emigration to America. The Ardcroney church, a typical rural Church of Ireland building of the nineteenth century, now stands in Co. Tyrone as an exhibit in a history it didn't know it was part of. The site it left behind in the village is empty. The Catholic church of St John the Baptist holds the crossroads alone.

Population

~100

Coords

52.9800° N, 8.1700° W

01 / 05

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 road

The N52 between Nenagh and Borrisokane.

Ardcroney sits on the main road north from Nenagh - five kilometres south of Borrisokane, fifteen from the county town. Most people pass through. A few have always stopped.

Stories & lore → 02 St John the Baptist

The Catholic church, still standing.

The Catholic parish church of St John the Baptist anchors the crossroads. The Church of Ireland church that once stood nearby is gone - physically lifted and taken to Co. Tyrone to be preserved. One building stayed; the other became an exhibit.

Stories & lore → 03 North Tipperary

Drumlin country on the edge of the Shannon basin.

The landscape around Ardcroney is quiet north Tipperary farmland - drumlins, hedgerows, the odd stand of beech. Lough Derg is twenty kilometres west. The Silver Mines are south. The village sits in the middle of it, at a crossroads, going about its business.

Getting here →

02 / 05

Stories & lore.

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

From Tipperary to Tyrone

The church that left

The Church of Ireland church at Ardcroney was dismantled and re-erected at the Ulster American Folk Park near Omagh, Co. Tyrone. The folk park - an open-air museum telling the story of Irish emigration to America - collects vernacular and period buildings from across Ireland, reassembling them on a single site as architectural witnesses to a vanished way of life. The Ardcroney church fitted the brief: a small, plain, rural Church of Ireland building of the kind that served Protestant farming communities across nineteenth-century Ireland. It now stands in Tyrone, complete. The parish it came from has one fewer building at its crossroads.

The name behind the place

Saint Croine

The place name Ard Croine - the height of Croine - points to an early Christian monastic presence associated with Saint Croine, one of the lesser-documented early Irish saints of the north Tipperary region. Early ecclesiastical foundations of this kind were the original reasons for settlement at crossroads sites across the midlands; Ardcroney follows the pattern. No physical trace of the early foundation survives above ground. The Catholic church of St John the Baptist is the modern heir to that original presence.

North Tipperary before the Butlers

The O'Kennedy country

The parish of Ardcroney sits in what was historically the territory of the O'Kennedys - the Gaelic lords of Ormond who held north Tipperary before Norman power consolidated under the Butler earls. The O'Kennedys resisted long enough to leave their name on the landscape: Ormond - Urmhumha - was their kingdom, and the place names around Nenagh and Borrisokane still carry their traces. Ardcroney was Gaelic pastoral country before it became plantation farmland, and the quiet drumlins around it don't announce which era they belong to.

03 / 05

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

North Tipperary is at its greenest. If you're passing through on the N52, this is when the countryside justifies a slow drive.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Lough Derg is the destination in summer - Ardcroney is a crossroads on the way there from Nenagh. Combine it with Borrisokane and Terryglass.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

The drumlin country looks its best in autumn light. Quiet roads, no coach traffic, the village as it always is.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

There is nothing open in Ardcroney in winter beyond the church. Borrisokane, five kilometres north, has The Green 1918 for food and warmth.

◐ Mind yourself

04 / 05

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 with amenities

Ardcroney is a crossroads with a church and houses. There is no pub, no café, no shop. Borrisokane is five minutes up the road and has all of those.

Driving past on the N52 at speed

The church transfer story is the reason to pause. Slow down at the crossroads, look at where the Church of Ireland building used to stand, and think about a building that packed itself up and moved counties.

Getting there.

By car

Ardcroney is on the N52, fifteen kilometres north of Nenagh and five kilometres south of Borrisokane. From Nenagh, drive north on the N52 - the crossroads is straightforward to find. Shannon Airport is roughly 60 km south via Nenagh.

By bus

Bus Éireann Route 324 (Nenagh to Borrisokane direction) passes through the area. Check current timetables - stops in small crossroads villages on this route are flagged stops.

By train

No train. Nearest station is Nenagh, fifteen kilometres south.