Kill
An Choill

The Copper Coast hinterland
STOP 03 / 03

An Choill · Co. Waterford

A crossroads village four kilometres up the road from the sea.

Kill is a small village. The name is An Choill — the wood — and there is no longer much wood about it. What there is, is a stretch of the R681 with a church, a couple of pubs, a handful of houses, and a turn for Bunmahon. The 2022 census counted 349 people. That is up from 271 six years earlier, which by Copper Coast standards counts as a boom.

It earns a stop for two reasons. The first is the old parish of Kilbarrymeaden, two kilometres southeast — a ruined church on what may be a pre-Norman monastic site, with a bullan stone in the field beside it. The village takes its name from that parish, not the other way round. The second is geography: Kill is the inland hinge of the Copper Coast, four and a half kilometres above Bunmahon, twenty minutes off the coast road. If you are driving through, the Sweep junction is where the day actually begins.

Population

349 (2022)

Founded

Village grew around the Catholic church in the early 1800s

Coords

52.18° N, 7.36° W

01 / 03

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

On the R681 between The Sweep and Bunmahon.

Kill sits where the inland road from Waterford to the Copper Coast crosses itself. Most people go through it on the way to the sea. A few stop.

Getting there → 02 The old parish

Kilbarrymeaden ruin, two kilometres southeast.

The medieval parish church the village is named after still stands as a ruin in a field outside the village. A bullan stone in the next field hints at a pre-Norman monastery on the same site.

Stories & lore → 03 The Geopark

Inside the Copper Coast UNESCO boundary.

Kill is officially part of the Copper Coast UNESCO Global Geopark, even though the cliffs and the engine houses are down at Bunmahon. The Geopark uses Kill as one of its inland orientation points.

Next stops →

02 / 03

Stories & lore.

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

The parish that named the village

Kilbarrymeaden

The medieval parish of Kilbarrymeaden sat two kilometres southeast of where the village stands now. Its ruined church is still in the field. The site was held by the Bishop of Waterford until the Reformation, around 1550. A bullan stone in the adjoining field — a hollowed boulder used in early Christian rituals — suggests a pre-Norman monastic foundation underneath the medieval church. The village of Kill came later. It grew up around a new Catholic church in the early nineteenth century, a couple of kilometres from the older site, and inherited the parish name in shortened form.

How Kill emptied with Knockmahon

The mining decline

Like Bunmahon down the road, Kill was tied to the Knockmahon copper mines through the nineteenth century. In 1870 the village had 62 houses and 282 people. By 1890, after the mines closed in 1875, that was down to 44 houses and 130 people. The 1881 census put the cause in plain print: the mines had finally shut, and the men had gone — to the copper fields of Michigan, Montana and South Australia. The population only really came back in the last twenty years, and slowly.

Getting there.

By car

Waterford city to Kill is 25 minutes on the R681 via the Sweep. Bunmahon is 4.5 km further south on the same road, about ten minutes. Dungarvan is 30 minutes west.

By bus

Local Link route 360A (Tramore–Dungarvan via Bunmahon) passes through Kill a few times a day. Check the timetable before relying on it.

By train

No train. Nearest station is Waterford Plunkett, 30 km.

By air

Cork (ORK) is 1h 30m. Dublin is 2h 30m.