Ballynacargy, Baile na Carraige, Co. Westmeath

Baile na Carraige · Co. Westmeath

A canal harbour, a five-arch aqueduct, and a village the linen trade forgot.

Ballynacargy is a small village 15 km north-west of Mullingar on the R393, sat on a bend of the Royal Canal. Two hundred and twenty-seven people at the last census. A harbour, a couple of bars, a Garda station, a GAA pitch. That is the whole of it. The canal is why anyone outside the parish has heard of it at all.

The Malone family of Baronstown laid the village out in the mid-eighteenth century, hoping to seed a linen industry. The linen never took. What did take, sixty years later, was the Royal Canal - it reached the village in 1817 and gave it a harbour, a hotel, commercial stores, a cast-iron crane on the quayside. For a few decades Ballynacargy was a stop on the working line between Dublin and the Shannon. Then the railway opened in the 1850s and the canal trade slid away. The harbour buildings are still there, weathered into the bank as if they had always been part of it.

Come for an hour. Walk down to the harbour, look at the lock, walk a kilometre west to the Whitworth Aqueduct and watch the Inny pass under five limestone arches. Stay for a pint. Don't expect more than that. Ballynacargy doesn't pretend.

Population

227

Founded

Canal harbour opened 1817

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 canal

Royal Canal Greenway runs through the village.

The 35th lock and its keeper's cottage sit at the harbour. Ten locks drop down from Coolnahay above. The towpath is now a flat, walkable greenway in both directions.

Walks & outings → 02 The aqueduct

The Whitworth Aqueduct, five arches over the Inny.

A mile or so west of the village, the canal crosses the River Inny on a five-arch limestone aqueduct named for Lord Charles Whitworth, Lord Lieutenant when this stretch was built.

Stories & lore → 03 The famine trail

A bronze pair of children’s shoes at the harbour.

Ballynacargy is a marker on the National Famine Way - the 165 km walk from Strokestown to Dublin retracing the 1847 emigration of 1,490 tenants from the Mahon estate.

The walk →

02 / 05

The pubs.

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

The Wagon Wheel

Local, sociable

Village pub

On the main street, a working village bar of the old kind. Hosts darts league nights - the Westmeath Darts Shield was played out here in 2025. If you want a quiet pint after walking the greenway, this is the one.

03 / 05

Stories & lore.

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

Built late, beaten by the railway

The Royal Canal

The Royal Canal was the second of Ireland's two great inland navigations, dug in competition with the Grand Canal on the other side of Dublin. It reached Ballynacargy in 1817 and opened all the way to the Shannon at Cloondara in 1817 as well. The harbour here got a canal hotel, commercial stores and a heavy-goods crane - the cast-iron stump of the crane is still there. Then the Midland Great Western Railway laid track along the canal's own banks in the 1850s and the trade vanished within a generation. The canal closed to commercial traffic in 1955, was abandoned, then slowly restored by volunteers from the 1970s on. The Royal Canal Greenway opened along the towpath in 2021 and Ballynacargy is, once again, a stop on a long line of people heading west.

Five arches over the Inny

The Whitworth Aqueduct

Just west of the village the canal has to cross the River Inny, and it does so on a five-arch limestone aqueduct most likely named for Lord Charles Whitworth, who was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland between 1813 and 1817 - exactly the years this section was being built. It is one of the more impressive structures on the whole canal and almost nobody stops to look at it. Walk the towpath out from the harbour for fifteen minutes and there it is, water above water, the Inny turning underneath.

A National Famine Way marker

The bronze shoes at the harbour

In 1847 the landlord Major Denis Mahon chartered boats to ship 1,490 of his Strokestown tenants down the Royal Canal to Dublin and on to Liverpool and Quebec. They walked the first stretch from Roscommon to Cloondara in two days, then took canal boats east. The National Famine Way retraces that route as a 165 km walk, marked along its length by thirty pairs of bronze children's shoes cast from a real pair found in the rafters of a ruined cottage. Ballynacargy harbour is one of those markers. Two-thirds of the original 1,490 were children. Stand at the harbour and read the plaque.

04 / 05

Things to do outside.

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

Royal Canal Greenway - Ballynacargy to the Whitworth Aqueduct Out west from the harbour along the towpath, past the 35th lock keeper's cottage, to where the canal crosses the River Inny on the five-arch aqueduct. Flat, easy, dog-friendly. Turn back at the aqueduct or push on toward Abbeyshrule.

~3 km returndistance

45 mintime

Royal Canal Greenway - Ballynacargy to Abbeyshrule West along the towpath into Co. Longford. Crosses the Whitworth Aqueduct in the first kilometre. Abbeyshrule has a 12th-century Cistercian abbey ruin and a pub at the other end. Arrange a lift back or walk both ways.

8.8 km one-waydistance

2 hours walk / 35 min cycletime

Royal Canal Greenway - Ballynacargy to Coolnahay East toward Mullingar. The path climbs gently through a flight of locks - the 35th here at the harbour up through the 26th at Coolnahay. The least busy stretch of the whole greenway most days.

8 km one-waydistance

1h 45m walk / 30 min cycletime