Baylin
Béal Linne

The Ireland's Hidden Heartlands
STOP 03 / 03

Béal Linne · Co. Westmeath

A crossroads village south-east of Athlone where the parish keeps the lights on.

Baylin is a small farming village south-east of Athlone, named in Irish Béal Linne — the mouth of the pool — for the small water at the bridge that gives the place half its identity. The other half is the crossroads. There is no main street. There is a road in, a road out, a bridge, a few houses set back from the verge, and the country either side laid out in long fields and drains. It is a village in the way that a stretch of road with a name on the map is a village. It works for the people who live here, which is the only audience it has ever played to.

What Baylin has is a parish and a club. The Catholic parish of Ballyloughloe takes in Mount Temple a few kilometres up the road, and the two villages share a priest, a school catchment, and a Sunday rhythm. The GAA club is Caulry — founded in 1928 by Fr Francis Skelly to bring Mount Temple and Baylin in under one jersey — and on a championship Sunday the cars on the verge are how you know the parish is alive. The rest of the week it is what it looks like: a quiet country place between Athlone and the bog, getting on with itself.

Population

284 (2022 census)

Walk score

A crossroads, a bridge, and the road on either side

Coords

53.4083° N, 7.8200° 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 crossroads

Baylin Crossroads, Baylin Bridge.

The village is the meeting of the back roads between Moate, Athlone and the bog country south of the R390. The bridge and the crossroads carry the name and most of the traffic.

About the village → 02 The parish

Same parish as Mount Temple.

Baylin sits inside the Catholic parish of Ballyloughloe, paired with Mount Temple a few kilometres up the road. One parish, two villages, one priest most weeks.

Stories & lore → 03 The club

Caulry GAA covers here.

The local GAA club is Caulry — founded in 1928 to bring Mount Temple and Baylin in under one jersey. The pitch is up the road, not in the village itself.

GAA history →

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Stories & lore.

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

One parish, one team

Caulry, Mount Temple, Baylin

The local GAA club is Caulry — the Anglicised form of Calraidhe, an old territorial name that pre-dates either Mount Temple or Baylin on the map. Fr Francis Skelly, then curate in Mount Temple, founded the club in 1928 to bring all sections of the Mount Temple and Baylin community in under one jersey, and the name has held since. Caulry took the Westmeath Junior in 2009 and lifted the Intermediate in 2019, and the club has been kicking around senior football in the years since. The pitch is between the two villages, which is the point: neither one is the home ground, and both of them are.

Getting there.

By car

Athlone to Baylin is about 15 minutes east on the back roads off the R390. Moate is about 10 minutes south. The village sits in the country between the two — turns are signposted but small.

By bus

No regular village bus. Local Link runs along the R390 corridor between Athlone, Moate and Mullingar on weekdays — closer to Mount Temple than to Baylin itself. In practice, you drive.

By train

No station. Athlone is on the Dublin–Galway line; Mullingar is on the Dublin–Sligo line. From either, it is car or taxi the rest of the way.