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GLASSON

CO. WESTMEATH · IE

Glasson
Glasán

The Ireland's Hidden Heartlands
STOP 04 / 06

Glasán · Co. Westmeath

Six kilometres of road and a lake separate Athlone from a village punching above its weight.

Glasson — written Glassan on the Ordnance Survey, Glasson on every signboard in the village — is a single bend of road on the N55 between Athlone and Ballymahon. Two hundred and eighteen people live here. They have, between them, a Georgian-era estate village, three full restaurants, two well-known pubs, a country-house golf hotel, and a lakeside lodge with rooms. Athlone does the heavy lifting on tourism in this part of the country; Glasson does the eating and sleeping after.

The shape of the place is the Temple-Harris family. Waterston House, built in the 1740s, needed a service village; Glasson is what they laid out to do the job. The wine port that gave Wineport Lodge its name was a jetty on the shore of Lough Ree where claret came in by boat off the Shannon and went up to the big house by cart. The lodge today is the Byrnes' restaurant-with-rooms — Ray Byrne and Jane English opened it as a small lakeside dining room in 1993 and added bedrooms in 2002, more in 2005, suites again in 2006. It is now the most-photographed deck in the Midlands.

Then there is Goldsmith. Oliver Goldsmith — "She Stoops to Conquer", "The Vicar of Wakefield", "The Deserted Village" — spent his childhood at the parsonage in Lissoy, a few miles north on the Ballymahon road. The village he wrote into the 1770 poem is meant to be partly Lissoy and partly somewhere in the English Midlands; the local conviction that Auburn is Lissoy is not quite settled scholarship, but there is a townland called Auburn next door and the lough beside it shares the name. The annual Goldsmith Festival has run since 1985 over the June Bank Holiday and the audio trail strung between the Three Jolly Pigeons, the schoolhouse and the parsonage ruins is the best two hours you will spend on a wet afternoon.

Stay a night. The lake will fog in by morning and burn off by ten. Walk the back road to the shore. Eat somewhere with a view of water. Then drive on.

Population

218 (2022)

Walk score

One street, one bend, one minute end-to-end

Founded

Estate village built for Waterston House, mid-1700s

Coords

53.4847° N, 7.8703° W

01 / 09

At a glance.

Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.

01 Lough Ree

Ireland's third-biggest lake, on the doorstep.

The shore is a kilometre out the back road. Inchcleraun and Hare Island sit out in the water with monastic ruins on them. Boats go from Coosan and Hodson Bay; the Glasson side has the views, not the pier.

Walks & outings → 02 Goldsmith Country

"Sweet Auburn" is somewhere round here.

Oliver Goldsmith grew up in the parsonage at Lissoy, ten minutes north. "The Deserted Village" (1770) drew on the place — partly. Scholars still argue how literally. There is a Goldsmith Trail and a festival in June.

Stories & lore → 03 Eat and stay

Three serious kitchens for a 218-person village.

Wineport Lodge on the lake. The Glasson Village Restaurant in the middle. The Villager next door doing gastropub. None of them should be here at this scale. All of them are.

Food & drink →

02 / 09

The pubs.

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

Grogans of Glasson

Local, busy on weekends

Pub & food, in the village

The bar in the centre of the village. Pints, a sociable lounge, food on most days. The kind of place locals from Athlone drive out to on a Friday and the kind of place a wet cyclist off the lake walks into and is glad of.

The Villager

Food-led, family-run

Gastropub

Cathal Moran and Maeve Lennon run it; took home Westmeath's Best Gastropub at the Irish Restaurant Awards in 2016 and again in 2017. Garden out the back. Book on a weekend.

03 / 09

Where to eat.

Place	Type	€	Local note
Wineport Lodge	Restaurant with rooms, on the lake	€€€	Cedar-clad, deck out over Killinure Lough on the south end of Lough Ree. Ray Byrne and Jane English since 1993. The view sells the table; the kitchen earns the second visit. Sunday lunch is the local tradition.
Glasson Village Restaurant	Restaurant, established 1986	€€€	Family-run on the village street since 1986. Modern Irish, local producers, a wine list someone has thought about. Dinner only most nights — phone first. Steady at this for nearly forty years.
The Villager	Gastropub kitchen	€€	The pub does the cheaper side of the bill. Chowder, brown bread, a lamb dish if you are lucky. The garden out the back works in summer.
Glasson Lakehouse — Killinure Restaurant	Hotel restaurant	€€	The dining room at the golf hotel, view over Killinure. Dependable rather than destination. Sunday lunch is a Midlands ritual.

04 / 09

Where to sleep.

Place	Type	Local note
Wineport Lodge	Restaurant with rooms, lakeside	Around thirty-four rooms and suites at last count. Spa, jetty, balcony for every room. The room with the corner view is the one to ask for. Book months out for summer weekends.
Glasson Lakehouse	Hotel & golf resort	Formerly the Glasson Country House Hotel & Golf Club; bought by Paddy McKillen Jnr's Press Up group in 2019 and rebranded. Sixty-five rooms, eco cabins on stilts being added, Christy O'Connor Jnr golf course since 1993. Big-wedding territory.
Glasson Holiday Homes	Self-catering cottages	Cluster of self-catering houses at the village end. Useful for families and longer stays. Walk to the pubs, drive to the lake.

05 / 09

Stories & lore.

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

"Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain"

Goldsmith and Auburn

Oliver Goldsmith was raised at the parsonage at Lissoy, ten minutes north of Glasson on the Ballymahon road, where his father was rector of Kilkenny West from 1730. The school, the alehouse (the Three Jolly Pigeons), the parsonage and the Busy Mill all turn up in his work. "The Deserted Village" (1770) opens with a village called Auburn — and there is a townland called Auburn beside Lissoy, with a lough of the same name. Whether the poem's village is Lissoy, an English village Goldsmith saw cleared for an estate, or a composite, has been argued since the poem was published. The Goldsmith Literary Festival has run since 1985 over the June Bank Holiday and a self-guided audio trail now connects the sites.

Inchcleraun, Hare Island, Inchbofin

The islands of Lough Ree

Out in the lake, off the Glasson shore, sit the early-Christian islands. Inchcleraun (Inis Clothrann) holds the ruins of St Diarmaid's monastery, founded around 540, and an Augustinian priory on top of it from the thirteenth century — six churches inside an enclosure, all National Monuments now. Hare Island (Inis Aingin) was where St Ciarán founded a community before he moved south to Clonmacnoise around 545. Vikings burned the lot of it more than once between 800 and 1300. The boats out are not from Glasson — try Coosan Point south of the village, or Hodson Bay on the Roscommon side.

How the lodge got its name

The wine port

The deer park of Waterston House ran down to the lake. A jetty on the shore took deliveries off the Shannon — claret from France, sherry from Spain, brought up the river by boat and then by cart up to the cellars. The locals called the spot the wine port. When Ray Byrne and Jane English opened a small cedar-clad restaurant on the same shore in 1993, they used the name. Rooms followed in 2002, more in 2005, suites in 2006. The deer park is now somebody's farm and the wine arrives in a van from Athlone, but the deck where you sit is roughly where the casks once landed.

06 / 09

Things to do outside.

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

Glasson to the lake shore Down the side road past Wineport, on to the shore at Killinure. Lough Ree opens up. Quiet road, no footpath worth the name, watch for cars on Sundays.

4 km returndistance

1 hourtime

Goldsmith Trail (driving) Glasson — Tang — Lissoy — the parsonage — Three Jolly Pigeons — back. Audio trail commentary runs at marked stops. Better in shoulder season when the gates aren't being mobbed.

20 km loopdistance

Half daytime

The Old Rail Trail (nearby) Mullingar to Athlone on the old Midland Great Western line. Joins the wider greenway network. Glasson sits just off it; rent a bike in Athlone and detour up the N55 for lunch.

40 kmdistance

Day by biketime

07 / 09

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar–May

Lake clearing of fog, pubs not yet booked out, the festival builds through May into the June Bank Holiday weekend.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun–Aug

Wineport and the Lakehouse are wedding venues — check the calendars before booking. Long evenings on the deck make up for it.

◐ Mind yourself

Autumn

Sep–Oct

The locals' season. Sunday-lunch country, light off the water, prices easing.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov–Feb

Restaurants run skeleton hours from January through to early March. Phone before you drive out. The lake in fog is a thing to see, mind.

◐ Mind yourself

08 / 09

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.

Trying to ferry to Inchcleraun from Glasson itself

There is no public pier with a ferry on the Glasson shore. The boat trips out to the islands run from Coosan Point in Athlone or from Hodson Bay across the lake. Drive twenty minutes.

Using Glasson as a base for the Cliffs of Moher

Two hours each way and three other counties between you and the cliffs. Use Glasson for the lake, Goldsmith Country, and Athlone. Use Doolin for the cliffs.

Insisting Lissoy is "the" deserted village

It is part of the picture. So is somewhere in the English Midlands. So is Goldsmith's memory of being a child. The literary scholars do not agree; do not get into a row about it in a pub.

A Sunday-lunch booking at three on the day

Wineport, the Lakehouse and the Glasson Village Restaurant are all booked weeks out for Sunday lunch in summer. It is the local sport. Plan ahead.

Getting there.

By car

Athlone to Glasson is 10 minutes on the N55 north — six kilometres, signed for the village. Mullingar is 35 minutes east. Dublin is 1h 30m on the M4/M6.

By bus

Local Link routes connect Glasson with Athlone on weekdays; the schedule is light. A taxi from Athlone is the usual answer.

By train

Athlone station (Dublin–Galway and Dublin–Westport lines) is the nearest. Then taxi or bus.

By air

Dublin Airport is 1h 45m by car. Shannon is 1h 15m. Ireland West (Knock) is 1h 30m.