Kilbeggan, Cill Bheagáin, Co. Westmeath

Cill Bheagáin · Co. Westmeath

A river town built on whiskey, with a racecourse out the back road.

Kilbeggan is a small town on a small river that did one big thing very well for a very long time. The distillery on Lower Main Street has been licensed since 1757 - older than the United States, older than the French Revolution, older than most arguments about who is older. It went silent in the fifties and stayed silent for half a century. Then in 2007 they fired the stills again, on the 250th anniversary, and the smell of mash drifted back over the Brosna.

What you need to know: it's a working town first. The M6 takes the through-traffic now, which is good for the town and good for you. Main Street is short and walkable. The pubs lean local. The races are out a back road past the racecourse roundabout, ten meetings between May and September, almost all of them in the evening. Get here at five, see two horses warm up, eat a chip, watch the last race in Friday-evening light.

Don't make it a forty-minute distillery stop on the way to somewhere else. Stay a night. Do the tour properly - they pour you a flight at the end and you need an hour to think about it. Walk the river. Eat in town. If the racing is on, that's your evening sorted. If it isn't, find a bar stool and let the conversation come to you.

Population

1,575 (2022)

Walk score

End to end in twelve minutes

Founded

Borough by charter of James I, 1612

Coords

53.3675° N, 7.5050° W

01 / 08

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 distillery

Licensed since 1757. Still here.

Kilbeggan Distillery sits on the Brosna where the river drives the wheel. It went dark in the fifties and came back to life in 2007. The pot stills inside are the oldest working stills on the planet.

Stories & lore → 02 The races

Evening jumps, May to September.

Loughnagore is the only racecourse in Ireland that runs jumps-only under National Hunt rules. Ten meetings a summer, mostly Friday and Saturday evenings. The Midlands National in July is the day.

Stories & lore → 03 The river

The Brosna runs the town.

It powered the distillery, the woollen mill and the corn store before it. Walk from the bridge to the old mill and back and you have the geography of the place.

Walks & outings →

02 / 08

The pubs.

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

Larrigy's

Busiest in town

Pub & late bar

On Main Street. The one the locals end up in. Music some nights, late on a Friday, and a crowd that has known each other since school.

McNamara's Bar

Old corner pub

Pub

21 Main Street. Started as a corner shop in the 1860s and never quite stopped being one. Low ceilings, a fire in winter, an honest pint.

The Saddler's Inn

Workingman corner

Pub

Old-fashioned bar by the market square end of town. The kind of place where the door swings and someone looks up.

McCormack's

Whiskey shelf

Pub

Functioning Main Street pub with a whole shelf given over to Kilbeggan whiskey. Ask which one they actually drink.

03 / 08

Where to sleep.

Place	Type	Local note
Bloomfield House Hotel (Lough Ennell)	Hotel, 15 minutes north	On the shore of Lough Ennell between Kilbeggan and Mullingar. Pool, parkland, a quiet base. The closest proper hotel if Kilbeggan town is full of itself.
Mullingar Park Hotel	Hotel, 25 minutes	If Bloomfield is booked. Bigger, blander, reliable. Twenty-five minutes up the N52.
Self-catering on the Brosna	Cottage / Airbnb	There are cottages within a mile of the distillery on the river side. Cheaper than a hotel, quiet at four in the morning. Search the usual sites.

04 / 08

Stories & lore.

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

1757, and not in a straight line

The oldest licence

Matthew MacManus took out a licence to distill in Kilbeggan in 1757. The Locke family bought the place in 1843 and ran it for four generations under the name Locke's. The early twentieth century was hard on Irish whiskey - Prohibition shut the American market, the Trade War shut the British one, and the Lockes shut the stills. Production stopped in 1953, the doors closed in 1957, and the building sat there full of copper and silence. The town kept the licence renewed every year just in case. Cooley Distillery bought the brand in 1987 and started maturing whiskey on the site again. In 2007 - exactly 250 years after MacManus signed his name - they fired the pot stills back up. Beam Suntory now own it. Kilbeggan is one of the oldest distillery buildings in the world, with records dating to 1757 - though production was not continuous.

Loughnagore in July

The Midlands National

Racing in Kilbeggan goes back to a Challenge Cup in March 1840. It moved around the parish for half a century before settling at Loughnagore in 1901, and it has been there ever since. The course is a right-handed undulating mile and a furlong, jumps-only - the only one in Ireland under National Hunt rules and nothing else. Ten meetings a summer, almost all evenings, almost all Friday or Saturday. The Midlands National Handicap Chase in July is the headline - three miles a furlong, a hundred grand in prize money, and a recognised trial for the Galway Plate three weeks later.

Pikes against muskets

1798 in Kilbeggan

On the day of the local fair in June 1798, around a thousand United Irishmen marched into Kilbeggan armed mostly with pikes and pitchforks. Sixty soldiers of the Northumberland Militia were holding the town with muskets. The fight that followed was not a fight in any meaningful sense - over a hundred insurgents were killed in the riot. The trigger had been the arrest and execution of John MacManus, son of a local distiller, in the weeks before. Local memory keeps both names. The fair-day date is still in the parish records.

Where the name comes from

St Bécán

Cill Bheagáin - the church of Bécán. A sixth-century saint set up a monastery here, and the McCoghlans rebuilt it as a Cistercian house in the twelfth, with monks coming down from Mellifont in 1150. The monastery ran until the Dissolution around 1549. The town's name still carries the saint's, and you can see traces of the monastic enclosure if you know where to look on the older side of the river.

05 / 08

Things to do outside.

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

The Brosna river walk From the bridge in town up past the distillery and along the river. Short, easy, and it tells you why the town is where it is.

2 km returndistance

30-40 mintime

Kilbeggan to the racecourse Out the L1015 toward Loughnagore. Not a designated trail - a country road walk. Do it on a non-race day if you want it quiet, or follow the cars on a Friday evening if you don't.

3 km one waydistance

40 mintime

06 / 08

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

Distillery quieter, racecourse opens mid-May, fields green and fresh. The light along the Brosna in April is worth the trip.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Race season in full swing. Friday and Saturday evenings are the move. Long evenings, ten meetings, the Midlands National in July is the one.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

Last races of the season early September. Distillery still on full tour rota until end of October. The town gets back to itself.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

Racecourse shut. Distillery on reduced tour times. The pubs do what pubs do in winter, which is fine if that is what you want.

◐ Mind yourself

07 / 08

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

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

Treating the distillery as a forty-minute stop

It is not a forty-minute stop. The full Distillery Experience is the one - pot stills, working waterwheel, a tasting at the end. Allow ninety minutes.

Driving past on the M6

The motorway runs the town and the town breathes easier for it, but you only see Kilbeggan from the off-ramp. Take the exit. It is two minutes off the road.

A racecourse trip on a non-race night

There is nothing to see. It is a working National Hunt course. Check the fixture list, plan around an evening meeting, do it properly.

Looking for a hotel in town

There isn't one any more. The closest proper hotel is Bloomfield House on Lough Ennell, fifteen minutes north. Self-catering or B&B is the local move.

Getting there.

By car

Dublin to Kilbeggan is 1h 10m on the M4/M6 (Junction 5). Athlone is 30 minutes west, Mullingar 25 minutes north, Tullamore 15 minutes south.

By bus

Bus Éireann 115 Dublin-Athlone stops in Kilbeggan, several services daily, around 1h 30m from Busáras.

By train

No train. Nearest stations are Mullingar (25 minutes by car) and Tullamore (15 minutes), both on the Dublin-Sligo and Dublin-Galway lines respectively.

By air

Dublin Airport is 1h 20m by car. Shannon is 1h 30m. Knock is 2 hours.

Next on the tour

Co. Offaly

Tullamore

Fifteen minutes south. The other midlands whiskey town - Tullamore D.E.W. Visitor Centre and a bigger high street.

Co. Offaly

Clara

Fifteen minutes west. Small mill town on the Brosna with the same river-and-distillery DNA, only quieter.

Co. Offaly

Clonmacnoise

Forty-five minutes south-west. The early-medieval monastic city on the Shannon. The big spiritual day-trip from anywhere in the midlands.

Co. Westmeath

Castletown-Geoghegan

Nine kilometres south, a crossroads carrying the name of a Gaelic family that held this corner for centuries.