POSTED FROM

MILLTOWNPASS

CO. WESTMEATH · IE

Milltownpass
Bealach Bhaile an Mhuilinn, Co. Westmeath

The Ireland's Hidden Heartlands
STOP 07 / 07

Bealach Bhaile an Mhuilinn · Co. Westmeath

A strung-out coaching village the M6 lifted clean off the map - and one of the first places in Ireland to light its own houses.

Milltownpass is the kind of village the road made and the road then unmade. The street runs in a long thin line because the old N6 between Dublin and Galway ran straight down the middle of it. Coaches changed horses here, lorries pulled in, and the road was the reason the place existed. Then in 2006 the Kinnegad-to-Tyrrellspass dual carriageway opened just to the north, took the through-traffic with it, and the village street went quiet in a way it had not been quiet since before the mail coaches.

What is left is a small place - well under three hundred people, the second village of the Rochfortbridge parish, a national school, a GAA club founded in 1977, one pub, a shop, and a long stretch of houses that used to face the road and now face each other. As far back as 1837 it was recorded as eleven houses and sixty-odd souls in the parish of Kilbride-Pilate, so it has never been a big place. The interesting thing is the river. In the 1920s, decades before the ESB strung wires across rural Ireland, the people of Milltownpass put a turbine on the Milltown River, raised £700 between them, and lit their own houses. The mill the village is named for did the work. That is most of what there is to say, and on a back-road tour of south Westmeath, it is enough.

Population

Under 300

Pubs

1and counting

Walk score

A long single street, end to end in five minutes

Founded

A milling settlement on the Milltown River; recorded in 1837 as 11 houses in the parish of Kilbride-Pilate

Coords

53.4422° N, 7.2436° W

01 / 07

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 old road

The Dublin-Galway road, and then it was not.

The street is long because the road was busy. Coaches changed horses, lorries queued, and the N6 ran the length of it. The 2006 bypass took the traffic and the village got its own front door back.

Stories & lore → 02 The mill

Lit by its own river, decades before the ESB.

In the 1920s the village clubbed together for £700, put a turbine on the Milltown River, and wired the houses themselves. It is in the name - Bealach Bhaile an Mhuilinn, the way of the town of the mill - and the river kept up its end.

Stories & lore →

02 / 07

The pubs.

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

Grennan's

The one pub, and the social hub

Village pub on the main street

Milltownpass has one pub, and this is it - Grennan's, on the main street, run by the Grennan family who also keep the village shop. A reliable spot for a pint and a plate, with occasional live music. It is the meeting room, the match post-mortem and the funeral gathering for the parish all in one. Do not arrive expecting a row of bars; there is this, and this does the job.

03 / 07

Stories & lore.

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

A village that wired itself in the 1920s

Lit by its own river

Long before the Electricity Supply Board's Rural Electrification Scheme reached most of the Irish countryside from 1946 onward, Milltownpass had its own lights. In the 1920s the residents formed a company, raised £700 between them, installed a turbine on the Milltown River at the local mill, and wired the houses under a resident engineer. The village name - Bealach Bhaile an Mhuilinn, the way of the town of the mill - explains itself in a sentence. The mill kept the lights on here for decades before the national grid arrived. It is the kind of self-reliance the midlands rarely gets credit for.

A village shaped by one road

The old N6

Milltownpass sits on what was, until 2006, the main Dublin to Galway road - the N6, single carriageway, running the length of the village street. It is why the place is the shape it is: houses long-strung along one road because that road was where the work was. The dual carriageway from Kinnegad to Tyrrellspass opened in 2006, bypassing the village, and the old route here was reclassified as the R446 - quiet enough now to walk along, which it was not before.

A GAA club since 1977

The Whittakers

Milltownpass GAA was founded in 1977, plays in black and white, and is known locally as the Whittakers. It fields both men's and women's teams in the Westmeath county leagues and lives, by its own admission, in the shadow of its bigger neighbour St Mary's in Rochfortbridge. For a village of this size, fielding a team at all is the achievement. If the road through the village is busy on a Sunday, a match is the likely reason.

04 / 07

Things to do outside.

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

The village street There is no marked trail, but the long single street is the walk. End to end in five minutes, slower if you stop to read the place. The old N6 is now quiet enough to stroll down the middle of, which was not true before 2006. Look for where the mill pond once dominated the south side of the road.

1 km returndistance

20 minutestime

Milltownpass Bog The raised bog lies just outside the village. It is working cutaway bog rather than a waymarked amenity - boots, common sense, and respect for turbary rights. Good for big midland skies, curlew if you are lucky, and the particular quiet of a Westmeath bog. Not a destination; a detour for those who like flat wild ground.

Variesdistance

1 hour+time

05 / 07

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

Long bright evenings on the way and the quiet village street at its best. A fine base for a back-road tour of south Westmeath when the through-traffic is light.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

The motorway nearby makes day-trips to Belvedere, Kilbeggan and Athlone painless. GAA season is in full swing, so the village fills around match times.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

Good light over the bog and the fields around the Milltown River. School back in, the road busy at the school run, otherwise quiet.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

A small village in a flat midland landscape. Short days, dark evenings, not much on beyond the pub. If you are passing through it works; as a destination in winter, it does not.

◐ Mind yourself

06 / 07

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

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

Treating it as a sightseeing stop on its own

There is no castle, no museum, no stately home in the village. The story here is the electricity scheme and the shape of the old road. Use Milltownpass as a quiet base for Belvedere House, Kilbeggan Distillery and Tyrrellspass green and it earns its keep; on its own it is a five-minute street.

Expecting a choice of pubs

There is one pub - Grennan's - and one shop. This is a village of under three hundred people. Set your expectations to that and the single bar is a perfectly good evening; arrive looking for a pub crawl and you will be disappointed by lunchtime.

The motorway instead of the village

If you have come off the M6 for a break, the village is a couple of minutes off the old road. It is genuinely quiet now the traffic has gone, which is the whole point of stopping.

Getting there.

By car

On the R446 (the old N6) between Rochfortbridge and Tyrrellspass - five minutes either way. The M6 motorway and the Kinnegad-Tyrrellspass dual carriageway run north of the village; come off near Rochfortbridge and you are here in a few minutes. Dublin is around 70 km / 1 hour. Mullingar is 10 km north-west. Athlone is around 40 km west.

By bus

Limited. Long-distance coaches use the M6 and skip the village. Local services and Citylink routes call at nearby Rochfortbridge rather than here - check the timetable before you depend on it.

By train

No station. Mullingar (around 10 km north-west) is the nearest, on the Dublin-Sligo line.

By air

Dublin Airport is around 90 minutes by car via the M6/M50.