Walter Bagenal set out to build Versailles in County Carlow. In the 18th century he laid out a planned town on the River Barrow, called it New Versailles, and had got as far as a courthouse when the Dublin coach road was rerouted to cross the river at Leighlinbridge instead, taking the through-traffic with it. He gave up. The courthouse, modelled (depending who you ask) on the Parthenon, is now the public library, and the grand avenues never came.
What grew up instead is a workaday milling and railway town, officially Muine Bheag, ‘small thicket’, with a population just under 3,000. It isn’t a place most people set out for, but three things make it worth turning off the M9: the railway station, the Barrow towpath, and a handful of medieval ruins in the surrounding fields. If you stop for only one, make it Ballymoon Castle.
Ballymoon Castle and the other ruins
Ballymoon, 3.5 km east of the town off the R724, is a strange and satisfying 14th-century ruin: a near-square courtyard about 80 feet across, walled in granite 8 feet thick and 20 feet high, with a small bridge over the old ditch giving access to the outer yard. It’s free, open and rarely busy.
The rest are a short drive apart:
- Ballyloughan Castle – a 14th-century ruin with a twin-towered gatehouse and a moat, held in turn by the Kavanaghs, the Bagenals and then the Bruen family. It stands on private land but is clearly seen from the gate on the approach road.
- Dunleckney Manor – the Bagenals’ 17th-century home, still a private residence, but the restored gardens are walkable and worth it for an avenue of old lime trees and an elaborate staircase salvaged from St Canice’s Cathedral in Kilkenny.
- Wells Church – a ruin dating to 1262, in a graveyard that is still in use.
The station, and a fence found nowhere else
The railway arrived in 1848 and made the town. The station, designed by William Deane Butler in limestone and granite to an Italianate plan, is reckoned one of the finest in Ireland and survives largely as built, still in use on the Dublin–Waterford line. While you’re near the tracks, look for the Carlow fence by the railway bridge on the R705 Borris road: granite slabs laid horizontally across upright posts, a local style said to exist nowhere else in the world.
The best view of the town is from the Leighlinbridge approach road, where the spire of St Andrew’s Catholic Church and the tower of St Mary’s Church of Ireland line up over the rooftops.
The Barrow and the swimming pool
Stage 4 of the Barrow Way is a flat 16 km of towpath from Carlow to Bagenalstown, past lock houses and old mill sites, easy for cycling or a family walk. The river holds coarse fish, and there are prepared, wheelchair-friendly fishing stands near the swimming pool.
That pool is the town’s summer fixture: a 25-metre outdoor pool and a paddling pool for small children, geothermally heated, open daily from June to September, €5 in. One honest caveat – the hours are awkward. It runs in separate sessions through the day rather than one continuous block, and the timetable shifts, so check before you turn up with towels and expectations. There’s no boat hire in Bagenalstown either; for that, head up to Leighlinbridge.
The name, and the signs
The town can’t quite agree what it’s called. Officially Muine Bheag since the Free State renamed it, it has stayed Bagenalstown to many locals; a 1975 plebiscite found 77% wanting the English name restored, defeated only by a low turnout. In 1911 it became the first town in Ireland to put up bilingual street signs, which are still there. The 1999 coat of arms keeps both identities: blackthorn for the Irish name, gold for the Bagenals, a wavy band for the Barrow, under the motto Uimhir Gan Choisc, ‘the irrepressible number’ – a nod to nine, whose multiples always reduce to nine, and to the town commission’s nine members.
People were here long before any of that. Saint Lappan is said to have founded an 8th-century monastic school at nearby Donore, and in 1982 a Bronze Age cist burial turned up a mile north of town when a farmer was digging for a silo.
Getting there
Muine Bheag station is on the Dublin–Waterford line, roughly 75 to 90 minutes from Dublin Heuston. By road the town sits where the R705, R724 and R448 meet, off the M9. Within a short drive are Ballyellen Upper Lock, Aghade Bridge and the Georgian village of Borris with its tall railway viaduct.
If you’re cycling the towpath in summer, aim to finish at the pool for an evening dip – but ring ahead first, because the session times change from week to week.