A word before a place
For a lot of people, Ballycumber is a word before it’s a village. In Douglas Adams and John Lloyd’s comic dictionary The Meaning of Liff, which hands spare Irish and British place-names invented definitions, Ballycumber is ‘one of the six half-read books lying somewhere in your bed’. The joke stuck: the book-swapping site BookCrossing took a running yellow book as its mascot and named it Ballycumber. The real place is quieter than that suggests – a scatter of houses where the R436 crosses the River Brosna, 208 people at the last census, ten minutes off the M6 between Dublin and Galway.
The reason to stop: St Manchán’s Shrine
A short way out at Boher, the parish church – opened in 1861 and named for St Manchán – holds the thing worth the trip. The Shrine of St Manchán is a 12th-century, house-shaped reliquary, gilt-bronze over wood and worked in fine filigree, with cast figures fixed across its faces (several now missing). It was built to be carried, with loops at the corners for poles, and it is among the best medieval metalwork left in Ireland. Above it, five windows from the Harry Clarke studio (1930) include one showing Manchán with his cow.
One catch: this is a working country church, not a museum, and a national treasure happens to live in it. It isn’t always open to callers. Sunday Mass is at 10.30am; outside that, check the parish times or ring ahead rather than turning up on spec.
The Pilgrim’s Path
Ballycumber is the start of the Pilgrim’s Path, an old east–west way that runs roughly 25 km along the Esker Riada – the gravel ridge the ice left behind – to the monastic city at Clonmacnoise. It’s clearly waymarked and within most people’s reach, though the boggy stretches go soft after rain. For an easier outing, the towpath along the Brosna is flat and quiet and links into the wider greenway network; coarse anglers work the same banks.
History around the village
There’s more history here than the size suggests: a stone bridge over the Brosna, the early monastic site at Lemanaghan a little way off, and a scatter of old castles. Moorock House, near the village, has the grim distinction of being the first of Offaly’s ‘Big Houses’ burned in the upheavals of 1919–23.
Community and connections
Sport holds the place together. The GAA pitch sits a couple of miles out; the hurling club, Brosna Gaels, draws from Ballycumber, Doon and Pullough and has held senior status since 2009, while Ballycumber Rovers have county cup wins to their name. The village lent its name once more, to the stage, when Sebastian Barry’s play Tales of Ballycumber opened at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre in 2009.
Getting there and staying
- Road: the R436 runs through the village; the M6 at Clara or Moate is about ten minutes away.
- Bus: Bus Éireann runs roughly hourly from Moate and Tullamore, with connections on to Galway, Dublin, Waterford and Belfast.
- Train: the nearest station is Clara, on the Dublin–Galway line, about every two hours; Ballycumber’s own station closed in 1963.
For a base, Ballycumber House offers self-catering rooms in wooded grounds with open fires and access to the river, and Sloepark is a self-contained unit about ten minutes’ walk from the village, with its own entrance and parking. Eating options in the village are thin – Clara or Tullamore have the pubs and cafés.
Nearby
- Birr Castle & Gardens – about 15 minutes north, with the great Leviathan telescope and its gardens. See Birr Castle.
- Lough Boora Discovery Park – roughly 20 minutes east, cutaway bog turned into trails and a sculpture park. See Lough Boora.
Time your visit for Sunday morning Mass if you want a real chance of finding Boher church open – the shrine inside is the one thing here you shouldn’t miss.