The Neolithic house
The remarkable thing about Ballyglass is invisible now. In 1970, excavating a Neolithic court cairn, archaeologists found beneath it the footprint of a rectangular timber house dating to around 3000 BCE, complete with pottery, flint arrowheads and chert scrapers – one of only a handful of Neolithic dwellings known anywhere in Ireland or Britain.
Be warned: it’s a site for the imagination, not the camera. The house was recorded and the ground long since returned to farmland, so there’s little to see on the spot. What you’re really visiting is a fact, not a monument – but it’s a startling one for a quiet village most people drive past.
The wider landscape backs it up: Bronze Age burial mounds (the site at Curlisduane was dug in the 1930s), ringforts, and fulachta fiadh, the ancient cooking pits. Three natural turloughs – seasonal lakes that fill in winter and drain by summer – dot the land around, the main one at Carrowhall drawing swans and other wildfowl in the cold months.
The village
Ballyglass (An Baile Glas, ‘the green village’) lives up to its name on a fertile strip between the parishes of Mayo Abbey and Carnacon, roughly 10 miles (16km) from Castlebar and much the same from Claremorris and Ballinrobe. For its size it’s well served: a post office, shop and petrol station, two pubs, a primary school, a creche and a community centre. Farming is still the mainstay.
The community centre took over the old national school after it closed in 1986, and now runs everything from keep-fit and cards to a writers’ club and an over-55s group, with a free tennis court out the back. The Heritage Club, founded in 2007, drives the calendar. Come on the June bank holiday Sunday for the Vintage Show – classic tractors, old machinery and local crafts – or in August for the Tractor Road Run.
Football and old sports
Sport carries real weight here. Ballyglass FC has won the Mayo Association Football League three times, in 1990–91, 1996 and 1997, and plays on a ground with a floodlit training pitch, an astro-turf field and a clubhouse. A plaque unveiled in 2009 remembers founding member Michael Keaveney.
The village also has a long habit of open sports going back to the 1940s, first held on the seasonal turlough, later moved to a bigger field. They ran until the mid-1990s and were revived in 2010.
Old buildings and local lore
Ballyglass’s buildings map its history as a stopping place. In the 19th century it was a stage on the Bianconi coach routes that ran before the railways. The Old Ground pub began life as a warehouse. And the former Garda barracks was built, optimistically, as a hotel to serve a Claremorris–Westport railway station that never came; when the line went elsewhere it became a police station instead, closing in 2013 and selling at auction in 2021. The old courthouse site is now Murphy’s Guest House.
Local memory holds that the village fair once moved to nearby Donamona after a fatal dispute – a reminder that historic Irish market days could be rougher than the word ‘fair’ suggests.
Nearby
- Moore Hall – The gaunt ruins of an 18th-century house on the shore of Lough Carra, home of the Moore family (including the writer George Moore) until it was burned in the Civil War in 1923; now a forest park for woodland walks and birdwatching. (Carnacon)
- Lough Carra – A clear marl lake, pale green in the right light, with wild brown trout and plenty of birdlife.
- Mayo Abbey – About 6km east, with the ruins of a 7th-century monastery founded by Saint Colman and a short heritage trail.
Practical notes
You’ll need a car. Ballyglass is reached by the N60 and regional roads linking Castlebar, Claremorris and Ballinrobe; the nearest train station is Castlebar (about 16km) and Ireland West Airport Knock roughly 45km away. Bus Éireann services between Castlebar and Claremorris are limited, so check timetables before relying on them. There’s free parking at the community centre, the football grounds and the shop.
If you want the village at its liveliest, aim for that June bank holiday Sunday and the Vintage Show. The rest of the year it’s a quiet farming parish with a good pub and a very old story under the fields.