The high crosses
The oldest and most surprising things in Ballymore Eustace stand in the graveyard of St John’s Church: two granite high crosses that predate the Normans, among a dozen or so medieval grave slabs. The taller, the north cross, rises 3.4 metres in three pieces – head, shaft and pyramidal base – and was knocked down and re-erected in 1689 by a local man, Ambrose Walls. The south cross is smaller, about two metres, cut from a single block of granite and now mostly broken away. Both are probably 10th or 11th century, and both are free to visit at any hour. If you stop for one thing, stop for these.
The town itself (Irish: An Baile Mór, ‘the big town’, in full Baile Mór na nIústasach) sits on the River Liffey where the R411 meets the R413, with a stone bridge carrying the road over the river and a population of 689 at the 2022 census. It keeps a village pace.
Border history
Ballymore was a manor and castle of the Archbishops of Dublin in the 12th century. Henry III granted it an eight-day fair in 1244; Thomas FitzOliver FitzEustace was made constable in 1373, and it’s his family that gave the town its second name. A parliament even sat here in 1389. No trace of the castle survives.
Its position on the edge of the Pale made it a target: the O’Tooles and O’Byrnes raided down from the Wicklow hills, and on 23 May 1798 United Irish rebels attacked the British garrison here in one of the rebellion’s opening clashes – but the garrison held and drove them off.
The mills
Milling at Ballymore goes back to the 12th century. On the manor lands at Ardenode stood the earliest tuck mill – a fulling mill for finishing cloth – in Ireland that has been definitively dated, to 1276–7. By the 19th century the Gallagher family’s cotton mill dominated the town; at its peak around 1815 it worked roughly 700 people across 150 machines. Its stone ruins still stand by the river at a spot known locally as the ‘pike hole’.
Down the hill from the Catholic church runs Weaver’s Row, a terrace of single-storey workers’ cottages, now a protected structure and a plain reminder of the mill town this once was.
Arts, writers and film
The Ballymore Eustace Art Studio, run by artist Fiona Barrett at Lime Kiln House amid fields and resident hens, offers painting and mixed-media workshops for all ages, and paint parties, booked by appointment on-site or online.
The writer Seumas O’Kelly (1881–1918) drew on this landscape of canals and mill communities; his short story The Weaver’s Grave was illustrated by Jack B. Yeats. Filmmakers have used the countryside too, with the town and its surroundings appearing in Shake Hands With the Devil (1959), Braveheart (1995) and King Arthur (2003) – for which a one-kilometre mock-up of Hadrian’s Wall was built in a nearby field.
Walking, cycling and the lakes
Ballymore Eustace sits at the gateway to the Blessington Lakes (Poulaphouca Reservoir) and the Bog of Allen. The reservoir was created in the 1940s when the ESB dammed the Liffey at Poulaphouca for hydro-electric power and Dublin’s water supply; today it offers boat hire, permit trout fishing, a visitor centre (check seasonal hours) and lakeside trails for walking and cycling.
Closer in, a flat paved path follows the Liffey from the bridge past the cotton-mill ruins and the pike hole, running about three kilometres towards Golden Falls – easy going for families and wheelchairs. To the south, marked trails cross the Bog of Allen through the peatlands. Cyclists are well placed here: TFI Local Link route 885 links Baltinglass to Sallins station via Ballymore, Blessington and Naas, and there’s a self-service bike-repair stand at Fogarty’s shop on the R411.
A local footnote
In April 2014 a farmer, Paddy Murphy, found a healthy ‘geep’ – a sheep-goat hybrid – on his land near the town. Such crosses are usually stillborn; this one thrived and drew international news coverage, an odd footnote to an otherwise agricultural place.
Where to eat and practical notes
The reason many people actually detour here is the Ballymore Inn, a long-running gastropub (opened 1995) that has won a shelf of awards for its food; it has a large car park and free on-street parking nearby, and closes on Christmas Day. For everything else, the town square and the ground near the GAA club offer free parking, with public toilets at the GAA grounds on match days.
Getting there – Dublin Bus route 65 runs several times a day to Dublin city centre (Poolbeg Street), about 1 hour 30 minutes – four times on weekdays, more at weekends. TFI Local Link 885 connects to Sallins station and trains to Dublin Heuston.
Opening – The high crosses, mill ruins and Weaver’s Row are open-air and free at any time; the art studio is by appointment only.
Further afield
A short drive opens up a lot. Russborough House, with the Beit collection (works by Goya and Vermeer), is nearby, as are the Palladian grandeur of Castletown House in Celbridge and the hilltop ruins at Carbury. Make Ballymore Eustace a slow day: lunch at the Ballymore Inn, ten minutes at St John’s crosses, and a riverside walk – that’s the town at its best.