Overview
Most Irish villages straggle along a single road. Churchtown doesn’t. After the Whiteboys burned the old thatched settlement in January 1822, the Earl of Egmont’s agent, Sir Edward Tierney, had it rebuilt as a grid of streets around a central square – a planned layout that still gives this north Cork village a faintly English look you won’t find in the farmland around it. It’s a few kilometres north-west of Buttevant in County Cork. The Irish name is Brugh Thuinne, ‘royal house of the pasture lands’ (it also turns up as Baile an Teampaill).
The rebuild, and the people it produced
Tierney’s reconstruction ran from 1822 to 1849. He laid out George’s Street, Kerry Lane, Egmont Row and Lodge Road (now Burton Road) around the communal square, a model unusual for rural Ireland at the time. For a village that counted just 684 people in the 2022 census, Churchtown has an unlikely roll-call of natives: the Gaelic poet Seán Clárach Mac Domhnaill, Barry O’Meara – the surgeon who attended Napoleon in exile on St Helena – and the racehorse trainer Vincent O’Brien. All three are named on the ‘Jockey on Horse’ statue in the square. A village school was first endowed here in 1702; the current national school, Scoil Bhrugh Thuinne, dates from 1948.
What to see
The square and Market House
The red-brick Market House on Kerry Lane was finished in 1845, built by Tierney to collect the Earl of Egmont’s rents; it now houses the Windmill Nursing Home Group. The square around it, ringed with period cottages and overlooked by the Catholic parish church of St Nicholas, is still where the village gathers.
Bruhenny graveyard
If you only have a few minutes, spend them here. Bruhenny graveyard appears as far back as 1291 in the Pipe Roll of Cloyne; the ruined pre-Reformation church at its centre – roughly 60 feet by 30 – was officially closed in 1710. Among its 18th- and 19th-century headstones, table tombs and vaults is the grave of the actor Oliver Reed, who spent his last years in the parish and was buried here on 15 May 1999.
Pound Corner
At Pound Corner a slab of locally quarried red Churchtown marble sits beside a bronze plaque. The ‘pound’ once held the livestock of tenants who fell behind on their rent – a small, hard piece of estate history set into the streetscape.
Burton Park
Just outside the village, Burton Park was built in 1676, burned in 1690 by Jacobite forces after the Boyne, then rebuilt; the Purcell family bought it in 1889 and remodelled it in the 1890s. It’s now the home of Slí Eile, a mental-health charity that works the estate. The grounds open to the public on selected dates through the year – times and any charge vary, so check before you make the trip out.
Practical information
- Getting there: Churchtown is 4 km west of the N20, roughly halfway between Cork and Limerick; the R522 from Buttevant is the direct route. Public transport is thin, so you’ll want a car.
- Parking: you can usually park near the Market House or by the GAA pitch on Kerry Lane. Pairc Bhrugh Thuinne has two pitches across ten acres and is home to the Gaels club, busy on football and hurling days.
- Staying over: Boss Murphy House has rooms in a building of the 1830s, refurbished in 1999.
- Heritage archive: the Bruhenny/Churchtown Heritage Society keeps a deep online archive with free downloads, including The Annals of Churchtown; historical queries go to heritage@bruhenny.com.
Nearby
From the late 1940s until the 1970s, a week-long carnival run by Muintir na Tíre was the high point of the village year; the heritage society’s archive is the best way to meet that older Churchtown. Pair a visit with Buttevant next door or the wider Ballyhoura country to the north-west, rolling walking ground of quiet lanes and low hills. Treat Churchtown as a detour off the N20 rather than a day out – a short stop with a good story, best taken with somewhere else.