Overview
The best reason to turn off for Newtowncashel is a workshop near Barley Harbour where a father and son, Michael and Kevin Casey, carve sculptures out of bog oak and yew that spent 5,000 years buried in the Longford bogs. The wood comes out of the ground black and hard, and Casey’s Bogwood Sculptures works it into figures, bowls and furniture. The studio and gift shop are open Monday to Saturday, 9am to 6pm, and by appointment.
The village itself is small and well kept. Newtowncashel won the national Tidy Towns competition in 1980, the first place in Longford to do so, and it has stayed tidy since. It sits on the north-eastern shore of Lough Ree, on a spur of farmland the locals call an island parish because bog cuts it off to the north and east. The older Irish name, Cor na Dumhca, means the ‘round hill of the cauldron’.
The lake and the ruins
Barley Harbour is the parish’s one public gap onto Lough Ree – a cut-stone harbour with a slipway, benches and grass for a picnic, used for swimming and small boats, with anglers launching from the slip after the lake’s brown trout, pike and perch. Elfeet Castle, a 15th-century tower-house ruin, stands on the shore nearby; its odd footnote is that George Calvert, who held a tower house here, went on to found the Maryland colony in America. Up on Cashel Hill are the ruins of the old parish church of St Catherine’s, the lake spread out below. The village’s own church dates from 1833.
The islands
Two of Lough Ree’s monastic islands belong to this parish. Inchcleraun – also called Inis Clothrann or Quaker Island – is where St Diarmuid is said to have founded an abbey around 540 AD; its ruins include a cluster of small churches, among them the square-towered Clogás, Teampall Diarmada, and Teampall Mór with its lancet windows. Saints’ Island, joined to the mainland by a natural causeway, holds the remains of a monastery linked to St Kevin.
One thing to sort before you plan: the Lough Ree island boat trips do not leave from Barley Harbour. The Access for All boat runs from Ballyleague, beside Lanesborough at the north end of the lake, three times a day – a 90-minute trip built to take wheelchair users as well.
Walks
Three woodlands and commons give easy walking close to the village. Culnagore Wood covers 90 acres along the lakeshore; Carrowmore Wood, pine and spruce, sits on the highest hill in the parish; and Cashel Commons, 200 acres of open ground, has gentle routes and long views over Lough Ree. If the weather turns, the Newtowncashel (or Cashel) Heritage Centre in the village traces rural life in the area.
Practical information
Getting there – The village is signposted off the minor roads along the Longford shore of Lough Ree, south of Lanesborough. Lanesborough, a short drive north, has the nearest shops and the island boat trips; Longford town and Athlone are both within about half an hour by car for a Shannon-corridor day.
Parking and facilities – There is free parking in the village and at Barley Harbour. The village has a shop, a post office and a community hall, and a couple of pubs for an evening pint.
Nearby – For more of Longford’s heritage, the Corlea Trackway Visitor Centre preserves an Iron Age bog road a short drive away, and Edgeworthstown carries the literary legacy of Maria Edgeworth.