The two pubs
Paddy’s Bar has been pouring pints in Terryglass for close to two hundred years, and along with Larkins up the street it is the main reason the village keeps its name up. Both serve local food, both fill when there is music, and between them they hold together a Lough Derg village that is otherwise very quiet.
Terryglass (Irish: Tír Dhá Ghlas, ‘land of the two streams’) sits on the north-eastern shore of Lough Derg, near where the Shannon enters the lake, on the R493. It has taken the national Tidy Towns title twice, in 1983 and 1997, and was named Tipperary’s tidiest village in 2019, so expect clipped verges and painted shopfronts.
The monastery and the Book of Leinster
St Columba of Terryglass founded a monastery on the lakeshore in 549, and it grew into a serious centre of learning. Its most famous product came six centuries later: around 1160 the scribe Áed Ua Crimthainn compiled the Book of Leinster here, one of the great medieval Irish manuscripts, now kept at Trinity College Dublin. The Vikings raided in 843, and the abbey burned more than once down the years, including in 1164.
Don’t come expecting a grand ruin. What survives is a single fragment of the abbey wall behind the old church, along with a weathered bullaun stone and a Penal-era mass rock. Terryglass Castle, a fortified house near the shore that is now a National Monument, is not open to the public.
The holy wells
Two holy wells are still tended. St Columba’s Headache Well is visited for headaches and migraines; St Augh’s Eye Well, near the quay, is for eye ailments and draws people on Saturdays in May. Both are free to reach and quiet – treat them as the working devotional places they still are, and leave them as you found them.
On the water and on two wheels
The harbour has slipways and modern facilities, and it is a launching point for boating, kayaking and stand-up paddleboarding on the lake. The Lough Derg Blueway threads 21 marked paddling routes across three counties from here. On land, the North Tipperary Cycle Route runs 65 km from Nenagh through the village – a comfortable half-day on gentle gradients, and the best way to see the back roads. Cross the Shannon bridge and Portumna Forest Park adds a marked loop through oak woodland on the Galway side.
Garrykennedy sits a little way down the same shore, another small harbour village with a castle ruin, if you want to string two stops together.
Getting there
Terryglass is 12 km north of Nenagh on the R493, and you will need a car: there is no bus into the village. Bus Éireann’s route 323 between Nenagh and Limerick runs well to the south, through Birdhill, Ballina and Portroe, and does not come near. The nearest train station is Limerick Junction, about 45 km away. There is a small free car park by the harbour, with public toilets and a café close by.
Best plan: come on an evening when there is music in Paddy’s or Larkins. The wall and the wells take half an hour between them; the pubs take as long as you let them.