Qualla: Ardclough

Ardclough: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit William Murphy, CC BY-SA 2.0. Arthur Guinness, the founder of the famous brewery, is buried in Oughterard cemetery just outside the village. The graveyard sits on a low hill that was the inauguration site for ten kings of Leinster of the Ui Dunchada dynasty, and the seventh-century monastery that once crowned the hill was associated with two female Irish saints, Briga and Derchairthinn. Ardclough is the kind of small Kildare village where you keep finding much bigger histories tucked into the hedgerows. Tradition holds that Guinness's mother returned to the Read family homestead at Bishopscourt to give birth - a custom of the time - which would make Ardclough his birthplace as well as his burial place.

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Image: William Murphy | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ardclough: The Brewer's Country

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sheila1988, CC BY-SA 4.0. Ardclough is officially Ardclogh, in the parish of Kill in County Kildare, two miles off the N7 national primary road. The River Liffey passes within a kilometre. The village lies below two detached foothills of the Wicklow Mountains - Lyons Hill and Oughterard - on some of the m...

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Image: Sheila1988 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ardclough: Granite for Nelson's Pillar

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DiggingSpace, CC BY-SA 4.0. When the Grand Canal began construction in 1756, Ardclough was one of the first sections to be dug. The canal reached the village in 1763 with the opening of the 13th lock - a 137-foot double lock built with Pozzolana mortar to the ambitious design of the canal's original enginee...

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Image: DiggingSpace | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ardclough: The Fog of October 1853

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sheila1988, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 5 October 1853, a heavy fog hung over the Great Southern and Western Railway line near Straffan station. A goods train ran into the back of a stalled passenger train at a point 974 yards south of the station. The collision was so violent that the goods train smashed through th...

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Image: Sheila1988 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ardclough: Boyzone, Ryanair, and the Civil War

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Linsdell from St. Andrews, Canada, CC BY 2.0. Ronan Keating - the lead singer of Boyzone - grew up in Ardclough. So did Charlie McCreevy, who served as Ireland's Minister for Finance from 1997 to 2004 and then as European Commissioner for the Internal Market until 2010; he was raised in the lock house at the 14th lock and pl...

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Image: Robert Linsdell from St. Andrews, Canada | CC BY 2.0