Qualla: Ballymaglancy Cave

Ballymaglancy Cave: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Three kilometres west of the village of Cong, just across the county border into Galway, there is a cave entrance two metres high and three metres wide. A stream emerges from it. The stream has begun its journey under the village of Cong, flowed through a network of named caves called Pollpuisin, Pigeon Hole, Wolves' Hole, and pseudo-Priests' Hole, and resurfaces here. In winter, lesser horseshoe bats hang from the cave's ceiling in clusters too small for casual observation but large enough that the Irish state has designated 9.3 hectares around the entrance a Special Area of Conservation. The cave's full name is Uaimh Bhaile Mhic Fhlannchaidh, which translates approximately as the cave of the townland of the Mic Fhlannchaidh family. In English, the surname becomes Clancy or Glancy. The cave kept the older form.

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Ballymaglancy Cave: A Bat the Size of a Thumb

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The lesser horseshoe bat, Rhinolophus hipposideros, is the only member of its family found in Ireland. It is small, weighing roughly five to nine grams, with a body about the size of a human thumb. The most recent Irish population estimate places it at 12,870 individuals, scatter...

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Ballymaglancy Cave: Wet Ear and Mud Chamber

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In addition to the main cave, the Ballymaglancy Resurgence cave has been mapped: 417 metres in length, five metres in height, with about 50 metres unsurveyed as of 2015. The entrance lies in Galway, but most of the cave system extends underneath County Mayo, which has the strange...

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Ballymaglancy Cave: A Minimum of Fifty

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Conservation targets for the site set a minimum of 50 bats to be maintained or improved at Ballymaglancy. The current qualified mean of 28 bats, calculated from winter counts between 2013 and 2017, falls short of that target. Bat Conservation Ireland, the National Parks and Wildl...

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Ballymaglancy Cave: The Caves of Cong in Music

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The cave complexes around Cong, of which Ballymaglancy is one, were preserved in nineteenth-century Irish traditional music as well as in stone. The Irish air called The Caves of Cong, also known as Bean an Fhir Ruadh or The Red Haired Man's Wife, appears in the Collection of Iri...

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