Qualla: Boyle

Boyle: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oliver Dixon, CC BY-SA 2.0. Boyle sits in a soft bowl of country between two lakes, at the foot of the low blue-grey wall of the Curlew Mountains. The Boyle River runs through the middle of the town, under the five-arched span of Abbeytown Bridge - one of the oldest surviving stone bridges in Ireland, late twelfth century, still carrying a five-ton load eight centuries after the Cistercians laid it. Boyle is a small place, population just under three thousand, but it has the architectural density of somewhere much larger. There is a great ruined Cistercian abbey at one end of Main Street and a great Georgian mansion at the other; in 1881 the town directory recorded twenty-five pubs, sixteen of which doubled as groceries, and forty grocery shops, and twelve bakeries. It also produced an actress who would become Tarzan's Jane, and a redheaded comedian who would become a film star.

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Image: Oliver Dixon | CC BY-SA 2.0

Boyle: The Cistercians and the Sheela

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit jbraine, CC BY 2.0. Boyle Abbey was founded in the twelfth century under the patronage of the local ruling family - the MacDermotts, kings of Moylurg, whose castle on a rock in Lough Key is just up the road. Monks were colonised here from Mellifont in 1161 and they began building almost at once. The...

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Image: jbraine | CC BY 2.0

Boyle: King House and the Family with 365 Windows

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ivanrlynn at English Wikipedia, Public domain. At the other end of Main Street stands King House, an early Georgian mansion built between 1720 and 1740 for Sir Henry King MP - whose family, the Earls of Kingston, were among the wealthiest in Ireland. The architect was William Halfpenny, an assistant to Edward Lovett Pearce. U...

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Image: Ivanrlynn at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Boyle: The Town That Voted for the Rising

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sarah777 at English Wikipedia, Public domain. In 1917 Boyle made a small piece of national history. The North Roscommon by-election - the first by-election in Ireland since the Easter Rising of 1916 - was won by Count George Noble Plunkett standing for Sinn Fein, the first Sinn Fein candidate ever elected to Parliament. Plun...

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Image: Sarah777 at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Boyle: Tarzan's Jane and Moone Boy

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oliver Dixon, CC BY-SA 2.0. Boyle has been quietly generous with talent. Maureen O'Sullivan was born here in 1911 - she became Hollywood's most famous Jane opposite Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan in six films through the 1930s and 40s, and was later mother to Mia Farrow. The conductor Michael Bowles grew up he...

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Image: Oliver Dixon | CC BY-SA 2.0