Qualla: Kinvara https://qualla.com/kinvara en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:11 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/3/w/kinvara-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Kinvara https://qualla.com/kinvara Kinvara: Introduction https://qualla.com/kinvara/ Photo credit MaxPride, CC BY-SA 3.0. Cinn Mhara, the Irish name, means the head of the sea. The English Kinvara - or Kinvarra - is the same idea, anglicised. The village sits at the head of a shallow inlet at the south-eastern corner of Galway Bay, the kind of place where the tide goes a long way out and comes back unhurried. Dunguaire Castle stands on the rocks at the eastern edge of the village, a sixteenth-century tower house of the O'Hynes that has somehow refused to fall. John Prine, the American singer-songwriter, kept a house here. So did poets and judges and saints, in their turn.

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Image: MaxPride | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/3/w/kinvara-wp/gc3w-kinvara-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Kinvara: Castle of Guaire https://qualla.com/kinvara/ Photo credit Martin P. Whyte, CC BY-SA 4.0. Dunguaire - the Castle of Guaire - is named after a seventh-century king of Connacht famous for hospitality so reckless his courtiers worried for the kingdom's finances. The tower itself dates from around 1520, built by the Ó hEidhin (O'Hynes) clan. A 1574 list of Galway castles,...

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Image: Martin P. Whyte | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/3/w/kinvara-wp/gc3w-kinvara-castle-of-guaire.mp3 0:06 2 full Kinvara: Chasm of the Heads https://qualla.com/kinvara/ Photo credit John A. Taylor, CC BY-SA 3.0. Outside the village a Mass rock survives - the Poulnegan Altar, known in Connaught Irish as Poll na gCeann, the chasm of the heads. The story attached to it is one of the small horrors of the Cromwellian conquest. According to local tradition, there was a college nearby where stu...

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Image: John A. Taylor | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/3/w/kinvara-wp/gc3w-kinvara-chasm-of-the-heads.mp3 0:06 3 full Kinvara: Famine Port https://qualla.com/kinvara/ Photo credit User:O'Dea, CC BY-SA 4.0. Before the Great Famine, Kinvara was a thriving port - corn shipped out, seaweed harvested from the bay, hookers and pucans plying back and forth to the Aran Islands and the Clare coast. The Famine of the 1840s broke that economy as it broke so many others, and the steady emigrat...

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Image: User:O'Dea | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/3/w/kinvara-wp/gc3w-kinvara-famine-port.mp3 0:06 4 full Kinvara: Cuckoos and Boats https://qualla.com/kinvara/ Photo credit michael clarke stuff, CC BY-SA 2.0. Two festivals shape the Kinvara year. Fleadh na gCuach - the Cuckoo Festival - is an Irish traditional music gathering in early May, when the cuckoo first calls and the musicians arrive to fill the village pubs. In mid-August comes Cruinniu na mBad, the Gathering of the Boats, wh...

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Image: michael clarke stuff | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/3/w/kinvara-wp/gc3w-kinvara-cuckoos-and-boats.mp3 0:06 5 full Kinvara: Songwriters and Saints https://qualla.com/kinvara/ Photo credit Markbriggs, CC BY-SA 3.0. Francis Fahy, the songwriter who wrote 'Galway Bay,' was a son of Kinvara - not the more famous Bing Crosby version from 1947 but the older, gentler song that came before it. Ailbhe of Ceann Mhara, a ninth-century cleric, and Coman of Kinvara, an early medieval saint, gave the vi...

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Image: Markbriggs | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/3/w/kinvara-wp/gc3w-kinvara-songwriters-and-saints.mp3 0:06 6 full