The history of Ballygar
The surrender of 1585, the vanished castle, Kelly's market of 1820, tickets and loans, the town of 1840. 6 moments, in order.
- 1585
Francis Shane of Ballygar
On 6 August the chieftains of Galway and Roscommon met Lord Deputy Perrot in Galway to surrender their lands and take them back at a penny an acre; Francis Shane, gent, of Ballygar, perhaps the owner of the castle, signed. The place was already a McDermott meeting point and trading centre.
- 1641 to 1704
The castle goes
The Earl of St Albans held Bealagara in 1641 and lost it; the castle, garrisoned in the rebellion of the 1640s, passed to Clanricarde and vanished early in the eighteenth century. In 1704 the Clanricardes leased Ballygar farm and 800 acres to Edward Donnellan for two lives at two shillings an acre.
- 1820
Denis Henry Kelly's market
The owner of 13,500 acres set up a toll market by the main entrance to Castle Kelly. Round it he built a wide main street, a market square, a diamond at his gate and two back streets, and leased the shops and houses himself.
- 1835 to 1841
Loans and tidiness
A Reproductive Loan Fund, run like a credit union, opened in 1835 with 1,000 pounds circulating by 1844. Only two pubs stood in the town in 1839. Kelly gave cleanliness tickets house by house each month; the winner dined at Castle Kelly with a prize of one pound ten. The 1841 census found 5,300 people on the estate.
- 1840
Second only to Athlone
Twenty years after its founding, the market was said to be the second in trade in the region and the town had 52 houses and 363 people.
- 2022
660 people
The census count for the village, 19 km from Roscommon town.
Where this comes from
Every paragraph above summarises a statement in Wikipedia, "Ballygar", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, as it read on 2026-09-19. Follow it for the footnotes. Nothing has been added from memory.