The history of Kinvarra
O'Hynes country, the 1574 castle list, the Mass rock, the Terry Alts, emptying and filling again. 7 moments, in order.
- Early times
Forts, a kiln and a windmill
Promontory forts and ringforts lie in the townlands round about, Dungory West, Ballybranagan and Loughcurra North, and Kinvarra townland itself has ring fort sites, a lime kiln and the ruin of an eighteenth-century windmill. The parish was the O'Hynes territory of Coill Ua bhFiachrach, a name John O'Donovan still heard in use in the mid-nineteenth century.
- 16th century
Dunguaire
The O'Hynes built the tower house on the shore east of the village; a list of Galway castles and their owners drawn up in 1574, probably for Lord Deputy Sidney and the composition of Connacht, records Faragh O'Hynes as its owner.
- 1650s
The chasm of the heads
The Mass rock near the village, the Poulnegan Altar, is called Poll na gCeann, the chasm of the heads; tradition says student monks from a college nearby were killed at Mass there by Cromwell's soldiers and their heads thrown into the chasm.
- 1819 and 1877
Two churches
St Colman's was built in 1819 and St Joseph's in 1877, with the presbytery, once a convent, of about 1875.
- 1831
The Terry Alts
The agrarian secret society gathered in force on Abbey Hill between Kinvara and New Quay and dared the troops to fight; they had dispersed before the soldiers came. An ambush at Corranroo in the west of the parish failed and cost one member his life.
- 1840s to 1960s
The port empties
The Famine and a century of emigration left a village that had shipped corn and seaweed with no more than a few hundred people.
- 1991 to 2016
Growing again
The population rose by 70 per cent in twenty-five years, from 425 to 734.
Where this comes from
Every paragraph above summarises a statement in Wikipedia, "Kinvara", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, as it read on 2026-09-19. Follow it for the footnotes. Nothing has been added from memory.