Ballinrobe Golf Club

The Cloonacastle Estate has been occupied since around 1238 — first by the Fitzgeralds, then by the Bourkes of Connacht, then by the Binghams after Sir Richard Bingham, the brutal English governor who administered Connacht with ruthless efficiency in the 1580s and 1590s, drove them out. Richard Oge Bourke was hanged by Bingham in 1586. His brother Walter was ousted from Cloonacastle in 1591. A place on the estate grounds is still known as poll-na-marbh — "hollow of the dead" — where fifteen women named Mary Bourke, executed by Bingham, are said to be buried. The medieval tower house that stands beside the 10th tee dates to the 13th century. The old estate house is now the clubhouse.

The golf club was founded in Ballinrobe in 1895 and played on various sites around the town for its first century. In 1995 — the club's centenary year — it moved to the Cloonacastle Estate, and Eddie Hackett, then in his final years of practice, designed the new 18-hole layout through the medieval grounds. The course runs to over 7,300 yards from the back tees at par 73 — unusually five par fives, three on the front nine. Seven holes feature lakes; the River Robe comes into play at the 5th and defines the most spectacular hole on the card. The greens are 80% sand-based and play well year-round.

Pádraig Harrington, who played the course on a visit, was straightforward about his assessment: "My favourite hole is the fifth, with a marvellous green inset into the River Robe. The par threes, in particular, are a delight. This must be the finest championship course in the West of Ireland." The course has been named Connacht Parkland Course of the Year five times, most recently in 2025.

Three miles from Ballinrobe, the story of how one English land agent's bad autumn became a permanent addition to the English language. Captain Charles Boycott was the estate manager at Lough Mask for Lord Erne. In 1880, following a bad harvest, the Land League organised a total ostracism — his workers walked off, Ballinrobe shopkeepers refused to serve him, tradespeople declined his business. The Times of London coined the word "boycott" to describe the tactic. Boycott left Ireland in December 1880 in disgrace. The word stuck. Cong is twelve kilometres south, where Rory O'Connor — the last High King of Ireland — died in 1198, and where John Ford shot The Quiet Man in 1951.