Boyle, County Roscommon
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Boyle Mainistir na Búille
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| Town | |
Market Square, Boyle
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 Boyle
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| Coordinates: 53°58′23″N 8°18′04″W / 53.973°N 8.301°WCoordinates: 53°58′23″N 8°18′04″W / 53.973°N 8.301°W | |
| Country | Ireland |
| Province | Connacht |
| County | County Roscommon |
| Elevation | 83 m (272 ft) |
| Population (2011) | |
| • Town | 2,588 |
| • Urban | 1,599 |
| • Environs | 923 |
| Irish Grid Reference | G797019 |
Boyle (/ˈbɔɪl/; Irish: Mainistir na Búille) is a town in County Roscommon, Ireland. It is located at the foot of the Curlew Mountains near Lough Key in the north of the county. Carrowkeel Megalithic Cemetery, the Drumanone Dolmen and the lakes of Lough Arrow and Lough Gara are also close by. The population of the town was 3,000 in 2010 and 5,110 in 2011 including a rural area.
On 15 August 1599, the Battle of Curlew Pass between English and Irish forces was fought in the Curlew mountains during the Nine Years' War, between an English force under Sir Conyers Clifford and a native Irish force led by Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill (Red Hugh O'Donnell). The English were ambushed and routed while marching through a pass in the Curlew Mountains, with the English forces suffering heavy casualties. Losses by allied Irish forces were not recorded. The Queen's principal secretary, Sir Robert Cecil, rated this defeat (and the simultaneous defeat of Harrington in Wicklow) as the two heaviest blows suffered by the English in Ireland.
Boyle suffered hardship during the famine years (1847–49). The following quote from the novel Woodbrook is one example: A retired herd, Mick Maxwell, speaking to Thompson about his grandfather during the famine, related the following: 'when his grandfather, the only man strong enough, brought fifty and sixty corpses on a barrow, one by one, two miles from Cootehall near his home to the graveyard at Ardcarne'.
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