Free guided tours open at the new Kells Printing Works

Weekly one-hour tours of the Church Lane print works and its historic cast-iron presses run every Friday to 18 December. Booking is required.

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Kells · 18 October 2026

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An ornate cast-iron Columbian hand printing press with trays of type beside it in a printing museum; warm sepia tones
Photo: Oronsay, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Columbian press, Penrith Museum of Printing, not the Kells press). Colour-toned by Made in Kells.

The new Kells Printing Works on Church Lane is running free guided tours this autumn, Meath County Council announced on 7 October, with sessions listed on Discover Boyne Valley.

The council describes the tour as a step back to a time when the written word was made by hand, with ink and iron. Visitors are taken through the whole traditional printing process and shown the works' collection of historic cast-iron presses.

Each tour lasts about an hour and starts in the courtyard of the Printing Works. The remaining October dates are 23 and 30 October at 10am. Further tours are listed for 6, 13, 20 and 27 November and 4, 11 and 18 December, also at 10am.

The tours are free, but places must be booked in advance through the Discover Boyne Valley listing. The Printing Works can be contacted at kellsprintingworks@meathcoco.ie or 046 909 7574.

It's fitting. Kells has been a town of the written word for more than a thousand years, since the monks of Colmcille's community worked here. The craft of making letters by hand is on show again in the town that gave its name to the greatest book ever made by hand. The Book itself remains in Dublin, 69 km away.

Reported as of 18 October 2026.

Sources