Ballaugh (/bəˈlæf/ bə-LAF;[1] from Manx Balley ny Loghey 'town of the lake', IPA: [b(alən)əˈlaf])[2] is a small village in the Isle of Man in the parish of the same name, in the sheading of Michael.
[3] The parish adjoins Jurby to the north, Lezayre to the east, Michael to the south and south-west, and the Irish Sea to the west.
The name 'Ballaugh' derives from the Manx Balley ny Loghey or "the place of the lake" cognate with loch and lough.
The lake, which measured up to a mile in length, was drained by the excavation about 300 years ago of the silted-up Lhen Trench which, during the last ice age, is believed to have been a meltwater channel flowing north to south from the melting ice front.
In 1819 a nearly fully intact skeleton of an Irish Elk was discovered in bog land by Thomas Kewish and James Taubmann in Ballaugh.
The Ballaugh Elk is currently housed at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
The village was served by Ballaugh Station which was part of the Manx Northern Railway that ran between St. John's and Ramsey.
There is one pub in Ballaugh – the "Raven" – and one convenience store, operated by Spar, which incorporates a post office.
After a mating pair of wallabies escaped the park in the 1960s, there are at least 160 living wild in the Manx countryside.
The land on which the first Ballaugh Village Wesleyan Methodist Chapel stood was sold in 1778 to Thomas Clark for £2.