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FORKHILL

CO. ARMAGH · IE

Forkhill
Foirceal

The Ring of Gullion
STOP 09 / 09

Foirceal · Co. Armagh

A small village in the lap of Slieve Gullion — sing in the pub on Tuesday, walk the hill on Wednesday.

Forkhill is a one-street village in the lap of Slieve Gullion, three miles short of the border. Five hundred and fifty people on the last count. A pub, a café, a chapel, a primary school, a GAA pitch named for an 18th-century Gaelic poet who's buried up the road. That's most of it.

The angle here is song. South Armagh is the heartland of a particular kind of Irish music — unaccompanied singing in English and Irish, a tradition that produced poets like Peadar Ó Doirnín and Art Mac Cumhaigh and is still being carried by working singers today. The Tuesday session in the Welcome Inn has been running for the bones of fifty years. Tí Chulainn, the cultural centre that anchors all of this, is up the road in Mullaghbawn.

The other thing to know is that the Troubles fell hard on this parish. There was a base at the edge of the village, a watchtower on the hill, and a long list of incidents in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. The towers came down in 2006–07. People here lived through it and would rather talk about something else, which is fair. Read about it before you come; don't lead with it when you arrive.

Come for the hill, the session, the quiet. The Ring of Gullion runs all around you — a 150-square-kilometre ring dyke, the first one mapped anywhere in the world. There are worse places to spend a wet afternoon than a corner seat in the Welcome Inn with a fire on.

Population

550 (2021)

Walk score

Main Street end to end in six minutes

Founded

Resettled 1787–91 under the Jackson trust

Coords

54.0667° N, 6.4083° W

01 / 09

At a glance.

Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.

01 The hill

Slieve Gullion sits over everything — 573 metres of it.

The highest point in Armagh, with a Neolithic passage tomb on top — the highest surviving passage tomb in Ireland. The Forest Drive is signed from Meigh, ten minutes north. The summit cairn is closed for repairs at the moment, but the hill is still the hill.

Walks & outings → 02 The song

Tuesday night session, every Tuesday, for decades.

The Welcome Inn on Main Street is a Comhaltas pub. The session goes most Tuesdays at eight. Players from eight years old to eighty. South Armagh is song country — the Airgíalla tradition, sean-nós, the unaccompanied voice — and this is one of the rooms it lives in.

Music this week → 03 The history

The thirty years are over but they happened here.

Forkhill was one of the hardest places in the Troubles for soldiers and locals both. There was a fortified base on the edge of the village and a watchtower on the hill above. Both are gone now. The village is quieter than it has been in fifty years. Walk in carefully and listen — that's how anywhere worth visiting works.

Stories & lore →

02 / 09

The pubs.

None of these are themed Irish pubs, because they don't need to be. A few that earn the trip:

The Welcome Inn

Comhaltas Tuesdays, locals always

Village pub & session

35 Main Street. Originally the Alexander Arms Hotel. Tuesday night Comhaltas session at 9:30pm, players of all ages — the rule is you bring an instrument or you sit and listen. Saturday-night live music in the lounge. The pub of the village.

The Forge

Quieter, sport on

Locals' bar

The other pub. Smaller crowd, no scheduled music — the kind of place where the conversation does the work. Match days it fills up.

03 / 09

Where to eat.

Place	Type	€	Local note
Joe's Café	Café	£	Opened on Main Street in April 2022 — breakfast rolls, soup, traybakes, the whole village in and out. If it's lunchtime in Forkhill, this is where lunchtime is happening.

04 / 09

Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

1791

The Forkhill Outrage

In January 1791 a band of the Defenders broke into the schoolmaster Alexander Berkley's house at night and cut out the tongues of Berkley, his wife and his brother, and severed limbs. Berkley's wife died of her wounds. It was read for two centuries as Catholic-versus-Protestant — the parish had just been resettled with Protestant tenants under a trust set up by Richard Jackson. Modern historians (Kyla Madden) read it as a Defender warning to a man who had testified against them in court. Either way, it's the founding scar of modern Forkhill, and the house Berkley taught in is gone but the ground is the same ground.

The poet

Peadar Ó Doirnín

Peadar Ó Doirnín (c. 1700–1769) was a hedge-schoolmaster and Gaelic poet who spent most of his life in this parish. He wrote 'Mná na hÉireann' — yes, that one, the Seán Ó Riada tune Kate Bush and Sinéad O'Connor recorded. He died at his desk in a Forkhill schoolhouse and is buried in Urney graveyard, half an hour's walk away. The local GAA club is named for him. The Poets' Trail loops past his grave.

Came down in 2006

The watchtower

For two decades there was a hilltop fortified post — Romeo One Six, locally — overlooking Forkhill, and a base inside the village itself. Both were targets and both were the source of constant low-grade pressure on the parish. They were dismantled as part of demilitarisation between 2005 and 2007. The hill the tower sat on is still there. The view is now just a view.

Why people sing here

The Airgíalla tradition

South Armagh and north Louth share a Gaelic literary tradition called Airgíalla — four 18th-century poets (Ó Doirnín, Mac Cumhaigh, Mac Cuarta, Mac Giolla Ghunna) wrote songs that are still sung in this corner of the country. Tí Chulainn in Mullaghbawn was set up in 1999 to keep that work alive. It's why a 600-person village punches above its weight on a Tuesday night.

05 / 09

Music, by day of the week.

Schedules drift. This is roughly right. The real answer is "ask in the first pub you find."

Tue

The Welcome Inn — 9:30pm Comhaltas session, all comers

Sat

The Welcome Inn — live music in the lounge

06 / 09

Things to do outside.

Wear waterproofs. Bring a sandwich. Tell someone where you're going if it's the mountain.

Slieve Gullion summit The big one. Park at the top of the Forest Drive (signed off the B113 at Meigh), then it's a steady climb on a stone path to the South Cairn — the highest passage tomb in Ireland. The chamber itself is closed for repairs at the moment; the views aren't. On a clear day you'll see the Mournes, the Cooleys and half of Louth.

8 km returndistance

3 hourstime

Slieve Gullion Forest Drive A one-way scenic drive through the forest park. Pull over at the viewpoints. Heather goes purple in August. Not a walk but worth the petrol.

13 km loopdistance

40 min by cartime

The Poets' Trail (Urney Loop) From the village out past Glendesha Forest, around Croslieve and Sliebrack, and into Urney graveyard where Peadar Ó Doirnín is buried. Mostly quiet country lanes. Bring an OS map — the markings have seen better years.

9.7 km / 6 milesdistance

3 hourstime

07 / 09

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar–May

The hill greens up, the lambs are out, the Tuesday session has thawed. Best light of the year on Slieve Gullion.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun–Aug

Long evenings, heather on the hill, the Forest Drive in full purple by early August. Busiest you will ever see Forkhill, which is still not very busy.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep–Oct

The Ring of Gullion Autumn Festival runs in mid-September with singing workshops and walks. October is colour on the hill and a fire in the pub.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov–Feb

Short days, the summit gets weather — do not go up in cloud unless you know what you are doing. The pub is at its best, mind.

◐ Mind yourself

08 / 09

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.

The summit in cloud

You will see nothing and the path off the top is not obvious. Wait for a clear day or pick a lower walk.

Asking strangers about the Troubles

Everybody here has a version. Most of them they would rather not tell a stranger in a pub. Read the history at home; come for the village as it is now.

Driving the Forest Drive the wrong way

It's one-way. The signs are clear. Tourists miss them every summer and end up reversing past coming traffic on a forest road.