Keady, An Céide, Co. Armagh

An Céide · Co. Armagh

Tommy Makem's town. Linen mills, a viaduct, and a hill that leans toward Monaghan.

Keady is a market town of about three and a half thousand people, eight miles south of Armagh city, where the road starts to think about Monaghan. The Callan river runs through it and a steep main street climbs out of the square. There is a granite memorial in the middle of town to a Victorian linen baron, a Catholic church the size of a small cathedral, and a folk-music heritage that punches a long way above the place's weight.

What you need to know first: this is Tommy Makem's town. Born here in 1932, raised in a house off the square, son of Sarah Makem - herself one of the most important traditional singers ever recorded in Ulster. Tommy went to America with the Clancy Brothers in the late fifties and never quite came back, but he wrote "Four Green Fields" and a hundred others, and the town that produced him put up an arts centre with his name on it in 2015 and the first Tommy Makem Folk Festival in November 2025. The festival is the new chapter; the singing tradition is the old one.

The other thing to know is that the town is mill-shaped. The streets run down to the water because the water turned the wheels. The Kirk Monument is at the centre because William Kirk was at the centre. The viaduct two miles up the road carried the linen out and the workers in. None of that is a museum exhibit - it's the bones the modern town sits on. Walk the heritage trail down to Anvale and along to Tassagh and you can read the whole nineteenth century off the river.

Don't come for nightlife. Come for an afternoon and a song. Drive in from Armagh, park on the square, look at the Kirk Monument, sit in Mone's or Cassie's for a pint, walk down to the viaduct in the late light, and on the way back stop into the Tommy Makem Centre to see what's on. That's the day. It's a good one.

Population

3,327 (2021)

Walk score

The Square to the Kirk Monument in two minutes

Founded

Linen-mill town, 18th c.

Coords

54.2531° N, 6.6936° W

01 / 08

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 Bard

"The hub of the universe."

Tommy Makem (1932-2007) was born and raised here. He called Keady the hub of the universe and meant it. His mother Sarah was a source singer of national importance - Jean Ritchie's 1951 recording of her singing "As I Roved Out" became the BBC theme tune of the same name. The arts centre on Cow Fair carries his name.

Stories & lore → 02 The mills

Linen, water, and forty mills along two rivers.

From the 1750s the Callan and the Clea were dammed and re-dammed for bleach-greens and spinning mills. By the 1830s Darkley alone employed 780 people, mostly young women. The Kirk Monument in the centre of town is what the town built for William Kirk after he died in 1870 - the man who owned the mills.

Stories & lore → 03 The viaduct

Eleven arches over the Callan, no trains since 1957.

Tassagh Viaduct sits two miles north - 174 metres long, 24 metres high, designed by Sir Benjamin Baker (the man who built the Forth Bridge). Half a million bricks. Last train ran in 1957. Now a Grade B listed monument standing in a field, doing nothing in particular.

Walks & outings →

02 / 08

The pubs.

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

Mone's Bar

Local local

Long-standing town pub, Market Street

Number 7 Market Street, a few doors up from the Kirk Monument. The kind of place where the same ten people are at the bar at five o'clock every weekday and they all know what's going on.

Cassie's Bar

Match nights, talk

Town-centre bar

Market Street, beside Mone's. Sport on the screens, a session on the right night, and the door always going.

The Caledonian

Quiet, regulars

Square-side pub

On The Square itself. Easy to find, easy to settle into. A pint and the racing.

Arthurs' Bar

Down-the-hill local

Bridge Street pub

Number 4 Bridge Street, near the river. The end-of-town bar; a different crowd to the Square.

Basil Sheils

Out-of-town night

Country bar & restaurant, Tassagh

Out the Dundrum Road in Tassagh, a couple of miles north. Bigger than the town pubs, food served, a destination for a Friday or Saturday meal-and-pints rather than a Tuesday.

03 / 08

Where to eat.

Place	Type	€	Local note
Elevenses Home Bakery	Bakery & coffee, Market Street	£	Number 11 Market Street. Traybakes, sausage rolls, a proper coffee. The morning stop.
Fannings Bakery & Coffee	Bakery café, Kinelowen Street	£	Number 41 Kinelowen Street. Bread, cakes, soup-and-a-sandwich at lunchtime. Sit-in or takeaway.
Basil Sheils, Tassagh	Bar & restaurant	££	The night-out plate in the area. Steaks, fish, pub-restaurant menu done properly. Booking sensible at the weekend.

04 / 08

Stories & lore.

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

Born 4 November 1932

Tommy Makem

Tommy Makem was born here on 4 November 1932 and grew up in a house full of songs - his mother Sarah knew over five hundred of them by heart. He emigrated to the United States in 1955, met the Clancy brothers in New York, and through the 1960s the four of them in their Aran jumpers became the most famous Irishmen in America. He wrote "Four Green Fields" in 1967, "Gentle Annie", "The Winds Are Singing Freedom" and a long list more. He died in New Hampshire on 1 August 2007. He always called Keady the hub of the universe. Liam Clancy sang "The Bard of Armagh" at the funeral.

The source singer

Sarah Makem

Sarah Makem (1900-1983) is the more important figure to anyone who works in traditional song. She was a source singer - that is, an unschooled carrier of the unbroken oral tradition - and what came out of her kitchen in Keady was recorded by Sean O'Boyle, Peter Kennedy, Diane Hamilton, Jean Ritchie and Alan Lomax. Her 1951 recording of "As I Roved Out" became the signature tune of the BBC's long-running radio programme of the same name. She was, by all accounts, mortified to be hearing herself broadcast across the country every week.

A town built for its mill-owner

The Kirk Monument

The granite-and-freestone monument at the junction of Market, Kinelowen, Davis and Bridge Streets was put up in 1871, paid for by the people of Keady themselves, in memory of William Kirk (1795-1870). Kirk owned the big linen mills at Darkley and Annvale. He was a Liberal MP, a Presbyterian, a campaigner for religious equality, and he built houses, schools and a small hospital for the people who worked his looms. The villagers buried him in the family vault at Second Keady Presbyterian and then commissioned the engineer Fitzgibbon Louch to design the obelisk. There aren't many Irish towns that built a memorial to their factory-owner. Read into that what you will.

Forty mills on two rivers

Linen and water

Keady's geography is a wet one - the Callan and the Clea drop fast off the south Armagh hills - and Englishmen with money saw it in the 1750s. By 1837 there were spinning mills at New Holland and Darkley employing 780 people (mostly young women), a fine-linen manufactory at Ballier with another 2,500, and bleach-greens at Anvale, Greenmount, Dundrum, Ballier, Millview, Darkley and Linenvale finishing 235,000 pieces of cloth a year for the English market. Forty mills along the two rivers in total. Most of the buildings are gone or are sheds for tractors now; the dams and the mill-races are still there if you walk for them.

A bridge from a railway that closed

Tassagh Viaduct

Two miles north of the town the eleven brick arches of the Tassagh Viaduct stride across the Callan valley. Designed by Sir Benjamin Baker - the same engineer who built the Forth Bridge in Scotland - it carried the Castleblayney, Keady & Armagh Railway from 1910. The Armagh-to-Keady section had opened a year earlier, in 1909. Five hundred thousand bricks. 174 metres long, 24 high. The line closed in 1957 and the viaduct was listed in 1976. Now it sits in a field above the river, no track, no trains, all the engineering and none of the point - which is a fine thing to walk to in the evening.

Where the linen went

The Town of Tailors

Where there is linen, sooner or later there are tailors. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Keady was known up and down Ulster as the Town of Tailors - at the peak there were around a hundred and twenty of them in and around the town, every street with a workshop, the linen coming in off the bleach-greens a mile away. The trade declined after the first war as ready-to-wear took over. The last tailor still on the books is Hugh McElvanna on Main Street - opened 1968, London Diploma in Tailoring on the wall, in-house alterations still done.

Built in 1860, bigger than it looks

St Patrick's Church

The Catholic parish church on the hill above the town was built in 1860 and is one of the largest churches in the Archdiocese of Armagh by seating capacity. Gothic, T-shaped after the 1989 extension, with a three-stage square bell tower, corner pinnacles and crenellation. From the square it doesn't look extraordinary; from inside it surprises you. Worth ten quiet minutes if the doors are open.

One of the first GAA clubs in Armagh

Keady Michael Dwyer's

Keady Michael Dwyer's GFC was founded in 1888 - a year before the Armagh county board itself existed - making it one of the original Armagh clubs. Plays at Gerard McGleenan Park. The hurling sister club, Keady Lámh Dhearg, came along in 1949. Football is the dominant code, as everywhere in Armagh. A Sunday match in the Intermediate Championship will tell you who is in town that weekend.

05 / 08

Things to do outside.

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

Tassagh Viaduct walk Out of the town along the Tassagh Road, up the river valley to the eleven-arch viaduct, and back. Flat, easy, and the viaduct in the late afternoon light is the photograph you came for.

~5 km returndistance

1.5 hourstime

Keady Heritage Trail A signed loop around the town centre - the Kirk Monument, St Patrick's, Cow Fair, the Tommy Makem Centre, the old mill sites along the river. Pick up the leaflet from the Tommy Makem Centre or print from keadytown.com before you go.

~2 kmdistance

45 mintime

Keady to Tassagh Bridge Long version of the viaduct walk - out via the lakes (Tullynawood, Aughnagurgan), past mill ponds and bleach-green sites, with the viaduct as the turn. A good half-day on a dry afternoon.

~12 km returndistance

4 hourstime

Darkley loop South-west out of town to Darkley, the big mill village that powered Kirk's fortune, and back via the back roads. Quiet country lanes; you will meet more cattle than cars.

~10 kmdistance

3 hourstime

06 / 08

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

Long evenings start to come in, the river-side walks dry out, and the country roads to Tassagh are at their best.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Quiet. The town is workaday rather than tourist-mobbed. Fields, light, and an empty viaduct most evenings.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

County-championship football weekends bring the town alive. Check the Michael Dwyer's fixtures.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

The first week of November is festival week - the Tommy Makem Folk Festival ran 4-9 November 2025 and is set to return. Otherwise, short days, wet ground, the viaduct walk slick with leaves.

◐ Mind yourself

07 / 08

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

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

Looking for nightlife

Five pubs and bed by midnight. Armagh is twenty minutes north for a town night out; Newry is half an hour east.

Driving the heritage trail

It is two kilometres in a town of three thousand people. Park on the Square. Walk it.

Expecting a Tommy Makem theme park

The arts centre is a working community hall - folk nights, choir practice, the odd festival event - not a museum. If it's quiet it's because nobody booked it that day. That's fine.

Tassagh Viaduct in the rain

The path along the Callan is mud after a wet week and the viaduct itself is a brick arch in grey weather - atmospheric in mist, but the photograph wants late afternoon light.

Getting there.

By car

Armagh to Keady is 15 minutes south on the A29 (12 km). Newry is 35 minutes east on the B31 and B133. Monaghan is 30 minutes south-west via the border at Tyholland.

By bus

Translink Ulsterbus 251 runs between Armagh and Keady several times a day, with onward connections from Armagh to Belfast and Dublin.

By train

Nearest station is Newry (35 minutes by car), on the Dublin-Belfast Enterprise line.

By air

Belfast International is 80 km (about 1 hour 10 minutes). Dublin Airport is 130 km (about 1 hour 40 minutes via the M1).