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COOTEHILL

CO. CAVAN · IE

Cootehill
Muinchille

The Ireland's Ancient East
STOP 06 / 06

Muinchille · Co. Cavan

A Plantation town on the Annalee with one of Ireland's finest Palladian houses hiding in the trees.

Cootehill is a wide-streeted Plantation town in east Cavan, dropped onto a hill above the River Annalee in the 1660s by a family called Coote. The name is exactly what it sounds like — Coote plus hill. They got the land off Cromwell. The town got their name. Most of Ireland's awkward names work the same way if you scratch them.

What makes Cootehill worth a stop is what is hidden in the woods half a mile north. Bellamont Forest is a small Palladian villa designed by Edward Lovett Pearce in 1730, and it is reckoned by people who care about these things to be among the finest houses in Ireland. Pearce's other building was the Old Parliament House on College Green in Dublin. The villa is privately owned and not open to walk-ins, which is its own quiet thing — you go for the demesne, the lake, the avenue, and the glimpse through the trees.

The town itself is honest enough. A long main street, a wide market square that remembers when linen was the work, a few good pubs, and the Annalee curling around the bottom of the hill. Lough Sillan two miles south used to throw up record pike — including, allegedly, the bones of the largest red deer ever found in Ireland, dredged up by an angler in the 19th century. Stay an evening, walk the demesne in the morning, and put Bellamont and McKenna and the linen and the lake together yourself. It adds up to more than the road sign suggests.

Population

~1,900

Walk score

Main Street top to bottom in ten minutes; demesne walk adds an hour

Founded

Plantation town, 17th century

Coords

54.0739° N, 7.0822° W

01 / 06

At a glance.

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

01 Bellamont Forest

A Palladian villa most people have never heard of.

Edward Lovett Pearce designed it in 1730 — same hand that drew the Old Parliament House on College Green. It is privately owned, so you cannot tour the rooms, but the demesne walks deliver you the view through the trees.

Stories & lore → 02 T.P. McKenna

The actor's hometown.

Born here in 1929. RTÉ, the Royal Shakespeare Company, every middlebrow British drama of the 1970s and 80s. There is a plaque in the town. The locals knew him as Tommy Patrick.

Stories & lore → 03 Linen and the Annalee

An 18th-century mill town that the river built.

Cootehill was one of the great linen markets of Ulster before the famine, with bleach greens up the Annalee and a market house in the middle of town. The mills are gone. The river is still doing its bit.

Walks & outings →

02 / 06

Stories & lore.

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

How a town gets a name

The Cootes and the hill

Thomas Coote was an English soldier who came over with the Cromwellian armies in the 1640s and was rewarded, the way that generation was rewarded, with land. His son Thomas laid out a Plantation town on the hill above the Annalee in the 1660s and gave it the family name. The wide main street and the regular market square are both deliberate — Plantation towns were drawn on paper before they were built, and Cootehill is one of the better-preserved examples in Ulster.

Pearce's other building

Bellamont Forest

Edward Lovett Pearce designed Bellamont Forest in 1730 for Thomas Coote, a cousin of the founders. It is a small red-brick Palladian villa — perfectly symmetrical, four facades, a portico, the lot — and architectural historians put it in the top rank of Irish country houses. Pearce's only other major work is the Old Parliament House on College Green, now the Bank of Ireland. That a house this good sits in a wood outside an east-Cavan town and is barely on the tourist map is a quiet scandal. It is privately owned. You cannot go inside. You can walk the demesne and look up through the beeches.

Cootehill's actor

T.P. McKenna

Thomas Patrick McKenna was born on Bridge Street in 1929. He started in amateur drama in the town hall, joined the Abbey in the 1950s, played Buck Mulligan in the first film of Ulysses, and ended up at the Royal Shakespeare Company. If you watched British television between 1970 and 2000 you saw him a hundred times without knowing his name. He died in 2011. There is a plaque in the town. The locals are quietly proud and slightly nonchalant about it, which is the right Cavan attitude to fame.

When the Annalee was working

The linen years

In the 18th and 19th centuries Cootehill was one of the great linen markets of Ulster. Flax was grown in every parish in east Cavan, retted in pits along the river, beaten and spun and woven in cottages, then bleached on greens up the Annalee and sold at the market house in town on Friday mornings. At its peak the linen hall here was rivalled only by Belfast and Lisburn. The famine and then the cotton mills of Lancashire killed the trade. The mills are gone. The names — Bleach Green, Tannery Lane — are still on the map.

03 / 06

Things to do outside.

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

Bellamont Forest demesne walk From the top of Market Street, north past the church, into the demesne. Signposted forest tracks loop the lake and the lower fields, with views of the villa through the beeches. The house itself is private — admire it from the avenue and move on. The best walk in east Cavan, and almost no one does it.

~5 km loopdistance

1.5 hourstime

Lough Sillan loop Two miles south of town. A coarse-fishing lake long famous for big pike — twenties, occasionally thirties, in the right season. The shoreline path is rough in places. Bring proper boots. Bring midge repellent in summer; the Cavan midges are not a rumour.

~6 kmdistance

1.5–2 hourstime

Town and Annalee loop Down Market Street, across the bridge, along the river path under the old mill site, back up Bridge Street past the McKenna plaque. A pre-breakfast walk that takes in most of what the town has to show.

~3 kmdistance

45 mintime

04 / 06

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar–May

Bluebells in Bellamont demesne in late April. The Annalee runs high and clean. The angling on Sillan picks up in May.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun–Aug

Long evenings, the Arts Festival rolls through in July, and the demesne walks are at their best. Midges by Sillan after sundown — be warned.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep–Oct

The beeches at Bellamont turn copper and the demesne is a quiet wonder. Pike fishing on Sillan comes back into form.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov–Feb

It is east Cavan in winter — short days, soft rain, and a lot of mud underfoot in the demesne. The pubs are still warm.

◐ Mind yourself

05 / 06

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

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

Trying to get inside Bellamont Forest

It is a private home. People live there. Walk the demesne, look up through the trees, and let that be enough.

Treating Cootehill as a one-hour stop

If you are not walking the Bellamont demesne, you are missing the reason to come. That is an hour and a half on its own. Stay the night.

Driving to Sillan without boots

The shoreline is not a tarmac path. Wear what you would wear for a wet bog. You will be glad of it.

Getting there.

By car

Cavan town to Cootehill is 25 minutes on the R188. Dublin is 1h 45m via the M3 and then cross-country through Virginia and Bailieborough. From Monaghan, allow 35 minutes.

By bus

Bus Éireann route 109A connects Cavan and Monaghan via Cootehill. A handful of services daily. Check the timetable — it is not frequent.

By train

No train. Nearest railhead is Drogheda or Dundalk on the Belfast line, then a long cross-country drive.

By air

Dublin Airport is 1h 30m by car. Belfast International is 1h 15m.