Redhills, An Cnoc Rua, Co. Cavan

An Cnoc Rua · Co. Cavan

A border drumlin village that two films and one Oscar nominee put on the map.

Redhills sits on the N54 in north Cavan, a few miles inside the border from Monaghan and a longer few miles from Fermanagh. The drumlins here are dense and close together - small rounded hills left behind by the last ice sheet, running in every direction, making the landscape feel folded in on itself. The Finn River runs to the north and finds its way into Upper Lough Erne. The village is a crossroads, a church, a GAA pitch, a school, and the hills.

The name is An Cnoc Rua in Irish - the red hill. Drive through in autumn and you understand it. The bracken on the drumlin slopes goes a particular shade of burnt orange in October, and the light in north Cavan at that time of year is low and long and does something to that colour that you do not easily forget.

The village produced one of the sharper literary and screenwriting careers in twentieth-century Irish culture. Shane Connaughton grew up here, set his first two books in the border-country parish he knew as a boy, and then brought a film crew back twice to shoot them in the actual streets and fields. Albert Finney played a Cavan sergeant. Robin Wright played a woman who refused to be managed. Aidan Quinn played a travelling actor. The village was the set. Most of it is still there.

The Great Northern Railway ran through Redhills on the Cavan-to-Clones line from 1873 until passenger services stopped in 1957. The station building on Killyfana Road closed for good the following year. The line is gone now - the route has returned to farmland and green lane - but the fact of it explains the village's position. It was a stop on a working railway for eighty years. The junction of roads and the cluster of houses around the crossroads make more sense once you know that.

Population

~300

Walk score

Small enough to be through in five minutes, wide enough to spend a morning

Coords

54.10° N, 7.32° 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 An Cnoc Rua

The name means the red hill. There are several of them.

The drumlin country running north from Cootehill into Monaghan is a rolling sea of low rounded hills, many of them coloured by bracken and heather in the right light. The village sits in among them on the N54, eight miles northeast of Cavan town.

Stories & lore → 02 The border drumlins

Three counties meet within a few miles of here.

Cavan, Monaghan, and Fermanagh converge just north of the village. The Finn River, which flows to the north, finds its way eventually into Upper Lough Erne. The political border is invisible on the ground. The drumlins are not.

Walks & outings → 03 The quiet parish

Farming country. No performance about it.

Redhills is an agricultural parish - cattle, tillage, the GAA club, the church, the school. It does not try to be anything else. That is the whole identity, and it is more coherent than it sounds.

Stories & lore →

02 / 06

Stories & lore.

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

The screenwriter from the border

Shane Connaughton

Connaughton grew up in Redhills and set his first book, A Border Station (1989), in the parish - stories about a Garda sergeant's family on the Cavan-Monaghan line in the 1950s. It was shortlisted for a major prize and sold well. His second book, The Run of the Country (1991), was the same territory. Then Hollywood arrived. The Playboys (1992) - script by Connaughton, set in a 1957 Cavan village, filmed in Redhills itself - starred Albert Finney, Robin Wright, and Aidan Quinn. Connaughton had already been nominated for an Academy Award for co-writing My Left Foot. The village was, briefly, a film location of international standing. The fields and the church and the crossroads are still exactly what they were.

The line that went to Clones

The Great Northern Railway

The Cavan and Clones line of the Great Northern Railway opened in 1873, and Redhills got a station - a single-platform halt on Killyfana Road, eight and a half miles northeast of Cavan town. For eighty years the line connected this border country to Clones in Monaghan, and beyond that to the wider GNR network. Passenger services ended in October 1957. The station closed completely in June 1958. The track was lifted and the route absorbed back into the landscape. What looks like a particularly straight lane or a field with unexpectedly firm ground is often the old trackbed. The station building survived for decades and has been a landmark on the road ever since.

Three counties, one watershed

The Finn River and the border

The Finn River flows a short distance north of Redhills and drains into Upper Lough Erne in Fermanagh. This is a landscape where the county boundaries and the old Ulster border cut across the watershed in awkward angles. Farmers here have always had land in two counties, relatives in three, and a complicated relationship with whichever government was notionally in charge. The border that became the political frontier in 1921 ran through fields that families had farmed for generations. Connaughton's fiction - A Border Station especially - is as good an account of what that actually felt like, day to day, as anything in print.

Ice-age hills with autumn colour

The drumlins

The drumlin belt of north Cavan and south Monaghan is one of the densest concentrations of drumlins in Ireland - small oval hills, thirty to forty metres high, packed so tightly that the valleys between them fill with water or bog. They were formed at the edge of the last ice sheet and run roughly northwest to southeast, which is the direction the ice was moving. The bracken on the slopes turns red-brown in October. The name An Cnoc Rua - the red hill - is a straightforward description of what the place looks like for about six weeks of the year.

03 / 06

Things to do outside.

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

Drumlin lanes north of the village The network of quiet back roads running north and west from the crossroads takes you up and over several drumlin ridges with views across to Monaghan. No formal trail. Use the OS Discovery map, sheet 27. Best in autumn when the bracken is turning. Likely to meet no one.

3-6 km (variable)distance

1-2 hourstime

Old railway trackbed toward Ballyhaise The former Great Northern Railway route southwest toward Ballyhaise is partly walkable as green lane and farm track. The route is not waymarked and crosses private land in places - check access. Best as a there-and-back from the village end rather than a loop. Flat, straight, and very quiet.

~5 km one waydistance

1.5 hours each waytime

Cootehill direction road walk Follow the R188 south toward Cootehill through rolling drumlin country. Walk the verge - it is a rural road, not a trunk road. Cootehill has the Bellamont Forest demesne if you need a destination. Return by the same road or arrange a lift.

7 km one waydistance

1.5-2 hourstime

04 / 06

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

The drumlins green up fast after March. The back roads are quiet and the Finn River runs full. Good for walking without the summer midges.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Midges in the low drumlin hollows after sundown are serious. Long evenings are genuinely good. Not a destination for peak summer - a stopping point between other places.

◐ Mind yourself

Autumn

Sep-Oct

The bracken turns on the drumlin slopes and the name makes sense. October is when An Cnoc Rua becomes literally true. The best time to understand why the village is called what it is called.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

North Cavan winters are soft and wet. The lanes get muddy. The light goes early. That said, there is something about drumlin country under low cloud that is not nothing.

◐ 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.

Arriving without a map expecting waymarked trails

There are none. The walking here is on back lanes with an OS sheet. Brilliant if you come prepared. Confusing if you don't.

Driving through and calling it done

The village is a crossroads and a church. What it actually is - the hills, the border-country feel, the old railway route - is on the roads around it, not on the main road through it.

Looking for the film locations from The Playboys without research

The production used the actual village and surrounding fields in 1991. Some of it is recognisable. None of it is signposted. Do your homework before you go looking.

Getting there.

By car

Cavan town to Redhills is about 20 minutes northeast on the N54. Cootehill is 7 km south on the same road. From Monaghan town, allow 35 minutes via Clones and the R183.

By bus

Local Link route C3 connects Redhills to Ballyhaise and Cavan town with a small number of daily services, introduced July 2018. Check the Local Link Cavan timetable before travelling - it is not frequent.

By train

No railway. The Cavan-to-Clones Great Northern Railway line closed in 1957. Nearest operational station is Drogheda on the Belfast line, 1h 15m by car.

By air

Dublin Airport is 1h 30m by car via the N3 and N55. Belfast International is about 1h 30m via Clones and the A4.

Next on the tour

Co. Cavan

Cootehill

Seven kilometres south on the N54. A Plantation town with a Palladian villa in the woods and a linen history worth knowing.

Co. Cavan

Belturbet

Twenty minutes west on the Erne. An inland fishing town with a railway past of its own and a calmer pace than its size suggests.

Co. Monaghan

Clones

Fifteen minutes northeast. A border market town that was the next stop on the old Great Northern line, and still feels like it.

Co. Cavan

Ballyhaise

North a few miles to the big house that now teaches farming instead of hosting gentry.