Kingmakers of mid-Ulster
The O'Cahans
The Ó Catháin clan ran most of what is now County Derry for several hundred years before the Plantation. They held the right to inaugurate the O'Neill as king of Tír Eoghain — the ceremony involved throwing a shoe over the new king's head, which sounds ridiculous and was deadly serious. Their seat was here at Dungiven. Their priory still stands, mostly. The world they ran ended with the Flight of the Earls in 1607 and the Plantation that followed. Bits of the family fled to Spain and France and turned up in continental armies. Bits stayed and farmed.
Six gallowglass warriors carved in stone
The tomb in the chancel
Inside the ruined Augustinian priory above the Roe is a 15th-century tomb under a Gothic open-work canopy. The effigy on top wears Irish armour. Along the bench beneath, six small figures stand in arched niches — gallowglasses, the Scottish mercenary warriors the O'Cahans imported from the Western Isles. The detail in the kilts and the weapons is unbelievably fine. The carver was almost certainly a Scottish craftsman; the whole monument talks across the North Channel as if it were a parish boundary. It's traditionally identified with Cooey-na-Gall, who died in 1385, though the style points later — possibly Aibhne O'Cahan, murdered in 1492. Nobody minds the ambiguity. The thing itself is the point.
Why the hurling club is named for a hunger striker
Kevin Lynch's
Kevin Lynch was from Park, three miles up the road. In 1972 he captained the Derry U-16 hurlers to an All-Ireland title at Croke Park, beating Armagh. He joined the INLA. He went on hunger strike on 23 May 1981 and died on 1 August after 71 days. The hurling section of Dungiven GAC was renamed Kevin Lynch's in his honour. Hurling in this part of Ulster is a small, stubborn tradition, and the club is one of its strongholds. The motto on the crest is Misneach is Dílseacht — courage and loyalty.
Decades of A6 traffic, then silence
The road that's no longer the road
Until 2022 the main Belfast-to-Derry road came straight down Main Street. Lorries shaking the windows of the priory two miles away. Coaches mounting the kerb. The bypass was campaigned for since the 1990s and finally opened in stages — the Dungiven section in 2022, the full dual carriageway through to Drumahoe in April 2023. A few of the petrol stations and cafés that lived off the through traffic took a hit. The town itself can hear itself think for the first time in a generation.