POSTED FROM

EGLINTON

CO. DERRY · IE

Eglinton
Magh

The Causeway Coast & Glens
STOP 04 / 06

Magh · Co. Derry

A Plantation village with an airport on its doorstep and the Foyle ten minutes away.

Eglinton is a Plantation village seven miles east of Derry city, sitting on the A2 between the city and the Causeway Coast. It was called Muff for two and a half centuries — from the Irish Magh, 'the plain' — until 1858, when residents petitioned the visiting 13th Earl of Eglinton to lend his name to the place. The Earl was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; he was at the agricultural school up the road; the Donegal Muff was costing the post office money. The petition was granted on the spot.

The shape of the village is older than the name. The Grocers' Company of London — one of the twelve City livery companies that took on the Plantation in 1609 — built the Main Street you walk down today. Wide, tree-lined, houses set back, a green at the centre. There's a Glebe house on the site of the old castle, an 1894 Presbyterian church paid for partly by emigrant donations from America, and a former market house. None of it pretends to be cute. It's a working village that happened to be designed.

The airport changed the rest. RAF Eglinton opened in 1941, became RNAS Eglinton — HMS Gannet — under the Fleet Air Arm in May 1943, and closed in April 1959. The Royal Navy left, the runway stayed, and by the mid-1990s, after a £10.5 million rebuild, it had become City of Derry Airport — the regional airport for the north-west, with Loganair, Ryanair and easyJet running scheduled flights to London Heathrow, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Liverpool. The village is, as a result, the only place in rural Derry where you can walk to a runway.

Most people pass through Eglinton on the way somewhere. That's fine — that's how it works. But it's a useful base if you're flying in to do the Causeway Coast or Inishowen, and Muff Glen south of the village is a genuine surprise: thirty-four hectares of larch and emerging native broadleaf in a steep valley with a waterfall at the southern end. Ten minutes from the airport gate.

Population

3,571 (2021)

Walk score

Main Street top to bottom in ten minutes

Founded

1619 (Grocers' Company plantation)

Coords

55.0228° N, 7.1747° 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 renaming

Muff one morning, Eglinton by lunchtime.

On 19 August 1858 a petition was handed to the visiting Earl at the agricultural school up the road. He said yes. By the end of the day the village had a new name — and the postmen had a fighting chance of getting the mail to the right Muff.

Stories & lore → 02 The airport

Wartime fighter base, now your way out.

City of Derry Airport sits on the western edge of the village. It was RAF Eglinton in 1941, then HMS Gannet in '43. The Spitfires went, the runway stayed.

How the airfield turned civilian → 03 The street

A wide, tree-lined Main Street, on purpose.

The Grocers' Company built it in the early 1820s — houses set well back, a green at the centre, a row of widows' cottages now called Cottage Row. The village's surviving piece of design, and a clean half-hour walk.

Walks & outings →

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 Happy Landing

Family-run, plane-spotters welcome

Pub & restaurant, 4 Main Street

The pub on Main Street, with Connolly's restaurant attached — 120 covers, full menu, motorhomes parked free out the back if you eat in. The name is the airport joke. Do not arrive expecting anything else; the village has the one pub of any size, and this is it.

03 / 09

Where to eat.

Place	Type	€	Local note
The Happy Landing / Connolly's	Pub kitchen	€€	Burgers, curries, daily specials, a long menu that does what a long menu has to do in a village with one pub. Honest. The chips are good.

04 / 09

Where to sleep.

Place	Type	Local note
Best Western Plus White Horse Hotel	Hotel, 3-star, Campsie	On the A2 at Campsie, between Derry city and Eglinton — about three miles from the airport, six from the city. 57 rooms, pool, the 68 Clooney restaurant. The default pick if you want a hotel near the runway. Not in the village, but the closest one to it.
No hotel in the village itself	Note	Eglinton has B&Bs and short-let cottages but no hotel inside the village. For an early flight, the White Horse above is the obvious choice. Otherwise it's into Derry city — ten minutes by taxi — or out to the Causeway Coast.

05 / 09

Stories & lore.

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

A petition, an Earl, and a Donegal post office

Muff to Eglinton

On 19 August 1858, Archibald Montgomerie, 13th Earl of Eglinton and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, was visiting Templemoyle Agricultural School outside the village. The Reverend John Conroy met him with a petition signed by the locals: would His Excellency permit the village, 'instead of bearing the name Muff,' to take the name Eglinton? He would. The grievance was practical — there are several Muffs in Ireland, including one twenty kilometres away across the Foyle in Donegal, and the mail kept going to the wrong one. The Earl got a village named after him out of it. The Donegal Muff is still Muff.

The aerodrome that became an airport

RAF Eglinton, then HMS Gannet

RAF Eglinton opened in 1941 with No. 133 Squadron flying Hurricanes in defence of Derry — then the western anchor of the Battle of the Atlantic. In May 1943 the base transferred to the Fleet Air Arm and was commissioned as RNAS Eglinton, HMS Gannet, a fighter-pilot training station for the Pacific. The Royal Navy left in the late 1950s. The airfield went civilian — Eglinton Airport, then Londonderry Eglinton, then City of Derry Airport after a 1990s rebuild. The control tower you see from the A2 is doing its third job.

Built by London, in straight lines

The Grocers' Company village

When James I parcelled out Ulster in 1609, the Grocers' Company of London — one of the twelve great livery companies — got the parish of Faughanvale. They leased the land to Edward Rone of Essex; by 1619 his brother-in-law Robert Harrington had built a castle, a bawn and eight houses in the townland of Muff. By the 1820s the Company decided to make a model village of the place: a new Glebe house, a market house, tradesmen's houses along a wide Main Street, and Widow's Row — now Cottage Row — for the local widows. It's that 1820s plan you walk through now.

The diaspora paid for the building

The 1894 church and the Atlantic post

Faughanvale Presbyterian congregation has been here since 1730 — the original church sat in the graveyard at the back of the current site. When they built the new one in 1894 by public subscription, much of the money came back across the Atlantic from former parishioners who had emigrated to America. It's a small monument to how Ulster Presbyterianism worked: a church here, congregations in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, the same families on both sides of the water.

06 / 09

Things to do outside.

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

Muff Glen Forest Half a mile south of the village. Thirty-four hectares of larch and emerging native broadleaf in a steep valley, with a waterfall at the southern end and some proper steps to climb. Red squirrels, herons, brown trout in the Muff River if you stand still. Old name of the village, surviving on a forest sign.

Short loop, 1.5 kmdistance

40 mintime

Faughan Valley Woodlands South of Eglinton toward Claudy, the Woodland Trust has knitted Brackfield, Killaloo, Burntollet and Ervey woods into a connected network — long-term replanting of native oak and birch on what was conifer plantation. The whole project officially opened in 2023. Closest serious walking to Derry city.

35+ km of connected traildistance

Pick a looptime

Main Street and the Green Top of Main Street to bottom. The Green at the centre, Cottage Row (the old Widow's Row), the former market house, the 1894 Presbyterian church. It's a 200-year-old planned village in 20 minutes. Then go and have a pint.

1 kmdistance

20 mintime

07 / 09

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar–May

The Faughan woodlands come into leaf and the runway gets busy with summer-route launches. Grand walking weather, mostly.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun–Aug

Long evenings, the Causeway Coast a half-hour up the road, the airport doing its peak schedule. The village is a sane base for North Coast trips.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep–Oct

Best season for the woodlands — beech and oak in full colour. Quieter on the A2.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov–Feb

Short days, fog off the Foyle, a good chance of weather diversions at the airport. The pub is open. Not much else is.

◐ 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.

Treating Eglinton as a destination in itself

It's a Plantation village beside an airport, not a day out. Use it as a base, sleep here for an early flight, walk Main Street once — then go to Derry, the Causeway, or Inishowen. Two hours is plenty.

Confusing it with Muff in Donegal

There are several Muffs in Ireland and one Eglinton. The Donegal Muff sits on the other side of Lough Foyle, twenty kilometres away. This one has the airport. The 1858 renaming was specifically to stop the post office getting them wrong, and the post office still mostly manages.

Driving to the Cliffs of Moher from here

It's a five-hour drive each way. You're closer to the Giant's Causeway, which is forty minutes. Pick the cliff you can actually get to.