Glenullin, Gleann Ulinn, Co. Derry

Gleann Ulinn · Co. Derry

A glen between Garvagh and Dungiven that runs on a church, a school and a football club.

Glenullin - Gleann Ulinn, the glen of the elbow - is a rural Catholic parish in the foothills of the Sperrins, west of Garvagh and east of Dungiven. The village name on a map suggests a street; on the ground it is a valley. There is no main street to walk top-to-bottom. There is a church, a primary school, a GAA pitch and a scatter of farms along the back roads between them. Locally it is just called The Glen.

It does not appear in the NISRA Census as a separate settlement. Wikipedia is blunt about it - "not an officially recognised administrative division" - and the people who live here would not argue. What holds the place together instead is parish: St Joseph's Church (1885), the federated primary school next door, and John Mitchel's GAC at Seán Ó Maoláin Park. If you want to find out what a small rural parish in the north looks like with the tourist layer stripped off, this is one of them.

The angle worth coming for is the football club. Glenullin's centenary year was 2025; they marked it by winning the Ulster Intermediate Championship at Clones, a first in the club's history. The pitch at Seán Ó Maoláin Park is the same pitch that hosted the 1993 Derry Senior final on St Stephen's Day, in snow, with Lavey beating Swatragh on a frozen surface. That afternoon is the bit of folk memory the wider county still hands round.

Population

Rural parish - no separate census figure

Walk score

A glen, not a street - drive between the church, the school and the pitch

Founded

Parish identity; GAA club founded 1925

Coords

54.9667° N, 6.7500° W

01 / 03

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 club

John Mitchel's GAC - the centre of the parish.

Founded in May 1925 by the schoolteacher Johnny Mullan, named for the Young Irelander John Mitchel, green and white hoops. Senior champions in 1928 and 1985; Derry Intermediate champions in 2022 and 2023; Ulster Intermediate champions in their centenary year, 2025. The grounds are Seán Ó Maoláin Park.

Stories & lore → 02 The glen

Gleann Ulinn - the glen of the elbow.

A valley west of Garvagh where the road bends towards Dungiven and the ground starts to climb into the Sperrin foothills. The Glen, locally. Not an officially recognised settlement - a parish identity with a primary school, a church and a GAA pitch holding it together.

Stories & lore → 03 The parish

St Joseph's Church, 1885.

Glenullin is part of the Catholic parish of Errigal, alongside St Mary's at Ballerin. St Joseph's was built in 1885 and is still the church of the village. St Patrick's & St Joseph's Federated Primary School sits beside it. That is the civic infrastructure of The Glen.

Stories & lore →

02 / 03

Stories & lore.

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

A schoolteacher, a Young Irelander, a centenary

John Mitchel's GAC, 1925 to 2025

In May 1925 a local schoolteacher called Johnny Mullan called a meeting in Glenullin to start a Gaelic football club. They named it for John Mitchel, the Young Ireland writer transported to Van Diemen's Land in 1848, and stitched themselves into green-and-white hoops. The club won the Derry Senior League in 1927 and the Senior Championship in 1928, switched to North Derry competitions in 1938, lost most of a generation to emigration in the 1950s, rebuilt through the 1960s on minor titles, won a second Senior Championship in 1985 under captain Dermot McNicholl, then climbed back through the Intermediate grade - county titles in 2022 and 2023, Ulster Intermediate champions in November 2025, exactly a hundred years after Mullan's meeting. The pitch is Seán Ó Maoláin Park. The crest will be on the Croke Park scoreboard for the first time in the All-Ireland series.

Stephen's Day at Seán Ó Maoláin Park

The 1993 final in the snow

The 1993 Derry Senior Football Championship final between Lavey and Swatragh was pushed back into the winter because the Derry county side had spent the autumn winning the All-Ireland - beating Cork on the third Sunday in September. The club final eventually went down on St Stephen's Day, 26 December 1993, at Glenullin's pitch in deep snow. Lavey won. Anthony Tohill of Swatragh, an All-Ireland medal already in his pocket, was on the losing side. Glenullin's pitch - a neutral ground for a south-Derry derby - held the fixture because the weather had wrecked everywhere else. The story has stuck. Anyone in mid-Ulster of a certain age will tell you they were at it. Most of them were.

Church, school, pitch - that is the shape of it

A parish without a village

Glenullin is unusual on an Irish map because it is named and known but is not a village in the street-and-shop sense. The 1885 St Joseph's Church sits in the parish of Errigal alongside St Mary's at Ballerin a few miles north. The school next door - St Patrick's & St Joseph's Federated Primary - is the only school in the glen. Almost everything else is farmland and lanes between townlands. The community sector is active because it has to be: there is no town centre to inherit, only what the parish builds for itself. The GAA pitch sits in the middle of that arrangement, which is part of why it matters as much as it does.

Getting there.

By car

Glenullin sits off the B64 between Garvagh and Dungiven. Garvagh is 8 km / 10 minutes east; Dungiven is 12 km / 15 minutes west; Swatragh is 10 km / 15 minutes south. Derry is 45 minutes northwest on the A6. Belfast is 1h 15m via the M2 and A6.

By bus

No direct service. Translink Ulsterbus runs the A29 (Maghera-Garvagh-Coleraine) and the A6 (Belfast-Derry); the nearest stops are Garvagh and Dungiven. From either you need a lift or a taxi the last few miles into the glen.

By train

No station. Nearest line is Coleraine (Belfast-Derry Northern Ireland Railways), about 40 minutes by road.

By air

City of Derry (LDY) is 40 minutes northwest. Belfast International (BFS) is 50 minutes east.

Next on the tour

Co. Derry

Garvagh

Ten minutes east on the B64. The Plantation town the glen looks to for shops, mass times that don't clash, and the museum on Main Street.

Co. Derry

Swatragh

Fifteen minutes south on the back roads. The other side of the 1993 final, with the mart on Monday and Friels since 1835.

Co. Derry

Dungiven

Fifteen minutes west towards the Sperrins. Bigger village, the old priory ruin, and the start of the climb up to Glenshane Pass.

Co. Derry

Ringsend

Eight kilometres south-west to the wee A29 village between Garvagh and Aghadowey.