Limavady, Léim an Mhadaidh, Co. Derry

Léim an Mhadaidh · Co. Derry

The town that wrote down Danny Boy without meaning to.

Limavady is a market town on the inland edge of the Causeway Coast - Sperrins behind, Lough Foyle ahead, the Roe cutting through the middle. The name means "the leap of the dog" and refers to a hound jumping the gorge to carry a warning to the O'Cahan castle. The chiefs are gone. The dog has stayed in the name.

What you need to know: it's a working town, not a tourist town. The wide main street is the surviving bone of a 1612 Plantation grid, the linen industry left a country park three miles south, and a woman called Jane Ross sat at her window one day in 1851 and wrote down a tune that the world later attached to a song called Danny Boy. None of these things are dressed up for visitors. They're just here.

Use the town as a base. The North Coast is twenty minutes away - Magilligan Strand running seven unbroken miles to Downhill, the Martello tower at the point, the ferry across the foyle to Greencastle in Donegal. Roe Valley Country Park is a short drive south. Drenagh's gardens, when they're open, are worth the detour. Then come back and have a pint where the locals are.

Population

~11,700 (NISRA 2021)

Walk score

Wide Plantation main street, end to end in fifteen minutes

Founded

Plantation town, 1612

Coords

55.0517° N, 6.9489° 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 tune

51 Main Street, 1851.

Jane Ross heard a passing fiddler from her window, paid him two shillings and wrote the tune down. Sixty years later it became Danny Boy. The blue plaque is on the house and the house is still there.

Stories & lore → 02 The valley

Roe Valley Country Park, three miles south.

Linen-bleaching greens, watch towers, a waterwheel and the first hydroelectric power station in Northern Ireland - Ritter's Power House, 1896. The river runs through it all.

Walks & outings → 03 The grid

A Plantation town with the diamond intact.

Sir Thomas Phillips laid out the streets in 1611, got the patent in 1612 and built a castle, eighteen houses and a renaissance garden. The wide Main Street is what's left of the plan, and it's still the spine of the place.

Stories & lore →

02 / 09

The pubs.

None of these are themed Irish pubs, because they don't need to be. A few that earn the trip:

Owens Bar

Locals, stout, jazz in June

Pub, opened 1852

50 Main Street. Locally known as Frank's. Same family running it since 1960. Tiled floor, cast-iron fireplace, Darren Clarke's autographed pin flag from the 2011 Open on the wall. The marquee in the back garden is the main stage of the Danny Boy Jazz and Blues Festival every June.

The Corner Bar

All-rounder

Pub & Market Yard restaurant

41-43 Main Street. The town centre default - pint, lunch, Sunday carvery, late drink. Not pretending to be a craft destination. Just the one that works for everything.

03 / 09

Where to eat.

Place	Type	€	Local note
Greens at Roe Valley Resort	Hotel restaurant	€€€	The fine-dining room at the resort south of town. Local producers, dressed-up rooms, the kind of dinner you book ahead for an anniversary.
Coach House	Brasserie	€€	The casual room at Roe Valley Resort, looking onto the golf course. Better as a long lunch than a quick one.
Market Yard Restaurant	Bistro	€€	Behind the Corner Bar. Steaks, fish, a sensible wine list. Reliable for a town-centre dinner that does not involve a hotel.

04 / 09

Where to sleep.

Place	Type	Local note
Roe Valley Resort	Hotel & spa (4-star)	Formerly Roe Park Resort. 118 rooms, 18-hole course, spa with a pool. Sits in its own grounds beside the country park. The default if you want a hotel that feels like a hotel.
Drenagh Estate cottages	Self-catering on a country estate	On the McCausland family estate two miles north of town - Italian terraces, an arboretum, a Lanyon house. Rentable cottages on the grounds when the estate isn't booked for a wedding.
Bellarena Station	Self-catering at the train halt	The old station house at Bellarena, six miles north on the Belfast-Derry line. Sleep above the platform; trains hourly, level crossing closes the road.

05 / 09

Stories & lore.

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

51 Main Street, 1851

The tune nobody named

Jane Ross lived with her sisters at 51 Main Street and was in the habit of taking down tunes from passing musicians. One day in 1851 she heard a fiddler in the street, paid him two shillings for permission to write the air down and sent it to George Petrie's collection of Irish music, where it appeared in 1855 as 'a very old air' from County Londonderry. Sixty years later, in 1913, an English barrister called Frederic Weatherly fitted his lyric Danny Boy to it and the world took both. The blue plaque on the house has been there since.

William Massey, 1856-1925

A New Zealand prime minister

William Ferguson Massey was born in Limavady on 26 March 1856 to a Protestant farming family. The family emigrated to New Zealand in 1862; he stayed behind to finish school and followed in 1870. He went on to lead the Reform Party and serve as the 19th Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1912 to 1925 - through the First World War, the 1918 flu and the 1919 peace conference. He never lived in Limavady again, but Limavady never quite let him go: there's a bust at Stormont and a regular wreath.

Roe Valley industry

A river that did the work

The Roe drove the local economy for two centuries. Linen weavers stretched their cloth on the bleach greens to whiten in the sun; flax was retted in the river and dried in the watch-towered fields. In 1896 a German immigrant called J.J. Ritter installed water turbines in a Power House on the Roe and switched on the first hydroelectric supply in Northern Ireland. The mill buildings and the Power House are still there - the visitor centre at the Country Park tells the story properly.

Magilligan & the Foyle

Seven miles of beach

Twenty minutes north the land flattens into Magilligan Foreland - Ireland's largest coastal accumulation, a pile of sand the post-glacial sea pushed up over six thousand years. Magilligan Strand runs seven unbroken miles from the Martello tower at the point down to Downhill. The tower itself was built between 1812 and 1817 to watch for Napoleon. Across the mouth of the lough you can see Donegal; a small ferry runs to Greencastle in fifteen minutes.

06 / 09

Things to do outside.

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

Roe Valley Country Park Park at the Dogleap Centre and walk both sides of the river. O'Cahan's Rock, the bleach green, the watchtowers, the Power House. A waterfall the local name for which is the Dogleap - the same dog that gave the town its name. Coffee at the centre when you're done.

5 km of riverside pathsdistance

1.5-2 hourstime

Benevenagh The basalt cliff that broods over the valley from the north. The summit walk from Bishops Road gives you Inishowen, the Sperrins and Lough Foyle in one rotation. Wind-exposed; pick a clear day.

8 km loopdistance

3 hourstime

Magilligan Strand Drive to the Martello tower at the point and walk south as far as you can be bothered. Hard sand, military firing range inland (signed, fenced), seabirds, a horizon. The longest beach in Ireland by most ways of counting.

7 miles one waydistance

However long you havetime

Drenagh Gardens The McCausland estate's Italian terraces, moon gate, arboretum and Lanyon-designed garden buildings. Open on advertised days only - check before you set off. Worth aligning a trip with.

2 km of pathsdistance

1 hourtime

07 / 09

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

The Roe Valley wakes up properly in April. Bluebells in the country park, lambs on the slopes of Benevenagh, days getting long enough for an after-work walk.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

The Danny Boy Jazz and Blues Festival takes over Owens Bar and the town for four days in June. Long northern evenings. Magilligan is a beach you can actually walk on.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

The country park does its best work in October - beech and oak along the river, light low through the trees. Quieter than the coast.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

Short days, Drenagh closed, parts of the country park flooded if the river is up. The pubs are at their most themselves and the spa at the resort earns its keep.

◐ 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 Limavady as a Danny Boy theme park

There's a plaque on a house, a festival in June and a name on a bridge. That's the lot. The tune is famous; the town's relationship with it is mostly genuine, partly amused, and not engineered for tourists.

The Mussenden Temple drive without stopping

It is twenty minutes up the road and stunning, but most people drive there from Coleraine or Portstewart and skip Limavady entirely. Reverse it - sleep in town, do Mussenden as the morning trip.

Looking for the original distillery

The historic Limavady Distillery closed in the 1880s. The new Limavady whiskey on the shelves is a re-launched brand, not a continuous operation, and there is no working distillery in town to visit.

Driving Magilligan when there's an Army flag up

Most of the Foreland is an active firing range. The signed beach access is fine; ignoring the red flags is a different story. Read the signs before you wander inland off the strand.

Getting there.

By car

Derry to Limavady is 30 minutes on the A2. Coleraine is 25 minutes east on the same road. From Belfast allow 1h 30m via the M2 and A37.

By bus

Translink Goldline 234 runs Derry-Limavady-Coleraine several times a day. Local Ulsterbus services connect Magilligan, Bellarena and the surrounding villages.

By train

Bellarena station, six miles north on the A2, is on the Belfast-Derry line - hourly Mon-Sat, six on Sunday. Taxi or bus from there into town.

By air

City of Derry Airport (LDY) is 12 minutes' drive - small, useful, a handful of UK routes. Belfast International is 1h 15m.