Maghera, Machaire Rátha, Co. Derry

Machaire Rátha · Co. Derry

A market town at the foot of the Glenshane, with a 12th-century carved doorway people drive past without knowing.

Maghera sits at the foot of the Glenshane Pass - the high road that climbs out of Mid-Ulster and crosses the Sperrins on its way to Derry. Most traffic going west doesn't stop. The town isn't trying to make them. It's a working market town with a creamery, a couple of supermarkets, a Catholic secondary school people travel for, and the kind of square where everyone parks at the wrong angle and nobody minds.

What's worth a stop is the old church up at the top of the town. St Lurach founded a monastery here in the 6th century and the place mattered for nearly seven hundred years - bishop's seat from the mid-1100s until Bishop Germanus O'Carolan got Pope Innocent IV's sanction in 1246 to move the see to Derry on the grounds the place was too remote. By 1254 the diocese was formally called Derry, not Maghera. The current ruin is mostly mediaeval, but built around the older west door. Above that door is a carved crucifixion from the 12th century, with a row of figures along the lintel. It's one of three surviving in Ireland. Nobody charges you to look at it.

The other thing to know: the parish. Watty Graham's, the GAA club a couple of miles up the road in Glen, is named after a local Presbyterian farmer who was hanged here in 1798 for his part in the United Irishmen's rebellion. In January 2024 they won the All-Ireland Club Football final at Croke Park. The trophy came home through the town in the rain. People talk about it the way people in other places talk about the weather.

Stay one night. Walk Carntogher in the morning, the church and the walled garden in the afternoon, eat at Ardtara if you can get a table, drink in Walsh's. Drive on to the Causeway or up to Derry the next day.

Population

4,235 (2021)

Walk score

Town centre and the old church on foot in fifteen minutes

Founded

Monastery c. 6th century

Coords

54.8420° N, 6.6700° 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 old church

St Lurach's, and the door that survived everything.

A roofless mediaeval shell on a 6th-century monastic site. Above the west doorway, a Romanesque crucifixion carved in the 12th century - Christ with fifteen figures and four angels, one of only three of its kind left in Ireland. The Vikings burned the place in 832. The carving is still there.

Stories & lore → 02 The hill

Carntogher, and the old coach road up it.

A 10-kilometre loop from Tirkane Road climbs the eastern shoulder of Carntogher and drops back through bog and gravel track. Boggy in patches. The summit gives you Lough Foyle, the high Sperrins, and the Mournes on a clear day.

Walks & outings → 03 The parish

Watty Graham's, and the trophy that took 76 years.

The local GAA club is named for Walter Graham - a Presbyterian farmer hanged in 1798 for the United Irishmen. In January 2024, his club won the All-Ireland Senior Club Football Championship at Croke Park. The town shut down for the parade.

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:

Jack's Bar (Walsh's Hotel)

Locals, generations

Hotel bar in town centre

Inside Walsh's Hotel at 53 Main Street - there's been an inn on this site since 1760, when (the story goes) a young Jack O'Neill found a crock of silver while herding sheep and built the first hostelry with it. Refurbished in 2017 but still the main town pub by default: where funerals end up, where weddings start, where the Watty Graham's lot landed with the cup in 2024.

03 / 09

Where to eat.

Place	Type	€	Local note
Ardtara Country House	Country-house restaurant	€€€	Two AA Rosettes (awarded 2018), Michelin-recommended. 19th-century house built for the Clark linen family, eight minutes from the town in Upperlands. Chef Patron Ian Orr changes the menu by what's coming out of the kitchen garden. Book ahead - there are only so many tables in the old dining room.
Walsh's Hotel restaurant	Hotel dining + Helena's bistro	€€	The grown-up dining room upstairs and Helena's coffee shop / bistro on the ground floor. Bistro is the better daytime stop - soup, sandwiches, a proper Sunday lunch. Reliable, not flashy.
The Ponderosa	Bar & restaurant on the Glenshane	€€	Twelve minutes up the pass - the highest licensed pub in Ireland, depending who you ask. Pub food, big windows, a peat fire. The point is the view and the stop on the way to Derry.

04 / 09

Where to sleep.

Place	Type	Local note
Ardtara Country House	Country house, 8 rooms	Member of Ireland's Blue Book. Big rooms, the restaurant downstairs, gardens. The expensive-but-correct option for a special night.
Walsh's Hotel	Town-centre hotel	On the site of the 1760 inn. Apartments as well as rooms - useful if you're a group or staying more than two nights. Walk out the front door and you're on the main square.
Mill Lodge Cabins	Self-catering cabins	Riverside cabins outside town, three to six guests each, hot tubs and fire pits. Quiet. Better for a couple than a stag.

05 / 09

Stories & lore.

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

12th-century stone, still in place

The carved door

The west doorway of St Lurach's old church is the find. Above it, carved into the lintel, is a crucifixion scene - Christ flanked by fifteen figures and four angels, weathered down through eight hundred years of Mid-Ulster rain. The carving was likely set there in the 12th century, probably after the cathedral burned in 1135. Only two other Irish examples survived from that period: one at Raphoe in Donegal, one at Dunshaughlin in Meath. There is no ticket, no glass case, no guide. You walk up through the graveyard and there it is.

The Presbyterian who's still on the team-sheet

Watty Graham

Walter Graham - Watty - was a Presbyterian tenant farmer and church elder from outside Maghera. In June 1798 he mustered several hundred men, held the town for a morning, and marched on to Crewe Hill before news arrived that McCracken had been defeated at Antrim. The rebellion collapsed. Graham was hanged on 19 June 1798, traditionally from a tree at the Church of Ireland rectory in the town; his head was paraded through the village afterwards. The local GAA club in Glen took his name. They beat St Brigid's of Roscommon 2-10 to 1-12 on 21 January 2024 to win the All-Ireland Senior Club Football Championship for the first time. The trophy came home through the town in the rain.

How Maghera lost its cathedral

The bishop and the move

From the mid-1100s, Maghera was a cathedral town - the seat of the diocese of Cenél nEóghain, known in Latin as Rathlurensis after the older name Ráth Lúraigh. The arrangement lasted roughly a hundred years. In 1246, after repeated complaints about how cut off the place was, Bishop Germanus O'Carolan got Pope Innocent IV's sanction to transfer the see to Derry. By 1254 the diocese was formally called Derry. The town has been quietly putting up with that decision ever since. The old church stayed in use as a parish church into the 18th century before the roof gave up.

Upperlands and the Clark mills

The linen village

Three miles north of the town, in Upperlands, Jackson Clark started a linen beetling operation in 1736 on a dark narrow stretch of river. The firm, William Clark & Sons, is still going nearly three hundred years on - Northern Ireland's oldest linen mill and the last commercial beetlers left in the world. The terraces of mill workers' housing in the village are intact. If you want to understand why this corner of Mid-Ulster looks the way it does - Presbyterian, industrial, prosperous in a quiet way - the mill at Upperlands is the answer.

The road over the hill

The Glenshane

The A6 climbs out of Maghera through the Glenshane Pass - the gap between the Carntogher hills on the north side and the rest of the central Sperrins on the south. The road is the main artery between Belfast and Derry, and it's the reason Maghera exists in the modern shape it does: the market town on the eastern foot of the pass. In bad winters the road shuts and the town goes quiet for a day or two. People remember which winters.

06 / 09

Things to do outside.

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

Carntogher Way (Slí an Chairn) Start at the small car park on Tirkane Road. The waymarked red route goes up the eastern shoulder of Carntogher on the old coach road, hits the summit at 464m, and drops back on gravel forest tracks. Boggy in patches - wear boots. There's a shorter blue alternative (the Skelp) if the cloud is in.

10 km loopdistance

3-3.5 hourstime

St Lurach's & the walled garden The old church ruin is at the top end of the town off St Lurach's Road. Walk through the graveyard, look at the west door, then drop down into the restored Victorian walled garden in the same grounds. Free, open most days in season.

1 kmdistance

30 mintime

Drumnaph Nature Reserve Mature broadleaf woodland a couple of miles south-east of the town, run by the Woodland Trust. Bluebells in May. A fine antidote if you've over-done the heritage.

4 kmdistance

1 hourtime

Tirnony Dolmen A Neolithic portal tomb in a field a mile north of the town. The capstone fell into the chamber in the hard winter of 2010 after frost cracked a support stone; archaeologists excavated and reset it. Not signposted with much enthusiasm - ask at the Heritage Centre for the lane.

500 m there-and-backdistance

20 mintime

07 / 09

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

Best window for Carntogher - long days, dry-ish ground, lambs on the lower slopes. Bluebells at Drumnaph in May.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

The town is busiest with passing traffic for the Causeway, but rooms are still findable. Long evenings make the walled garden worth a wander after dinner.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

The hills go copper. Cool, clear days. The shoulder season Ardtara holds tables you can't get in summer.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

The Glenshane shuts in heavy snow once or twice most winters. The town keeps going. Carntogher is a serious proposition in cloud - don't go up without a map and the weather.

◐ 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.

Confusing Maghera with Magherafelt

They're different towns, twelve miles apart. Magherafelt is the bigger one with the Bridewell and Seamus Heaney country to the south. Maghera is the one with the carved door and the GAA cup. The sat-nav has been wrong about this since 2003.

Driving through without stopping

The town is a fifteen-minute detour off the A6. The carved door is twelve hundred years old. You can spare twenty minutes.

The Glenshane in the hire-car-and-rain combination

The pass is fine in good weather and a slog in bad. If it's coming sideways, take the lower road via Dungiven instead and live to drive another day.

Getting there.

By car

Belfast to Maghera is 50 minutes on the M2 then A6 - the Glenshane. Derry is 45 minutes the other way, also on the A6. Park on the main square or behind Walsh's.

By bus

Translink Goldline 212 (Belfast-Derry) stops in town hourly each way. The Park & Ride at Craigadick, on the A6/A29 junction, has 123 spaces if you'd rather leave the car and ride in.

By train

No station. Nearest is Castledawson / Magherafelt direction (no train) or Coleraine (45 min by car).

By air

Belfast International (BFS) is 35 minutes. City of Derry (LDY) is an hour. Dublin is two and a quarter hours.