Ringsend
Droichead na Carraige

The Causeway Coast and Glens
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Droichead na Carraige · Co. Derry

A small village on the A29 between Garvagh and Aghadowey. Not the Dublin one.

Ringsend in Co. Derry is a small village on the A29 between Garvagh and Aghadowey. A crossroads, a church, a school, a few houses set back from the road, the rolling fields of the lower Bann valley behind. If you are driving south from Coleraine toward Maghera you will be through it in about ninety seconds, and you will probably not notice you were ever there.

It earns a page because somebody asked. The honest version: there is no pub worth driving for, no restaurant, no hotel, no walk that goes anywhere we would send you. What there is, is a name that confuses people — the Dublin Ringsend on the Liffey is the one most maps will hand you first — and a slow piece of farming country that has been here, doing its quiet work, for a long time.

Population

Small village; counted within the wider Ringsend electoral ward (2,455 at the 2011 census, ward not village)

Walk score

A crossroads on the A29 — end to end in two minutes

Coords

55.0167° N, 6.6500° W

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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 name

Not the Dublin Ringsend.

There are two Ringsends in Ireland. The famous one is a Dublin suburb on the Liffey. This one is a north Derry village on the A29, twenty minutes south of Coleraine. Google will offer you the wrong one until you add the county.

Stories & lore → 02 The road

On the A29, between two larger villages.

Ringsend sits on the A29 about three miles north of Garvagh and three miles south of Aghadowey. The road carries most of the traffic in north Derry that isn't on the A26.

Getting there → 03 The country

Lower Bann valley farmland.

Rolling fields, hedges, a stream, a few farms, a church. The Lower Bann itself runs east of the village. This is dairy and tillage country — not a destination, just a place people live.

Stories & lore →

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Stories & lore.

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

The other one is in Dublin

Two Ringsends

The Ringsend most Irish people mean is a Dublin suburb at the mouth of the Liffey — the one with the chimneys, the football ground, the village pubs. This one is a different place: a small north Derry village on the A29, in the Coleraine direction. The two share a name and nothing else. If you are searching for this Ringsend online, add 'Derry' or 'Londonderry' or the postcode will sort it for you.

Bridge of the rock

Droichead na Carraige

The Irish form of the name — Droichead na Carraige — translates as 'bridge of the rock', which suggests an old crossing point on a stream rather than anything to do with the Dublin Ringsend's Rinn Inn (the end of the point). The English name is the awkward fit here; the Irish one tells the older story. The crossing is on a small tributary running east toward the Bann.

Coleraine, the Bann, the Ironmongers

Plantation country

Ringsend sits inside what was the Coleraine portion of the seventeenth-century Londonderry Plantation — the same stretch of country that Garvagh and Aghadowey came out of, the lower Bann valley west of the river. Garvagh up the road belonged to the Ironmongers' Company of London and was laid out by the Canning family from 1615. Ringsend itself does not seem to have its own founding charter; it grew, as small Ulster villages did, around a road, a stream, and the farms that worked the land.

Getting there.

By car

On the A29 between Garvagh (3 miles south) and Aghadowey (3 miles north). Coleraine is twenty minutes north on the same road; Maghera about thirty minutes south.

By bus

Translink Ulsterbus services on the A29 between Coleraine and Maghera pass through. Not frequent — check the timetable before you rely on one.

By train

Nearest station is Coleraine, on the Belfast–Derry line. Then bus or taxi.

By air

City of Derry Airport (LDY) is about 30 miles west. Belfast International is about 40 miles south-east.