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KILLEA

CO. DONEGAL · IE

Killea
Cill Fhéich, Co. Donegal

The Laggan District
STOP 05 / 05

Cill Fhéich · Co. Donegal

A quiet border village on the Derry road, best known for a Celtic cross grown out of trees that you can only see from the air.

Killea is a working village in the Laggan, the rolling farmland of east Donegal that runs down to the River Foyle and the Derry border. It is not a tourist village and it does not pretend to be. Farms, a few houses strung along the road, a church, and a boundary line that has shaped the place more than anything else. It sits on the main Letterkenny-to-Derry road, close enough to the city that the commute is routine - many residents cross into Derry every day for work, then come home to fields and quiet.

The name is Cill Fhéich, the church of Fiach, and Killea has been a parish of the Laggan for centuries. In 1925 the Irish Boundary Commission looked at the eastern fringe of Donegal - villages like Killea with a Protestant majority sitting hard against the new border - and considered transferring them into Northern Ireland. The recommendations were never enacted. The line stayed where it was, Killea stayed in Donegal, and the cross-border life carried on regardless, customs post and all.

Don't come expecting a heritage trail or a row of pubs. The old village pub, the Argory Pipe on the Derry road, last poured a pint in 2011 and has since been turned to other use. What Killea has instead is one genuinely strange and lovely thing - the Emmery Celtic Cross hidden in the forest - and a position that puts you ten minutes from Derry, a short run from Letterkenny, and within reach of the Grianán of Aileach and the Ulster-Scots heritage of the Laggan. Use it as a quiet base, not a destination in itself.

Population

581 (2011 census)

Founded

Parish church of Killea, in the Laggan; church rebuilt 1765

Coords

54.9772° N, 7.4003° W

01 / 05

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 border

The last village in Donegal before the Derry line.

Killea sits right on the County Donegal-County Derry boundary, on the main road between Letterkenny and Derry. There was a customs post here on the old Letterkenny road. Today it is a commuter village - a lot of people sleep in Killea and work across the border in the city.

Stories & lore → 02 The cross

A 125-metre Celtic cross planted in living trees.

A forester named Liam Emmery planted larch among the spruce in a forest near the village. Years after his death the larch turned yellow in autumn and a perfect Celtic cross appeared in the canopy, only visible from the air. Passengers landing at City of Derry Airport spotted it first.

Stories & lore →

02 / 05

Stories & lore.

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

Liam Emmery, forester

The cross in the trees

Liam Emmery, a forester with a passion for Irish heritage, planted a Celtic cross into a new wood near Killea. He set golden larch among the dark green Sitka spruce, more than 3,000 trees laid out in the shape of a cross roughly 125 metres long and 70 metres wide. It was not part of any official plan - it was his own quiet work. Emmery suffered brain damage and died, and it was only in the dry autumn of 2016 that the larch turned vivid yellow against the spruce and the cross finally appeared, visible only from above. Passengers flying into City of Derry Airport saw it first. The trees are expected to carry the shape for sixty or seventy years.

1925: the Boundary Commission

The line that nearly moved

When Ireland was partitioned, the border was drawn and then re-examined by the Irish Boundary Commission in 1925. Killea was one of several villages along the eastern edge of Donegal, with a Protestant-majority population at the time, that the Commission considered moving into Northern Ireland. In the end none of the changes were enacted and the report was shelved. The customs post on the Letterkenny road is gone now, but for most of the twentieth century crossing the border here meant stopping at the hut. The village has lived with the line through hard borders and soft ones alike.

03 / 05

Things to do outside.

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

The Emmery Celtic Cross forest The cross itself can only be appreciated from the air, so on the ground you are walking an ordinary plantation of spruce and larch near the village. Worth a wander to stand in the wood that hides it, and the larch is at its golden best in October and November - the same weeks the cross shows up overhead. Bring boots; these are working forestry tracks, not waymarked trails.

Short forest tracksdistance

Allow an hourtime

The Laggan back roads The Laggan is gentle, hedged farmland rolling toward the Foyle, and the quiet roads around Killea are made for an unhurried walk or cycle. No marked loop, no signage - just lanes, fields and the occasional view across the river into Derry. This is the kind of walk you take because you are staying here, not because a guidebook sent you.

Variabledistance

As long as you liketime

04 / 05

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.

Expecting a day out in the village itself

Killea is a commuter village and a farming parish, not a visitor destination. There is no heritage centre, no cluster of cafes, no pub crawl - the old village pub closed in 2011. Come for the cross and the position, base yourself here for Derry and the Laggan, but do not plan a day around the main street.

Trying to see the Celtic cross from the ground

The whole point of the Emmery cross is that it only reads from the air, like a crop circle. From inside the forest you will see trees and nothing more. If you want to actually see the shape, your best chance is a window seat landing at City of Derry Airport in autumn.

Getting there.

By car

Killea is on the main Letterkenny-Derry road in east Donegal. Derry city is about ten minutes east; Letterkenny roughly twenty minutes west. From Dublin it is a little over three hours via the N2 or the M1/A5 through the North.

By bus

Bus Éireann Expressway route 64 (Derry-Letterkenny-Galway) serves the village, linking it directly with both Derry and Letterkenny. Beyond that, services are limited and a car is the practical option.

By train

There is no railway in this part of Donegal. The nearest mainline station is Derry/Londonderry (Waterside), about a fifteen-minute drive, on the line to Coleraine and Belfast.

By air

City of Derry Airport is roughly twenty minutes away - the same flight path whose passengers first spotted the Emmery cross. Belfast International is about an hour and a half; Dublin around three hours.