Cloone

The South Leitrim
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Cloone · Co. Leitrim

John McGahern country — a quiet farming village in the landscape that shaped one of Ireland's finest novelists.

Cloone is a small farming village in south Leitrim, in the landscape where novelist John McGahern (1934–2006) spent much of his life. McGahern's father was a Garda sergeant in the nearby Aughawillan area; the writer is buried in Aughawillan churchyard. The novels that made him famous — Amongst Women, The Dark, That They May Face the Rising Sun — are rooted in this quiet, rural south Leitrim and Roscommon borderland.

This is honest-to-god farming country. No tourist infrastructure. What you get is the landscape itself — gentle hills, small fields, the rhythms of rural life that McGahern wrote about so unflinchingly. If you are reading his work and want to walk where he walked, this is the place.

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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 novelist's shadow over south Leitrim

McGahern's Leitrim

John McGahern was born in 1934 in Dublin — his father was a Garda sergeant — but his formative years and much of his adult life were tied to south Leitrim and north Roscommon. After his early career as a teacher, he returned to this border region. His novels don't romanticise rural Ireland; they show it in its harshness, its beauty, its isolation. Amongst Women follows a farming family — a portrait of power, love, and generational change. That They May Face the Rising Sun (2002, his final novel) is set around a fictional lake in the same landscape. McGahern died in 2006 and was buried at Aughawillan churchyard, not far from Cloone.

Getting there.

By car

South of Carrick-on-Shannon via N4 then local roads. About 25 km from Carrick. No public transport worth relying on.

Next on the tour

Co. Leitrim

Mohill

The nearest town — O'Carolan country just up the road from McGahern country.

Co. Leitrim

Carrick-on-Shannon

The county town on the Shannon — hotels, restaurants, full services.