Coillte Clochair · Co. Leitrim
A remote upland village on the Fermanagh border, birthplace of Sean Mac Diarmada - the only 1916 signatory whose home cottage still stands.
Kiltyclogher is a tiny upland village in the far north of Leitrim, pressed up against the Fermanagh border. The Irish name, Coillte Clochair, means the stony woods, which is the honest description. The electoral division held around 233 people at the last full count, down from 254 before that, and the village itself is a square, a statue, a couple of pubs and the road out. In 1925 it had 38 houses and seven of them were licensed to sell drink. Make of that what you will.
You come here for one man. Sean Mac Diarmada was born nearby in 1883 and grew up in a three-roomed thatched cottage above Upper Lough MacNean. He became the organiser at the centre of the 1916 Easter Rising, the second name on the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, and was executed in Kilmainham at thirty-three. His cottage is the only original homeplace of any of the seven signatories still standing, kept in its old condition by the Office of Public Works. A stone statue of him - slight, country, a sad set to the face - stands in the village square inscribed with his last written words.
There is not much to consume here, and that is the truth of the place rather than a complaint. Two pubs, the Cosy Corner and McGowan's, a heritage centre that tells the Mac Diarmada story, and the community-run Holiday Centre that the village built to keep itself alive. The American ambassador Jean Kennedy-Smith opened it in 1996. Every summer the Sean Mac Diarmada Summer School brings politicians and historians up the back roads for a weekend of talks. The rest of the year it is quiet in the way only a border upland can be.
