POSTED FROM

MOYNALTY

CO. MEATH · IE

Moynalty
Maigh nEalta, Co. Meath

The Ireland's Ancient East
STOP 07 / 07

Maigh nEalta · Co. Meath

A planned village in Swiss dress, an Architectural Conservation Area, and the home of the steam threshing weekend that empties half of Meath into one field every August.

Moynalty is a planned village, and it looks it. James Farrell bought the lands in 1790 and his grandson John Arthur Farrell finished building the place in 1837, on a Swiss design, with the houses ranged neatly along one side of the street. Houses crept onto the river side after 1900, but the bones are the 1830s estate village, and they are intact enough that the whole thing is now an Architectural Conservation Area. The name is Maigh nEalta, the plain of the flocks.

It is small - around a hundred and sixteen people at the 2011 census - and it knows what it has. The street is tidy in the literal, competitive sense: Moynalty has taken a national Tidy Towns gold medal in Category A, was named Best Kept Town in all of Ireland in 2011, and won the overall national title in 2013. A village this size winning the whole thing is the kind of result that gets a plaque and a long memory.

For one Sunday a year none of the quiet applies. The Steam Threshing Festival, run since 1975, fills the place with vintage steam engines, threshing and flailing, hot forges, basket weavers, harness makers and a working museum, and pulls tens of thousands of people into a field on the edge of a village of a hundred. It started as a fundraiser for the church extension and turned into one of the longest-running agricultural heritage events in the country.

Outside that weekend, this is north Meath farming country, eight kilometres up the road from Kells and a short hop from the Cavan border. There is one pub, a shop, a post office. Come for the village itself, the festival if your timing is right, and Kells - the Book of Kells town, the round tower, the high crosses - twenty minutes down the R164.

Population

~116 (2011)

Pubs

1and counting

Founded

Planned estate village completed 1837 by John Arthur Farrell

01 / 07

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 village

A model estate village, built on one side of the street and largely unchanged since 1837.

James Farrell bought the lands in 1790; his grandson John Arthur Farrell finished the village in 1837, the houses on a Swiss design and ranged along a single side. It is now an Architectural Conservation Area, and it has the Tidy Towns silverware to match.

Stories & lore → 02 The festival

The Steam Threshing Festival, running since 1975, second Sunday of August.

It began as a fundraiser for the church extension and never stopped. Steam engines, threshing and flailing, blacksmiths, basket weavers, a working museum. Tens of thousands come for a single Sunday in a place of barely a hundred people.

Stories & lore →

02 / 07

The pubs.

None of these are themed Irish pubs, because they don't need to be. A few that earn the trip:

McCormack's Bar

The one pub, and it does pizza at night

Village pub, Main Street

Moynalty has one pub and this is it, on Main Street. It does the usual village-bar duties and serves pizza in the evening, which in a place this size makes it the kitchen as well as the bar. Do not arrive expecting a choice; arrive expecting the pub.

03 / 07

Stories & lore.

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

A Swiss idea in north Meath, 1837

Farrell's model village

Moynalty as you see it was built, not grown. James Farrell purchased the lands in 1790, and it was his grandson John Arthur Farrell who completed the village in 1837 - a planned estate village laid out to a Swiss design, with the houses set along a single side of the street and the green and church opposite. Cottages were added on the river side after 1900, but the planned core survived, which is why the place is now a designated Architectural Conservation Area. It is a rarer thing than it looks: a small Irish village that was conceived whole, drawn on paper, and built more or less as drawn.

Fifty years of letting off steam

The Steam Threshing Festival

It was meant to be once. In 1975 the parish needed money for the church extension, and Dickie Gilsenan suggested a steam threshing day as the fundraiser. It made its money on a wet Sunday afternoon, everyone enjoyed it, and they did it again the next year, and every year since. Held on the second Sunday of August, it now draws tens of thousands of people to watch vanishing work done properly: steam engines and horse power, threshing and flailing, steel forging and hot shoeing, basket weaving, tin craft, wood turning and harness making, plus a road-making display recreating methods a century old. There is a permanent museum of the artefacts. The machines work. The crafts are done by people who still know how.

Eighth-century bronze, found in 1984

The Donore Hoard

In 1984 a hoard of early-medieval bronze objects was found at Donore in the parish - a decorated door handle and boss, plates and fittings in an eighth-century style, among the finest Insular metalwork to come out of the ground in Ireland. The Donore Hoard went to the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin in 1985, where it remains. It is not in Moynalty, so set your expectations: the village gives you the find spot and the story, the museum on Kildare Street gives you the objects.

Two dates on one cross

St Mary's and the moving cross

St Mary's, the village church, carries a small piece of structural comedy in stone. A cross was installed on the front of the church in 1820; by 1916 it had been found too heavy for the walls to carry, so it was taken down and re-erected in the middle of St Mary's Cemetery, where it stands today - which is why it bears two dates, 1820 and 1916. The 1976 extension to the nave is the same work the first threshing day was raising money for.

04 / 07

Things to do outside.

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

Moynalty Heritage Trail A short signed walk around the 1837 estate village - the single-sided Swiss-design street, the green, St Mary's and the churchyard with its 1820/1916 cross. Small, but the point is that the whole layout is legible: you can read the plan of the village as you walk it, which is unusual.

Village loopdistance

30-45 minutestime

05 / 07

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

The estate village and the green at their tidiest - this is a Tidy Towns champion, and spring is when it shows. Quiet, no crowds.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Time it for the second Sunday in August and the Steam Threshing Festival, the one day the village is not quiet. The rest of the summer is calm north-Meath countryside.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

Soft light on the estate street and harvest country all around. A good time to combine with Kells down the road.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

Short days and very little open. The village is worth a slow look, but there is one pub and not much else, so build the day around Kells.

◐ Mind yourself

06 / 07

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

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

Turning up expecting a busy village outside festival week

This is a village of barely a hundred people with one pub, a shop and a post office. On an ordinary Tuesday it is quiet, and that is the correct state of it. The crowds are a once-a-year, second-Sunday-of-August thing.

Coming to see the Donore Hoard in Moynalty

The hoard was found in the parish but it has been in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin since 1985. You can stand near where it came out of the ground; you cannot see it here.

Getting there.

By car

Moynalty sits at the junction of the R194 and R164 in north Meath, 8 km north of Kells and close to the Cavan border. Kells is about 20 minutes south on the R164; Dublin is around 70 minutes via the M3 and Kells.

By bus

Bus Éireann routes 108 and 186 link Moynalty with Kells and Bailieborough. Service is rural and limited, so check times before relying on it; a car is the realistic way in.