Third-oldest in the world
The yacht club
Lough Derg Yacht Club was founded in 1835 — before the Crimean War, before the Famine, before most things people think of as old. It is considered the third-oldest yacht club in the world. The club began on the opposite shore of the lake at Kilteelagh, merged with the Lough Derg Boat Club, and settled at its current Dromineer home around 1901. The RNLI placed a lifeboat here in 2004 — the first inland lifeboat station in Ireland. The lake, at up to 13km wide, earns it.
Nobody could hold it long
The castle
Dromineer Castle started as a two-storey Norman hall house in the 13th century, built by followers of Theobald Butler. By 1299, the Cantwell family were paying taxes on it. In the late 14th century the land passed to the Ormond O'Kennedys, who remodelled it into a four-storey tower house. In 1582 the Butler Earls of Ormond retook it. In 1650 the Cromwellians garrisoned it. By the late 17th century it was a ruin. It still is. You can walk right up to it from the harbour.
Monks from Holy Island, maybe
The church in the graveyard
The ruined church in the village graveyard is thought to be older than the castle. The large stone blocks used in its construction have suggested to some that it dates from as early as the 10th century. It was remodelled in the 12th century in Celtic Romanesque style. There is a local tradition that monks from Iniscealtra — Holy Island on Lough Derg — came here to found a settlement, but that it never took hold. The church is what remained.
Two decades of October writers
The literary festival
The Dromineer Nenagh Literary Festival started in 2003 in a village with one pub and no obvious reason to host such a thing. It ran its 20th anniversary in October 2023, and has continued since. The programme splits between the village and Nenagh — readings, conversations, the occasional argument about books that goes on past closing. It is, for a few days each October, a larger place than it looks.