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LITTLETON

CO. TIPPERARY · IE

Littleton
An Baile Beag, Co. Tipperary

The Ireland's Ancient East
STOP 05 / 05

An Baile Beag · Co. Tipperary

A bog village on the R660 where the briquette factory ran for sixty years and then didn't.

Littleton sits on the R660, halfway between Thurles and Holycross, in the flat bogland south of the Suir. The road through it is brief. The church - Our Lady and St Kevin's - is on the left coming south. The village has the shape of a place that was built around an industry, because it was.

For sixty years the industry was peat. Bord na Móna opened the Littleton briquette factory in the mid-twentieth century, cutting and processing peat from the bogs that stretch east and west of the village. At its peak the factory employed 69 people full-time, with more on the harvesting operation in the fields. In 2017 Bord na Móna announced the closure. In April 2018, the machines stopped. The factory was repurposed for plastic recycling by a Chinese-owned company, SIS, but peat was finished. The bogs are now being rehabilitated - returned to wetland, to carbon sink, to the thing they were before the drainage machines arrived.

What the village holds onto is the GAA. Moycarkey-Borris covers the parish - Moycarkey, Littleton, Two-Mile-Borris - and it is a serious club. Founded the year after the GAA itself, with two All-Irelands won in consecutive years at the turn of the twentieth century. Twelve Tipperary county senior hurling titles. This is mid-Tipperary: hurling is the local grammar, the thing people argue about at the counter, the thing they go to watch on winter Sundays when nothing else is happening.

Population

~394

Walk score

Village in five minutes; bog in ten

Coords

52.6275° N, 7.7186° 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 bog

Littleton Bog: sixty years of peat, then silence.

Bord na Móna cut peat here from the 1950s. The briquette factory ran until April 2018, when 69 jobs went with it. The bogs are still here - being rehabilitated now, slowly returning to what they were.

Stories & lore → 02 The GAA

Moycarkey-Borris: twelve county titles and two All-Irelands back to back.

The club was formed on 1 November 1885 - one year to the day after the GAA itself. The parish won the All-Ireland in 1899 and again in 1900. Twelve Tipperary county titles since. Hurling is not a casual interest here.

Stories & lore → 03 The road

On the R660 between Thurles and Holycross.

Thurles is ten kilometres north - the cathedral town, the train station, the GAA heartland. Holycross is five kilometres south - the Cistercian abbey, the eight-arch bridge, the River Suir. Littleton is the mile marker between them.

Getting there →

02 / 05

Stories & lore.

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

Sixty years of briquettes

The factory

Bord na Móna built the Littleton plant as part of its post-war expansion into industrial peat production. Six or eight working bogs fed into the factory by narrow-gauge rail - the same system Bord na Móna ran across the Midlands. The briquette became an Irish domestic fuel, sold in every hardware shop and petrol station, and Littleton was one of the places that made them. In May 2017 Bord na Móna announced the plant would close, citing declining sales, competition, and the carbon tax bearing down on solid fuels. The shutdown came in April 2018 with 69 redundancies. A year later, Bord na Móna announced it was ending peat harvesting across all its bogs. The company that had cut the bog for sixty years was becoming a renewable energy company. The factory building was taken over for plastic recycling. The bogs are being managed for biodiversity and carbon. The narrow-gauge track is gone.

One year after the GAA, and going since

Moycarkey-Borris GAA

The club held its founding meeting on 1 November 1885 - exactly one year to the day after the GAA's founding meeting in Thurles. The parish has been at it since. The Horse and Jockey team representing the area won the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship in 1899, defeating Blackwater of Wexford. Two-Mile-Borris retained it in 1900 under captain Ned Hayes. After the clubs merged into Moycarkey-Borris, the county titles kept coming: twelve in total, including a run in the 1980s when five county titles were won at adult level and the 1982 team beat Ballyduff of Waterford and Patrickswell of Limerick to take the Munster Championship. The club trains a kilometre from the village centre.

What happens after the machines leave

The bog itself

The raised bogs around Littleton are among the most significant in Tipperary - deep peat deposits laid down over thousands of years. Drainage for agriculture and then for Bord na Móna altered them fundamentally, lowering the water table, exposing the peat surface to oxidation and loss. Bord na Móna's rehabilitation programme, backed by an investment of over €115m nationally, aims to rewet these bogs, block the drains, and allow the sphagnum moss to return. A rewetted bog captures carbon. A dry cutaway bog releases it. The transition is slow - decades, not years. But the machinery is gone and the water is coming back.

03 / 05

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

Bog walking is easiest in dry spring weather before the vegetation gets ahead of you. Holycross is five minutes south and at its quietest.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

No particular crowds here. GAA season is running. The countryside is fine.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

County hurling championship rounds. If Moycarkey-Borris are in it, the parish is paying attention.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

Nothing wrong with it - but Littleton in January is a place to pass through on the way to Holycross, not a destination in itself.

◐ Mind yourself

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 visible bog heritage

The Bord na Móna works are decommissioned and largely inaccessible. There is no interpretive trail, no preserved narrow-gauge track on display. The story is real; the physical remains are not set up for visitors.

Making this your base for the area

Thurles is ten minutes north and has hotels, restaurants, and a train station. Littleton is a village you pass through or stop at briefly. That is not a criticism; it is just what it is.

Getting there.

By car

Thurles to Littleton is 10km south on the R660 - about twelve minutes. Holycross is 5km further south on the same road. From Cashel, head northeast on the R660; allow 20 minutes. The village is on the main road and impossible to miss.

By bus

TFI Local Link Tipperary runs the Thurles-Holycross corridor, which passes through Littleton. Thurles is the practical base for public transport - it is on the Dublin Heuston-Cork main line.

By train

Thurles station is on the Dublin Heuston-Cork main line. Frequent services in both directions. From Thurles, drive or take the Local Link bus south on the R660.