Coill Íochtair · Co. County Tyrone
One of the most westerly points in Tyrone. Ninety-three people, a forest the size of a small county, and the Donegal border less than a kilometre away.
Killeter is the end of the road in more than one sense. The village itself is a handful of houses in the Upper Derg valley, population 93 at the last count, with the Donegal border pressing up from the west and a forest the size of a small county wrapping around the rest. The name means lower wood in Irish. The forest justifies it. Killeter Forest runs across roughly 32 square kilometres of valley and hillside - conifers, blanket bog, oligotrophic lakes, and the Derg river threading through the lot. It has been declared an Area of Special Scientific Interest for the bog and lake habitats it contains. You do not come here accidentally.
What Killeter has is a writer's footnote and a pilgrim's memory. Benedict Kiely, the Tyrone novelist, based the fictional village of Carmincross in his novel Nothing Happens in Carmincross on this place. Pilgrims walked through here for centuries on their way to Lough Derg, stopping at St Patrick's Well at the edge of the village. The August fair still runs, celebrating rural life in a parish that still lives it. There is a chip shop on the Woodside Road and a food store on the main street. That is the full inventory of services. For anything else, Castlederg is twelve kilometres east.
