Tigh na hÉille · Co. Wicklow
A small south Wicklow town that fills with 20,000 people one Monday every August for an agricultural show that has been running since 1935.
Tinahely is a south Wicklow market town that exists at two speeds. For most of the year it is a quiet service town for the surrounding farming country - a pub, a church, a handful of shops, the hills toward Carlow visible to the south-west. On the August bank holiday Monday it becomes something else entirely.
The Tinahely Agricultural Show has run every August bank holiday Monday since 1935, with only the wartime years as exception. It takes place at Fairwood Park, a 71-acre estate on the edge of the town, and draws around 20,000 people - livestock classes, show jumping, trade stands, craft tents, the full apparatus of an Irish agricultural show that has been doing this for ninety years. For a town of around 1,200 people, the scale of the show is improbable. It runs regardless of weather.
Outside of show week, Tinahely is a useful stopping point in south Wicklow between Aughrim and the Shillelagh road. The hills are accessible, the Derry River runs through the surrounding farmland, and the drive west through Coolkenno toward Kildavin is good quiet-road Wicklow.
