County Leitrim Guide (Liatroim)
“The Ridge County” - in the province of Connacht. County town: Carrick-on-Shannon.
Lakes, drumlins and the Shannon–Erne Waterway in Ireland’s least-populated county.
Ireland’s least-populated county, Leitrim is a hidden landscape of small lakes, drumlin hills and the meandering Shannon–Erne Waterway. Long overlooked, it has become a quiet haven for artists and those seeking a slower life. Tiny Carrick-on-Shannon, its capital, is a hub for boating the great river system.
Quietly beautiful and often overlooked, Leitrim is Ireland's least populous county, a place of drumlins, rushy fields and an extraordinary amount of water: Lough Allen splits it almost in two, the Shannon rises just beyond its border and glides through it, and dozens of smaller lakes stock some of the best coarse fishing in Europe. Sliabh an Iarainn, the Iron Mountain, recalls centuries of iron working above Lough Allen. The Famine hit Leitrim harder than almost anywhere; a county of more than 150,000 people in 1841 fell decade after decade, and its story is written in emigrant letters across America, Britain and Australia.
That history of leaving gives Leitrim a special pull for the diaspora, and the county has quietly reinvented itself around its waterways, artists and food producers. The reopening of the Ballinamore-Ballyconnell canal as the Shannon-Erne Waterway in 1994 turned Carrick-on-Shannon into one of Ireland's busiest boating towns, while Drumshanbo's gin has carried the county's name around the world. This was O'Rourke country, the kingdom of Breifne ruled from Dromahair, and it later gave the 1916 Rising one of its signatories, Sean Mac Diarmada, whose thatched birthplace still stands at Kiltyclogher.
Cities, towns and villages in Leitrim
- Carrick-on-Shannon - The lively county town and cruiser capital of the Shannon, home to the tiny Costello Memorial Chapel, the smallest in Ireland.
- Manorhamilton - Chief town of scenic north Leitrim, grown around the ruined 1630s castle of Sir Frederick Hamilton amid glacial valleys.
- Drumshanbo - Town at the foot of Sliabh an Iarainn famed for the Joe Mooney Summer School of traditional music and as the home of Gunpowder Irish Gin.
- Mohill - Market town closely associated with the blind harper Turlough O'Carolan, who is commemorated with a statue in its main street.
- Ballinamore - Friendly canal town on the Shannon-Erne Waterway with a strong angling and genealogy-research tradition.
- Dromahair - Village on the Bonet that was the seat of the O'Rourkes of Breifne, near the ruins of Creevelea Friary and Parke's Castle on Lough Gill.
- Kiltyclogher - Border village where 1916 leader Sean Mac Diarmada was born; his thatched homestead is preserved as a national monument.
- Drumsna - Shannonside village where Anthony Trollope, working for the postal service, found the inspiration for his first novel.
- Kinlough - Village near Lough Melvin, a lake renowned among anglers for trout varieties found almost nowhere else.
- Tullaghan - Leitrim's only coastal village, standing on the county's tiny sliver of Atlantic shoreline.
Famous people from Leitrim
- Sean Mac Diarmada - Signatory of the 1916 Proclamation and chief organiser of the Rising, born at Corranmore near Kiltyclogher in 1883.
- John McGahern - One of the finest Irish novelists of the 20th century, raised in and around Aughawillan and later farming near Fenagh, where books like Amongst Women are set.
- Margaret Haughery - The Bread Woman of New Orleans, a famine-era emigrant from Carrigallen whose charity made her one of the first women honoured with a public statue in America.
- Thomas Heazle Parke - Surgeon and explorer from Drumsna, the first Irishman to cross Africa, whose statue stands outside the Natural History Museum in Dublin.
- Turlough O'Carolan - The great blind harper and composer spent much of his life around Mohill, which honours him with a bronze statue.
- Brian O'Rourke - Lord of West Breifne who sheltered survivors of the Spanish Armada and was executed at Tyburn in 1591 for his defiance of the Crown.
- Packie McGarty - Mohill-born Gaelic footballer of the 1950s and 60s, widely regarded as the greatest player never to win a major national honour.
- Charlie McGettigan - Singer-songwriter long based in Drumshanbo who won the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest with Rock 'n' Roll Kids.
Did you know?
- Leitrim has the shortest coastline of any coastal county in Ireland, roughly four kilometres of Atlantic shore at Tullaghan.
- It is the least populous county in Ireland, having fallen from over 150,000 people before the Famine.
- The Costello Memorial Chapel in Carrick-on-Shannon, built in 1879 by a grieving husband, is the smallest chapel in Ireland and one of the smallest in the world.
- The Shannon-Erne Waterway, reopened in 1994 along the old Ballinamore-Ballyconnell canal, reconnected Ireland's two great river systems through Leitrim.
- Lough Melvin holds the gillaroo and sonaghan, genetically distinct trout found in very few waters anywhere in the world.
- Anthony Trollope began his first novel, The Macdermots of Ballycloran, after being struck by a ruined house he saw while stationed at Drumsna.
- Glencar Waterfall, on the Leitrim side of Glencar Lough, features in W. B. Yeats's poem The Stolen Child.
- Leitrim's 1994 Connacht senior football title was only its second ever, the first having come in 1927.
Surnames from Leitrim: Clancy · O'Rourke · Reynolds · Beirne · Berrigan · Forde · McKeon · Meehan