County Offaly Guide (Uíbh Fhailí)
“The Faithful County” - in the province of Leinster. County town: Tullamore.
Home of Clonmacnoise monastery and the Tullamore Dew distillery.
Offaly stretches from the Bog of Allen to the Slieve Bloom Mountains in the flat green midlands. Its treasure is Clonmacnoise, the great early-Christian monastic city on the banks of the Shannon, once a centre of learning for all of Europe. The county town, Tullamore, gives its name to a famous whiskey.
Few counties carry the weight of early Christian Ireland quite like Offaly. At Clonmacnoise, founded by St Ciaran around 544 where the Slighe Mhor road crossed the River Shannon, high kings of Ireland were buried among round towers and carved crosses, and the monastery grew into one of medieval Europe's great centres of learning. Shired in 1556 as King's County, in honour of Philip II of Spain during his marriage to Mary I, the county reclaimed its ancient name of Uibh Fhaili after independence. Its landscape is one of quiet drama: raised bogs, eskers left by retreating glaciers, and the rounded Slieve Bloom Mountains rising along the southern border.
For much of the twentieth century Offaly's economy ran on turf, with Bord na Mona harvesting the great midland bogs to feed power stations at Ferbane and Shannonbridge; today those same boglands are being rewetted and reimagined for wildlife and walking. Tullamore built a global whiskey brand, while Georgian Birr became an unlikely centre of Victorian science thanks to the astronomer earls of Rosse. Offaly people are famously understated, yet the county has punched far above its weight in sport, claiming All-Ireland titles in both hurling and football and producing an Open golf champion in Shane Lowry of Clara.
Cities, towns and villages in Offaly
- Tullamore - The county town on the Grand Canal, home of Tullamore D.E.W. whiskey and its visitor distillery.
- Birr - An elegant Georgian heritage town whose castle grounds hold the Leviathan, once the largest telescope on Earth.
- Banagher - A historic Shannon crossing point where Anthony Trollope worked and Charlotte Bronte spent her honeymoon.
- Edenderry - A busy market town on the county's eastern edge, ringed by the Bog of Allen and the Grand Canal.
- Clara - A former jute and mill town that raised both Taoiseach Brian Cowen and Open champion Shane Lowry.
- Daingean - Formerly Philipstown, the original county town of King's County, set on the Grand Canal.
- Ferbane - A west Offaly town shaped by the peat industry and its former Bord na Mona power station.
- Shannonbridge - A small Shannon-side village guarded by a Napoleonic-era artillery fortification, close to Clonmacnoise.
- Kinnitty - A pretty gateway village to the Slieve Bloom Mountains, known for its castle and curious pyramid mausoleum.
Famous people from Offaly
- Shane Lowry - Golfer from Clara who won the 2019 Open Championship at Royal Portrush.
- Brian Cowen - Clara native who served as Taoiseach from 2008 to 2011.
- William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse - Astronomer of Birr Castle who built the Leviathan telescope and first observed the spiral structure of galaxies.
- Sir Charles Parsons - Inventor of the compound steam turbine, raised at Birr Castle as the youngest son of the 3rd Earl of Rosse.
- Brian Whelahan - Birr hurling legend named on the GAA Team of the Millennium while still playing.
- Mundy - Singer-songwriter from Birr best known for 'July' and his version of 'Galway Girl'.
- Neil Delamere - Comedian and broadcaster from Edenderry, a fixture of Irish television panel shows.
- St Ciaran - Sixth-century saint who founded the great monastic city of Clonmacnoise on the Shannon.
- Barack Obama - The 44th US president traces his Irish roots to Moneygall, where his ancestor Falmouth Kearney lived before emigrating in 1850.
Did you know?
- Offaly was known as King's County from 1556 until independence, named for Philip II of Spain, then husband of Queen Mary I.
- The Leviathan of Parsonstown at Birr Castle, completed in 1845, remained the largest telescope in the world for over seventy years.
- In 1785 a crashed hot-air balloon set fire to Tullamore, destroying around 100 homes in what is often called the world's first aviation disaster; the town's crest features a phoenix rising from flames.
- Old Croghan Man, an exceptionally tall Iron Age bog body over 2,000 years old, was discovered near Croghan Hill in 2003.
- Seamus Darby's late goal for Offaly in the 1982 All-Ireland football final famously denied Kerry a historic five-in-a-row.
- Tullamore D.E.W. whiskey takes its initials from Daniel E. Williams, the manager who built up the distillery in the late 1800s.
- The box hedges in the gardens of Birr Castle are recognised as the tallest in the world.
- Clonmacnoise was the burial place of the last High King of Ireland, Rory O'Connor, in 1198.
Places to visit in Offaly
- Clonmacnoise - A great early-Christian monastic city on the Shannon.
Surnames from Offaly: Dunne · Carroll · Mooney · Hennessy · Dempsey · Molloy · Coughlan · Berrigan · Bulfin · Corcoran · Dooley · Fox