County Cavan · Ulster
Cootehill
Muinchille
the Irish name means 'sleeve' or ridge; the English name is for the Coote family
The story
Another town whose two names are unrelated. Thomas Coote got the land after the Cromwellian settlement and the town is named for him and his wife Frances Hill. It became one of Ulster's great linen markets, and the Irish name belongs to the older townland underneath it.
Worth seeing nearby
- Clones · Tigernach’s 6th-century monastery. A round tower, a stone sarcophagus said to be the saint’s, and a five-metre high cross whose shaft was carved between 825 and 875 — the head added later, by other hands.
- The Black Pig’s Dyke · A huge black boar tore up the ground with its tusks, and the ridge it threw up runs yet — in broken stretches across Leitrim, Longford, Cavan, Monaghan and Fermanagh. The boar is folklore; the bank is not. Timber from the Monaghan stretch dates to 390–370 BC. This pin marks one length of a very long thing.
All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.
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