Town in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland
Cookstown
A castle by John Nash, Bronze Age stone circles and sausages every Ulster fry knows: Cookstown packs a lot around one very long street.
Key information
- County
- County Tyrone
- Nation
- Northern Ireland
- Known for
- A mile-long main street, Cookstown sausages, the nearby Beaghmore Stone Circles
- Famous people
- Alan Cooke (founder), John Nash (Killymoon architect), the Stewart family of Killymoon
About Cookstown
The street that never seems to end
Cookstown is built around a single main street that runs for roughly 1.25 miles and is wide enough to feel more like a long, thin square. Arrive from either end and you can see the whole thing stretching away ahead of you. That is no accident. The town was laid out on a plan, not left to sprawl, and the broad street was designed as a place for markets, fairs and carts to turn without trouble. Centuries on, it still gives the town its character. It carries the name of the man behind it too. Cookstown is Alan Cooke's town, founded in the early 17th century when Tyrone was being resettled during the Plantation of Ulster.
Why a sausage made the town famous
Say 'Cookstown' in a Northern Irish kitchen and many people will think of breakfast. Cookstown sausages are a local brand and a byword across the north, a staple of the Ulster fry alongside soda farls, potato bread and bacon. It is a good example of a small town's food business growing far beyond its own boundaries. You will find the name on supermarket shelves well away from Tyrone. For a town of its size, that is a lot of fame from one humble product.
A castle by the man who designed Regent Street
Killymoon Castle, just outside the town, was designed by John Nash around the turn of the 19th century for the Stewart family, who owned the land and shaped Cookstown's growth. Nash is the architect better known for Regent's Park and Buckingham Palace's makeover. His Tyrone work is a battlemented, fairy-tale piece of Gothic Revival, set above the Ballinderry River. Killymoon is a private home, so it is best admired from a distance, but it tells you the Stewarts had big ambitions. The Stewart family's estate also helped decide the shape and prosperity of the town below.
Linen, water power and a working mill
Linen made this part of Ulster rich, and Wellbrook Beetling Mill, a short drive from Cookstown, is the proof. It is a water-driven mill where linen cloth was pounded with heavy wooden hammers, called beetles, to give it a sheen. Wellbrook is the last working water-powered beetling mill in Ireland. It is now cared for by the National Trust, and the clatter of the machinery is a sound that once echoed along many Ulster rivers. It is a handy reminder that the town's prosperity came from the farms, the bleach greens and the mills of the surrounding countryside.
Stones older than the town by thousands of years
Cookstown sits at the edge of the Sperrin Mountains, and the landscape just beyond has some of Ireland's strangest prehistoric sights. At Beaghmore, peat cutters in the 1930s uncovered a collection of Neolithic and Bronze Age stone circles, rows and cairns that had been buried under bog for millennia. The stones are small, more like a field of teeth than the giants of Stonehenge, but there are many of them, arranged in precise patterns. The area is also known for its dark skies, so it is a fine spot for stargazing. On the shore of Lough Neagh, Ardboe High Cross stands about 18 feet high. This 10th-century stone cross is carved with biblical scenes and has been weathering for around a thousand years.
Roads, fairways and Gaelic fields
Cookstown has a long relationship with speed. The Cookstown 100 is a road race on closed country roads near the town, part of Ulster's strong motorcycle racing tradition. If you prefer a slower pace, Killymoon Golf Club offers parkland golf beside the castle grounds. Gaelic games are strong here too, as in much of Tyrone, where football is close to a religion. Between the Sperrins, Lough Neagh and the long main street, the town is a handy base for a surprisingly varied day out.