Overview
Scotstown is the last village before the River Blackwater rises out of the Sliabh Beagh hills, which is why it sits where it does: a crossroads looking out over farmland in the north-west corner of County Monaghan. It’s a small place, 361 people at the 2016 census, and honest about it. What it does have is history stacked up in a way you wouldn’t expect for its size.
The names carry some of that. The townland is Bough, in Irish An Bhoth, ‘the hut’ or ‘place of huts’, which tells you how modest the start was, while Baile an Scotaigh is the official Irish name, a straight translation of the English. The English ‘Scotstown’ points either to Scots settled here during the 17th-century Plantation of Monaghan or to a landowner named George Scott in the 1660s. The village straddles several townlands (Carrowhatta, Teraverty, Drumdesco and Stracrunnion) within Tydavnet parish.
History and heritage
The oldest story here is out on Hollywood Lake, where a crannóg, an artificial island dwelling, was the headquarters of Patrick Mac Art Moyle MacMahon, a chief of the MacMahon sept. He held out through the Nine Years’ War and surrendered to Baron Mountjoy in 1601.
Religion left the deeper mark. The Catholic chapel at Drumdesco, Urbleshanny, was built in 1785 and rebuilt in the 1820s, and for a spell it punched above its station: from 1801 to 1824 it served as pro-cathedral for the Diocese of Clogher. Its registers go back to 1825 for marriages and 1835 for births, and the graveyard alongside has stones from the late 1700s. Local memory holds onto one detail better than any of that, the post-wedding whiskey-bottle races down to Whiskey Hollow. A Presbyterian cemetery near the village centre, no longer in use, is a reminder that the place was mixed.
By the 1830s Scotstown had a proper fair on the village green, with traders selling calico, linen, stockings and hardware; in the previous century it had been a depot for stone quarried off Sliabh Beagh. The village that reputedly ran the earliest Catholic school in the Diocese of Clogher, set up in 1791 once the penal laws eased, didn’t get its current Urbleshanny National School until 1932, and didn’t get electricity until 1948.
Sport is the thing people here will tell you about first. The GAA club, An Bhoth, won its first Monaghan Senior Football Championship in 1960 and retained it in 1961.
What to see and do
If you’ve an hour, make it the lake. Hollywood Lake is signposted off the Ballinode–Scotstown road, according to the county visitor guide. If you visit, stay on the public paths and follow the signs near the water.
Urbleshanny Chapel and its old graveyard are worth a quiet ten minutes if you’re passing, more for the age of the stones than the building.
The Sliabh Beagh uplands are close by, with marked routes managed by the county. Check the route map, conditions and return transport before setting out, as the ground up there is uneven and not for every pair of legs.
Rally School Ireland operates at the edge of the village, in Gola townland, offering driving experiences in rally cars. Sessions are not drop-in, so check its current availability and booking arrangements before you go.
Local events
Scotstown has a long-standing trad music tradition, and the Scoil Cheoil na Botha festival has been held here in autumn, built around fiddle, flute and song. Festival dates and facilities are not confirmed here, so check locally before planning a trip around it.
Getting there and nearby
Monaghan Tourism’s transport guide links to the Local Link service through Scotstown from Monaghan town. Check the timetable for both directions, particularly if you are travelling without a car.
North of the village, the Castle Leslie Estate at Glaslough is an easy drive, with its house, gardens and grounds.