Most tourists will arrive at Dublin airport and know where to go first: baggage carousel, immigration, car rental. Then wide, green there. But where should you go first when you are actually at (or at least close to) your destination, perhaps even before checking into your hotel or vacation home?
Well, we recommend a stop in the closest county town. Because… that’s where it is and where you’ll find what you need. In most cases, there is even a McDonald’s to keep those pesky kids quiet on the first day.
What is actually a county town?
The term “county city” generally refers to the administrative center of a county, often actually the largest city in the county. The county towns are found throughout the UK and Ireland.
Their special status usually comes from the administrative or judicial institutions based in the city, from the local planning office, through social welfare offices, hospitals, courts and everything in between the areas served by the Birth Registry. , deaths and marriages. Over the centuries, this will make the city the main city of a county. The center of attention, so to speak.
But, in the UK more than in Ireland, the old concept that the county town was actually the seat of the county administration (often in a more or less glamorous ‘town hall’) was diluted. Many reforms dragged the administration to another city, often with officials kicking and screaming, and some cities in the county returned to become a rural backwater.
Simply because people no longer went there …
What you can expect to find in a county town
Any county town in Ireland will generally have the following:
- local authority offices and court buildings, most of which are of no interest to the tourist (except perhaps from an architectural or historical point of view);
- tourist information offices (with many brochures and often reservation services);
- a library (always a good source of information, even in our mega digital age);
- a hospital (although this is definitely in decline, you are sure to find doctors, dentists and pharmacies);
- a station of the Garda Siochana, or Northern Ireland Police Service;
- shopping malls, from Aldi to artisan food, from shoes to intermediate books;
- gas stations and garages.
So basically anything that anyone traveling in Ireland might need. The county town is your only place of passage, as it is for the local population.
A list of county towns in Ireland
Without further ado, here are the county towns of Ireland as of 2015:
- County Antrim: the county town is Antrim;
- County Armagh: the county town is the City of Armagh;
- County of Carlow: the city of the county is Carlow;
- County of Cavan: the city of the county is Cavan;
- County Clare: the county town is Ennis;
- County Cork: the county town is Cork City;
- County Derry (also known as County Londonderry): the county town is Coleraine;
- County Donegal – County City is Lifford (but both Donegal City and, to a greater extent, Letterkenny are local centers);
- County Down: the county town is Downpatrick;
- Fermanagh County: the county town is Enniskillen;
- County Galway: The county town is Galway City;
- County Kerry: the county town is Tralee;
- Kildare County: the county town is Naas;
- County Kilkenny: the county town is Kilkenny;
- County of Laois – the county town is Portlaoise;
- County Leitrim: the county town is Carrick-on-Shannon;
- Limerick County: the city of the county is Limerick City;
- Longford County: the county town is Longford;
- County Louth: the county town is Dundalk;
- Mayo County: the county town is Castlebar;
- County Meath – County town is Navan (used to be Trim);
- County of Monaghan: the county town is Monaghan;
- County Offaly: the county town is Tullamore;
- Roscommon County: the county town is Roscommon;
- County of Sligo: the city of the county is Sligo;
- County Tipperary – the county town is Nenagh;
- Tyrone: the county town is Omagh;
- County of Waterford: the city of the county is Dungarvan;
- Westmeath County: the county town is Mullingar;
- County of Wexford: the county town is Wexford;
- County of Wicklow: the city of the county is Wicklow.
Dublin State
Originally the city of County Dublin would have been the City of Dublin, but County Dublin no longer exists. Instead, the previous entity has been divided into four:
- Dublin City;
- Dún Laoghaire and Rathdown with Dún Laoghaire as “county town”;
- Fingal county with swords as “county town”;
- South Dublin with Tallaght as ‘county town’.
