Moynalty

Moyalty is located in County Meath
(light green shape on the map.)

Moynalty (from the Irish Mágh nEalta) is a small rural village in the north-west of County Meath in Ireland. Located 8km north of Kells, where it borders County Cavan and was part of the Kells Poor Law Union.

Origins of the name

According to the Annals of the Four Masters the name 'Mágh nEalta' was introduced into Ireland about 2000 BC when Partholon, a Greek, gave that name to a treeless fertile plain in Dublin. Because the description also described its location, the area now known as Moynalty got the name Magh nEalta also. The name was initially used to describe the manoral lands and settlement in the area.

The Synod of Kells in 1152 restructured Catholicism on Ireland, replacing a monastic system of directing the Irish Church with a system of parishes, dioceses and archdioceses. As the old manorial village had embraced the name of the surrounding plain, the new parish assumed that name 'Magh n-Ealta' also.

Current village

The current village was built by James Farrell, who bought the estate which included Moynalty in 1790. It was erected in the 1820s and replaced an earlier village of mud cabins.

Buildings

The village's most prominent buildings are its Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland churches. The gothic St. Mary's Church was closed by the Church of Ireland and deconsecrated on 28 July 1992. It is now the offices of the local Credit Union.

Award-winning

Moynalty is very picturesque, and has won many awards, including the title of Ireland's Tidiest Village in 2004 and 2005, the second highest award in the annual Tidy Towns competition, (which is organised by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government) and one point behind overall Tidy Towns winner, Ennis, County Clare. Each August the village attracts thousands of people to its Steam Threshing festival, where old farming techniques used in Ireland down the years are displayed once more.

Saying

Because of the physical shape of the village when it was first erected in the 1820s, when the buildings were only on one side of the street, a Hiberno-English saying came into being:

All to one side like the town of Moynalty.

The saying used to describe something that is lopsided, uneven or of irregular shape.

The singer Matthew Gilsenan, one of the Celtic Tenors, comes from Moynalty.