Overview
In a Cavan village of a few hundred people, you can design a teddy bear from scratch, pick its eyes and its stuffing, and walk out with it the same afternoon. That’s Bear Essentials, and it’s the last thing you would expect on the main street of Bawnboy. The village – An Bábhún Buí, ‘the yellow bawn’ – sits at the foot of Slieve Rushen on the N87 between Ballyconnell and Swanlinbar, close to the Marble Arch Caves geopark and the Fermanagh border. A bawn is a walled enclosure built to protect cattle; the one that named the place is long gone, but a few good reasons to stop have outlasted it.
Bear Essentials
Bear Essentials and the Silver Bear Centre is a teddy bear workshop where you build your own bear – choose it, stuff it, dress it – and it also stocks collectable brands like Steiff and Charlie Bears. It’s a genuine oddity for a small border village and an easy hour with children. Ring ahead before you make a special trip, though: it’s a small operation, and hours can be irregular.
History
The area sits in the old McGovern barony of Tullyhaw. In medieval times the land was split into ballybetagh units, and the townland covering Bawnboy carried the name Aghawenagh, ‘the town of the marshy plain’. A 1622 survey recorded a stone bawn here, sixty feet square, with a small stone house inside it – the enclosure that gave the village both its shape and its name. Bawnboy turns up again as Baonboy in the mid-17th-century Hearth Money Rolls.
On the edge of the village stand the walls of the Bawnboy Union Workhouse, built in 1852, in the last year of the Great Famine. Like every workhouse it’s a grim building with a grim history, and it’s private property now, so view it from the road.
Brackley Lake and St Mogue’s Island
A couple of kilometres out, Brackley Lake is the local spot for coarse fishing and a summer swim, busiest on warm evenings. In the lake sits St Mogue’s Island, reckoned to be the birthplace of St Mogue around the year 558, with the ruins of an early Christian monastic site still on it.
The Bawnboy Loop walk
The Bawnboy Loop is a marked walk of about five kilometres through Carrick East Forest, following blue way-markers and climbing gently to a viewing platform over Brackley Lake and the drumlin country around it. It’s mixed forest, quiet lanes and open field, fine for anyone of moderate fitness, and Coillte publish a downloadable map. The forest sections turn muddy after heavy rain, so wear proper boots.
Nearby attractions
- Brackley Lake – the lake seen from the loop walk, and its island monastic ruins.
- Killycluggin Stone – a decorated Iron Age stone linked to the pagan idol Crom Cruaich once stood nearby; a replica marks the crossroads, and the original is in Cavan County Museum.
- Jampa Ling – a Tibetan Buddhist meditation centre just outside the village, another unlikely neighbour.
- Owendoon – an 1830 house nearby with a local curse story attached to it.
- Cavan Burren Park – a short drive north, with dolmens and wedge-tomb trails.
- Marble Arch Caves – the UNESCO-listed geopark, a few kilometres east.
- Annagh Lake – a quiet lake for swimming and angling, with a historic crannóg.
Practical information
- Location: Bawnboy, County Cavan, on the N87 between Ballyconnell and Swanlinbar.
- Getting there: there’s no rail service in the area – the narrow-gauge Cavan & Leitrim Railway closed decades ago, and Bawnboy Road station shut in 1959. Martin Leydon Coaches run a bus to Cavan town (about 47 minutes), but a car is easiest.
- Parking: free roadside parking near the village centre and at the trailhead for the loop walk.
- Facilities: a shop and a pub or two, and not much else – sort out food before you arrive.
- Trail conditions: the Bawnboy Loop is walkable year-round, but forest paths get muddy after rain, so bring sturdy footwear.
If you’ve time for only one stop, make it Bear Essentials – but ring first, because a village this size doesn’t keep tourist-office hours.