Monaghan

Monaghan ('mɒn@h@n ; ˈmɣɪnjəxaːnɣ) is the county town of County Monaghan, Ireland. It also provides the name of its civil parish and barony. The population of the town as of the 2016 census was 7,678. The town is on the N2 road from Dublin to Derry and Letterkenny. The Irish name Muineachán derives from a diminutive plural form of the Irish word muine meaning "brake" (a thickly overgrown area) or sometimes "hillock". The Irish historian and writer Patrick Weston Joyce interpreted this as "a place full of little hills or brakes". Monaghan County Council's preferred interpretation is "land of the little hills", a reference to the numerous drumlins in the area. The Menapii Celtic tribe are specifically named on Ptolemy's 150 AD map of Ireland, where they located their first colony – Menapia – on the Leinster coast 216 BC. They later settled around Lough Erne, becoming known as the Fir Manach, and giving their name to Fermanagh and Monaghan. Mongán mac Fiachnai, a 7th-century King of Ulster, is the protagonist of several legends linking him with Manannan mac Lir. They spread across Ireland, evolving into historic Irish (also Scottish and Manx) clans. The Battle of Clontibret, fought between the forces of The Earl of Tyrone, An Ó Néill (The O'Neill), of Tír Eoghain, and the English Crown, was fought in northern County Monaghan in May 1595. The territory of Monaghan had earlier been wrested from the control of the MacMahon sept in 1591, when the leader of the MacMahons was hanged by authority of the Dublin government; this was one of the events that led to the Nine Years War and the Tudor conquest of Ireland. On the Hill of Lech, the Hill of the Stone, was the inauguration stone of the Mac Mahons. It overlooks Ballagh Lough to the west, which was once known as Lough Leck. Situated south-west of Monaghan, the petrosomatoglyph was last used in 1595, but was destroyed by a farm owner in 1809. It is said to be built into the wall of a mill. In 1801, Monaghan Town, along with the rest of the Rossmore Estate, became the property of the Westenra family.