Magherafelt, NIR - Postcode - BT45 5AF

Description of Magherafelt

Magherafelt, Irish Machaire Fíolta, town and former district (1973–2015) within the former county of Londonderry, now in Mid Ulster district, central Northern Ireland. Magherafelt town was originally an English-company (Plantation of Ulster) town and is now a marketing centre. Maghera town, 9 miles (14 km) to the northwest, was the birthplace of Charles Thomson (1730–1824), who served as secretary to the First and Second U.S. Continental Congresses (1774–89) and wrote out the Declaration of Independence.

The former Magherafelt district was bounded by the River Bann and Lough (lake) Neagh on the east and by the Sperrin Mountains on the west. It bordered the former districts of Antrim and Ballymena to the east; Coleraine to the north; Limavady, Strabane, and Omagh to the west; and Cookstown to the south. Gently rolling lowlands in the east rise gradually westward to elevations of more than 1,800 feet (550 metres) above sea level in the Sperrin Mountains. The area is largely agricultural; its chief crops include potatoes, barley, flax, and oats. There is salmon fishing along the River Bann, and granite is quarried in the Sperrin Mountains.

History of Magherafelt

Magherafelt has been documented as a town since 1425. An earlier name for the area was Teach Fíolta - ‘Fíolta’s (monastic) house’. This would suggest that there was a monastic settlement here under the leadership of Fíolta. The site of the medieval parish church may be marked by the ruins of a later church and graveyard at the bottom of Broad Street. The Salters Company of London was granted the surrounding lands in South Londonderry in the seventeenth century as part of the Plantation of Ulster. Subsequently, the town began to take on its current shape with a central diamond forming the heart of the town.

Administration

The town had its own Magherafelt District Council. On 1 April 2015, it was merged with Cookstown District Council and Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council under local government reorganisation in Northern Ireland becoming Mid-Ulster District Council. Magherafelt's voters choose five of the Mid Ulster District Council's forty representatives. Two members of Sinn Féin, one member of the SDLP, and two members of the Democratic Unionist Party were among the five councillors elected in the 2019 Mid Ulster District Council election. Specifically, it is in the Mid Ulster constituency of the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Mid Ulster region (UK Parliament constituency).