Virginia, County Cavan
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Virginia Achadh an Iúir
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| Town | |
 Virginia
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| Coordinates: 53°50′00″N 7°05′00″W / 53.833333°N 7.0833337°WCoordinates: 53°50′00″N 7°05′00″W / 53.833333°N 7.0833337°W | |
| Country | Ireland |
| Province | Ulster |
| County | County Cavan |
| Area | |
| • Town | 49.77 km2 (19.22 sq mi) |
| Elevation | 113 m (371 ft) |
| Population (2016) | |
| • Town | 4,393 |
| • Density | 88/km2 (230/sq mi) |
| • Urban | 2,282 |
| • Rural | 1,657 |
| Time zone | WET (UTC+0) |
| • Summer (DST) | IST (WEST) (UTC-1) |
| Irish grid reference | N604876 |
| Website | www |
Virginia is the second largest town in County Cavan, Ireland. It was founded in the early 17th century, at Aghanure (Irish: Achadh an Iúir, meaning "field of the yew") during the Plantation of Ulster and was named Virginia after Queen Elizabeth I of England. The population is 2,282 (as of 2011).
Situated close to Lough Ramor, which is believed to be one of the largest lakes in County Cavan stretching approx. 7 km in length by 1 km at the narrowest point and feeds into the Blackwater and Boyne river systems. Virginia is on the N3 route approximately 85 km northwest of Dublin, where once it was a strategic staging and rest point for the coaches plying between Enniskillen and Dublin. In more recent times, Virginia is connected to the capital by an hourly bus service from Cavan town Bus Éireann. Regarded these days as a commuter town with its proximity to larger trading towns east and west, the local industry consists mainly of farming and milk processing at the local Glanbia factory, (formerly Virginia Milk Products) which produces skim milk powder and cream for the world-renowned brand Baileys Irish Cream liqueur. Other local manufacturers include the Fleetwood brand of paint products. Virginia won the Irish Tidy Towns Competition in 1964 and 1965. It has also been home to the popular annual Virginia Agricultural Show for over seventy years and more recently hosted Ireland's only Pumpkin Festival. The Virginia Pumpkin Festival takes place every October bank holiday weekend at Halloween time, it has been doing so since 2007.
Virginia began as an Ulster Plantation project, where an English adventurer named John Ridgeway was granted the crown patent in August 1612 to build a new town, situated upon the Great Road, approximately midway between the towns of Kells and Cavan. The chosen site according to tradition existed a ruined O'Reilly castle, and was then described as Aghaler, a location once set within the ancient Lurgan parish townland of Ballaghanea. Patented conditions of settlement which were to introduce English settlers to the area and build the town to incorporated borough status. Ridgeway's difficulty in attracting sufficient English trades people and settler families into what was then regarded as a hostile territory outside of the protection of the Pale, managed to build a few wooden cabins and a corn mill near to the castle and situated close to the shores of Lough Ramor. Ridgeway passed the patent on to another Englishman captain Hugh Culme who already possessed lands about Lough Oughter in County Cavan and had access to building timber. Culme persuaded the Plantation Commission to move the location of Virginia to its present location close to the Blackwater tributary river, whereupon he built a number of cabins for the settlers but still failed to meet the Commissions time frame for developing the town further before giving up on the task, probably for the same reasons as his predecessor. During November 1622, the Virginia estate came into the possession of Luke Plunkett, 1st Earl of Fingall who also held extensive lands around County Meath. Plunkett, who was a Catholic Anglo-Irish lord of Norman descent, whose family had come to Ireland in the twelfth century, undertook to complete the patented project.
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