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More about Cookstown

Cookstown's famous main street (laid out from c1735-c1800), is one and one quarter mile long 1.25 miles (2.01 km) and 135 feet wide 135 feet (41.15 m), one of the longest main streets in Ireland. Cookstown's main street hosts an open air market each Saturday. The annual Cookstown 100 National Road Race is a motorbiking event attended by many motorbiking enthusiasts. It is the opening race of the road racing calendar in Ireland and is usually held in April. Ardboe High Cross and Abbey (Seanchrois Ard Bó agus Ministir Naomh Colmán), one of the best examples of a 9th/10th century High cross in Ireland is 10 miles from Cookstown. 22 panels illustrate stories from the Old Testament and the New Testament of the Bible. Other ancient sites nearby include Beaghmore stone circles and Tullyhogue Fort, the crowning place of the chiefs of Tyrone (Tir Eogain), the O'Neills. Destroyed in 1602, the fort was salvaged to some degree in 1964, when the site was cleared and presented. Though none of the original buildings remain, the unusual layout (raised inner mounds, but no outer defensive ditch) is still clearly visible. The Donaghrisk walled cemetery to the southwest of (and clearly visible from) the fort is the resting place of the O'Hagans, the chief justices of Tyrone (and as such, they presided over the crowning ceremonies of the O'Neills).

Lissan House lies on the outskirts of Cookstown. It is a huge structure of little architectural beauty but enormous historical significance and was, until the death of its last inhabitant, Hazel Radclyffe Dolling (daughter of the 13th Baronet of Lissan, Sir Robert George Alexander Staples), in 2006, the oldest domestic dwelling in Ireland continually inhabited by one family. The entrance front is dominated by a gargantuan porte-cochere built in about 1830. Inside, the most striking feature is the bizarre and gargantuan oak staircase which rises from the stone flagged entrance hall the full height of the building. This was constructed by a local carpenter from the remnants of a rare seventeenth century staircase which collapsed (along with the floors between it) as a result of dry rot in the 1880s and is quite unique, having flights springing at every conceivable angle, some of which go nowhere. The other most notable feature of the house is its octagonal ball room added by Sir Thomas Staples (Queen's Advocate in Ireland) in about 1830 with its fine restrained neo-classical plasterwork, Dublin chimneypiece and carved door frames. The house currently lies empty, its contents in storage, but a Trust was established on the death of Mrs. Radclyffe Dolling to oversee the restoration of the house and its development into accommodation and conference facilities.

Killymoon Castle is about 1.5 kilometres (1 mile) south east of Cookstown. This imposing structure is Cookstown's finest piece of architectural heritage. It was built in just over a year at a cost of £80,000 and was Nash's first Irish commission. It is two stories high and has two large towers to the East and West, one circular the other (slightly lower) octagonal. Parts of the original castle were retained and its former Chapel became Nash's library. Inside the dramatic entrance porte-cochere can be found a return staircase leading to the octagonal drawing room and oval dining room. The Stewarts sold the castle in 1852 and, after passing though the hands of some 6 owners, it was sold for the final time in 1922 to a local farmer for the princely sum of £100. The same family retains it to this day.

With Ulster's industry now substantially defunct, the town began to attract instead financial investment from shopping and tourism. In 2000, the Burnavon Arts and Cultural Centre opened on the site of the former Town Hall on the Burn Road and began to attract large scale cultural and artistic events to the town whilst a year later, a development scheme began which saw the former LMS Railway Terminus turned into a shopping centre. In 2003 Cookstown District Council in conjunction with Cookstown Town Centre Forum launched Cookstown's ten year Town Centre Regeneration Strategy and Action Plan which details a range of short, medium and long range regeneration actions.

Today, Cookstown has been almost completely regenerated with plans for further regeneration work to be carried out throughout the town centre. Another large shopping centre on Molesworth Street was built in 2007. The old Gunning and Moore Weaving Mill at Broadfields has been transformed into a large retail park with outlets of Tesco, Marks and Spencer, Homebase, Next, Tempest, New Look and Peacocks being the first tenants to set up here.

The town's central location and many hotels (for a population of just over 11,000 it has no less than 4) has meant that it is a natural location for conferences and meetings involving delegates from across Northern Ireland. It was the natural choice of location for the Mid-Ulster Sports Arena (established in 2003) and the planned multi-million pound investment in a state of the art Public Service Training College which will accommodate the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue and the Northern Ireland Prison Service (which is to be built at Loughry commencing in early 2009). Cookstown currently has more than a hundred types of businesses operating at its heart. Of the direct retailing businesses some two-thirds are independent, largely family-owned concerns which give the town's retailing a distinctive appearance and a unique mix of excellence outlets. The town's rich traditional retailing mix of high quality independent stores is a tribute to retaining long-standing and loyal business while simultaneously building a new customer base with the continued attraction of some of the biggest names in national retailing. The town has taken a long term view to regeneration and Cookstown District Council in conjunction with Cookstown Town Centre Forum appointed a Town Strategy Manager to implement Cookstown's Town Centre Regeneration Strategy.

Cookstown confidently bills itself as the ‘Retail Capital of Mid Ulster’ and is at the forefront of those towns which are reinventing retail and communicating the strength of the retailing offer to wider audiences, through a unique Cookstown brand identity (Cookstown – Looking Good, Looking Great) and aggressive marketing of the town locally and nationally. The town was also one of the first in Northern Ireland to produce a ten year Urban Design Strategy (2007), an aspirational framework for all future town centre development. The Cookstown Town Centre Living Initiative (LOTS) Scheme (2006 – 2011) offers substantial grant assistance to reinvigorate unused or derelict space above shops into modern residential living accommodation is considered to be one of the most successful schemes of any town in Northern Ireland. The Cookstown Town Centre Street Entertainment Programme (2008) promotes the town's family-friendly appeal and encouraging people either to visit for the first time or to prolong a regular visit. While over the course of 2008 and 2009 the civic heart of Cookstown's Burn Road is due to benefit from an Environmental Improvement Scheme.

The Council has secured millions of UK pounds sterling and ensured that inward investment has been at its highest level since the establishment of the town in the seventeenth century, developing beyond recognition the economic infrastructure, tourism, retail and hospitality sectors in the area.

Cookstown is famous for its sausages, known as the "Cookstown Sizzler", which were advertised on television by Rolf Harris and George Best. Fictionalised as "Ballyglass", it is the hometown of the hero of Utterly Monkey, a novel by local writer Nick Laird (husband of novelist Zadie Smith). The local paper, The Mid Ulster Mail, is the biggest selling local newspaper in the area.

In the film The Devil's Own, the character played by Brad Pitt claimed to be from Cookstown, which he described as being "on the shores of the Lough". Cookstown is actually 16 kilometres (10 miles) from the shores of Lough Neagh, only slightly closer than Belfast. It is possible the character could have been thinking of the closest town to his father's shoreside farm, though this would have been unlikely given that there are many small villages such as Ardboe which are closer than Cookstown.

Jimmy Kennedy, although born in Omagh, grew up in the Cookstown area and was educated at Cookstown Academy (the forerunner of Cookstown High School). He is well known for the many songs he wrote including, 'The Teddy Bears' Picnic', 'Red Sails in the Sunset', 'The Hokey Kokey' and 'South of the Border'. He won numerous awards during his lifetime, and his name was entered in the Songwriters' Hall of Fame in New York in 1997.

On census day (29 April 2001) there were 10,646 people living in Cookstown. Of these: 26.0% were aged under 16 years and 15.6% were aged 60 and over 49.7% of the population were male and 50.3% were female 3.9% of people aged 16-74 were unemployed.

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