Borris Village is that rare marriage of beauty and bustle: a village that starts at the top of the hill and falls away to a mountain river at the bottom, and on its way offers a home to a single street of original buildings. The Blackstairs Mountain loom over the other side of the River Barrow, and the ancestral home of the McMurrough Kavanagh’s – Borris House – stretches one side of the street.

Public Houses, and in particular O’Shea’s Bar (which also sells tools) and Joyces (which has not changed much in decades), are busy places during the festival, as is the magnificent Step House Hotel, along with it’s incredible chef Alan Foley. Tea Rooms, indeterminate shops, a Town Hall, and 16-arch limestone viaduct built in 1860, and a large community of musicians, artists, poets, writers and film-makers living in its clutches make it an eccentric and very special place.

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