B&Bs in Monaghan
If you have found a list of twenty bed and breakfasts in Monaghan, that list is old. Several of the names that appear on the accommodation pages still floating around online closed years ago. This page is deliberately short, because an honest short list is more use than a long one that sends you to a house with the curtains shut.
What happened to the trade
Thirty years ago the border counties ran on B&Bs. Taking in guests was an ordinary sideline for a farm or a big house on a main road, and every approach to a town like this one had a few signs out.
Most of that is gone, and Monaghan is not unusual. The same thing happened across Cavan, Leitrim, Fermanagh and Tyrone. Hotel rooms got cheaper. Booking moved onto platforms that reward whoever has the most rooms and the most reviews. And the people who ran the good ones got older, and their children mostly did not take it on. A spare room in a family house stopped paying for the work involved.
What is left is smaller, and on the whole better. The places that survived did so because someone is genuinely good at it.
What is actually still open
These were taking bookings when this page was written, and each keeps a website of its own that you can check before you travel.
Ashleigh House on Dublin Street is a proper family run guesthouse rather than a spare room, in the town centre and within walking distance of everything. It is the obvious answer if you are arriving by bus and do not want to be driving anywhere.
Hillside is also in the town, on a quiet street with en suite rooms and breakfast included. It is small and owner run, which is the point of a B&B in the first place.
Lynster House at Milltown is a few minutes out of the town by car, with three guest rooms and a Failte Ireland rating. You need a car for it, and it is the closest thing locally to the old idea of a good country house B&B.
There are others taking bookings through the platforms without a site of their own. That is not a mark against them. It only means we cannot check them the way the rest of this site is checked, so they are not named here.
What has grown instead
Self catering. There are cottages, converted farm buildings and holiday lets scattered through the drumlins around the town, and there are more of them now than there were B&Bs at the peak. They tend to go by the week in summer and by the weekend the rest of the year.
If you are coming as a group, or for a family occasion, or with children who will not settle at a stranger’s breakfast table, self catering is usually better value than taking three hotel rooms. It is also the only way most people get to stay out in the countryside around Monaghan now that the farmhouse B&B has largely gone.
How to check what is actually trading
The whole point of this page is that you should not trust a static list, including this one.
- Try to make a booking. It is the fastest and most reliable test there is. A place that will not take a date is not open.
- The county tourism site at monaghantourism.com keeps separate listings for B&Bs, guesthouses and self catering, and it is maintained.
- Ring. Small places take direct bookings, plenty of them prefer it, and you will find out in thirty seconds whether they are still going.
- Check the date on whatever page you are reading. Ours is at the foot of this one.
If none of it suits
The town’s three hotels are the fallback and there is a page on hotels in Monaghan covering what each of them is good for. The wider picture, including Castle Leslie at Glaslough and what is available further out in the county, is on places to stay.
Details on this page last checked . If something here is out of date, it probably is our fault rather than yours.