Behy

19 registered freehold parcels lie mostly in Behy, from 105 m² to 130,588 m² (13.06 ha, 32.27 acres). The dashed line is the townland's boundary. 14 neighbouring parcels touch it.

Download the townland as DXF, in Irish Transverse Mercator metres, with its boundary, parcels and buildings, or as GeoJSON or KML.

No zone of a development plan covers Behy in the national zoning. Outside zoned towns and villages, the county development plan's rural policies apply to each application.

Source: Tailte Éireann and the Department of Housing (MyPlan), national zoning, CC BY 4.0.

• 12 Feb 2026Conditional

  to construct a dairy slatted cubicle house with underground slurry storage tanks together with concrete aprons and all associated site works

  Permission · Sligo County Council, 2660049

Source: National Planning Applications, Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, CC BY 4.0. Applicants are not shown.

Designated sites

No designated site (Special Area of Conservation, Special Protection Area, Natural Heritage Area or proposed one) touches the townland of Behy.

Recorded monuments

• SL034-001001 Castle - tower house
  Description

  On the E side of a low rise skirted to the W by a stream. The remains consist of the NW corner (5.6m E-W; 2.6m N-S) of a tower now standing to two storeys, and a large block of masonry lying on the ground immediately to its SE. These are located towards the E end of a rectangular sod-covered platform (c. 30m N-S; c. 25m E-W) which may be the remains of a bawn. Immediately E of the platform are two 19th-century farm buildings which contain carved stones derived from the tower including a sheela-na-gig (SL034-001002-) and a pick-dressed quoin. The tower is built of roughly coursed limestone in a lime mortar; the walls are gently battered, but most of the quoins are missing. The ground floor had a window in its W wall but only its N side survives which contains part of a splayed gun loop. In the corner, at first-floor level, is a mural chamber the inside wall of which is gone. At this level was a large window embrasure in the N wall but only its W side survives. On the external face, 3m above present ground level, is a horizontal slit (0.8m x 0.25m) which may be an exit for a garderobe chute. A drawing by Grose (1791, vol. 1, 52) shows the tower much as it is today but with the fallen block then standing. Grose described it as 'a square tower' and noted that the castle had been used as a quarry during the building of a nearby house (see above). Traditionally known as a MacDonagh castle (Grose 1797, vol. 1, 52; McParlan 1802, 92; O'Rorke [1889], vol. 2, 236). The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Sligo' compiled by Ursula Egan, Elizabeth Byrne, Mary Sleeman with Sheila Ronan and Connie Murphy (Dublin Stationery Office, 2005). Date of upload: 18 January 2008

• SL034-001002 Sheela-na-gig
  Description

  Built into the inside wall of a farm building immediately E of Behy Castle (SL034-001001-). A rectangular punch-dressed limestone block (0.85m x 0.45m) which was probably originally a quoin stone in the adjacent castle. Carved in low relief at one end of the stone is a full figure sheela-na-gig (L 0.35m), now painted pink, whilst at the other end is an 'X' picked out in three lines of pick marks. (O'Shaughnessy and Weaver 1992, 8; McMahon and Roberts 2001, 117-18) The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Sligo' compiled by Ursula Egan, Elizabeth Byrne, Mary Sleeman with Sheila Ronan and Connie Murphy (Dublin Stationery Office, 2005). Date of upload: 18 January 2008

Architectural heritage

No building of the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage stands in the townland of Behy.

Designated sites: National Parks and Wildlife Service. Recorded monuments: Sites and Monuments Record, National Monuments Service. Buildings: National Inventory of Architectural Heritage. Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, CC BY 4.0. Works at or in relation to a recorded monument need two months' written notice to the National Monuments Service (National Monuments (Amendment) Act 1994, section 12).

Radon

At the centre of the townland of Behy, about 1 in 10 homes in this area is likely to have high radon levels. Testing a home

Landslides

The 1:50,000 map rates the landslide susceptibility here as moderately low, low, partly inferred.

Terrain model

LiDAR of the Office of Public Works, flown in 2011, at 2 m: tile OPW_1165 (ZIP).

Flooding

The Office of Public Works publishes its flood maps on floodinfo.ie.

Radon Risk Map of Ireland, Environmental Protection Agency, and Landslide Susceptibility Classification, Geological Survey Ireland, both under CC BY 4.0. LiDAR: contains Irish Public Sector Data (Geological Survey Ireland & the Office of Public Works) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.

No address of the register names Behy with five sales or more. The sales of the area are on the page of Co. Sligo.

Name

Behy · An Bheithigh

Area

818,001 m² (81.8 ha, 202.13 acres)

Civil parish

Tawnagh, and its townlands

Barony

Tirerrill

Electoral division

Riverstown, the unit of the census

Census 2022

753 people lived in 283 households in the Riverstown electoral division. 74% of households owned their home. 42% of homes were built since 2001. 9% of dwellings stood vacant on census night, and 3% were holiday homes.

Neighbouring townlands

Carrowkeel, Cooperhill, Drumfin, Emlagh, Murillyroe, Ogham

Placenames

Behy on logainm.ie, the Placenames Database of Ireland

Townlands, civil parishes, baronies and electoral divisions, National Statutory Boundaries, Tailte Éireann, CC BY 4.0. Census 2022, Small Area Population Statistics by electoral division, Central Statistics Office, CC BY 4.0. A townland is the smallest land division of Ireland, and the unit of a rural address. Old registers such as the 1901 and 1911 censuses file it under its civil parish and barony.