Bellaghy (from Irish Baile Eachaidh, meaning 'Eachaidh's townland')[1][2] is a village in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

The village is also known as the birthplace, childhood home and resting place of poet Seamus Heaney (1939–2013), who won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

[4][5] In the early 17th century, Bellaghy became one of many towns planned, built and settled under the authority of the Vintners Company of London, as part of the English Plantation of Ulster.

In 1622, according to a manuscript of a Captain Thomas Ash, Bellaghy consisted of a church, a castle, a corn mill and twelve houses.

[8][9] Seamus Heaney, who became a Nobel Prize-winning poet, was born as the eldest of nine children at Mossbawn, his family's farm in Bellaghy.

[3] Others to hail from the village include World Outdoor Bowls champion Margaret Johnston,[10][11] international footballer Sarah McFadden,[12] and Eurovision 2022 entrant for Ireland Brooke Scullion.

[13] Two Bellaghy natives, Francis Hughes and his cousin Thomas McElwee, died participating in the 1981 Irish hunger strike during The Troubles.