Irish Town

Irish Town is a small village in St Andrew, on the road that climbs from Kingston through the foothills of the Blue Mountains toward Newcastle. It sits below Catherine's Peak, in coffee country proper: Craighton Estate, one of the best-documented Blue Mountain coffee properties, is located in the village itself.

Where is Irish Town?

Irish Town lies in St Andrew Parish, on the winding road that runs north from Kingston and Papine, climbs through the hills, and continues up to Newcastle and eventually Hardwar Gap. It sits below Catherine's Peak, in a stretch of the Blue Mountains foothills long settled and long farmed. The village marks a clear step up in elevation and coolness from Kingston, though it sits below the higher, mistier ground around Newcastle and Hardwar Gap further along the same road. A historic bus route once ran from Papine through Cooperage to Irish Town, evidence of how long the village has been treated as a fixed stop on this road rather than a passing place. Irish Town is often mentioned together with Redlight, a smaller settlement a short distance further along the same road; together they mark the first clearly rural, cooler stops that travelers reach after leaving Kingston's suburbs behind.

Craighton Estate and Craighton House

Irish Town's clearest link to Blue Mountain coffee is Craighton Estate, whose great house, Craighton House, was built around 1805 for its first owner, George Craighton, and stands at about 2,600 feet. The Jamaica National Heritage Trust records that it drew visits from Jamaican governors, including Sir John Grant and Sir Henry Blake, and from the botanical artist Marion North during the nineteenth century. Coffee had been grown on the property since the 1800s. In 1981 the Japanese company UCC Ueshima Coffee bought the house and estate and re-established coffee production there, describing it as the first Blue Mountain estate to be run directly by a Japanese company. UCC gives the coffee-growing elevation on the estate as 800 to 900 meters, on slopes as steep as 40 degrees, with the cherries carried down to Mavis Bank for processing. That processing step is the same one most Blue Mountain farms rely on, described in general terms on from cherry to cup. A fuller profile of the estate itself is on the Craighton Estate page, part of the site's estates directory.

What's in the name?

Irish Town's name is not fully documented in the sources available for this guide. One account holds that the village takes its name from Irish coopers, barrel-makers who once worked in the area making casks for the coffee trade — a plausible origin, given how much coffee left the Blue Mountains in barrels through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but not one this guide can confirm from a primary source.

Coffee at Irish Town's elevation

Craighton's coffee-growing elevation, 800 to 900 meters, or roughly 2,600 to 2,950 feet, sits below the 3,000-to-5,500-foot band most often quoted for Blue Mountain coffee. That is not a contradiction: Jamaica's coffee regulations define the Blue Mountain area by a boundary of named places, not by a strict elevation line, so a farm can sit outside the usual elevation band and still fall inside the legally defined area. Irish Town and Craighton illustrate that point well. For the full explanation of how the boundary and the elevation band relate, see the Blue Mountain growing region.

Irish Town is listed among St Andrew's settlements alongside Gordon Town and the parish's other coffee-growing districts, and coffee remains one of the parish's principal agricultural products. Set against that background, a single well-documented estate inside a small village is not unusual; it is closer to the pattern the wider Blue Mountains follow, where farms of very different sizes and histories sit within a few minutes of one another along the same road.

Visiting Irish Town

Irish Town is a waypoint rather than a destination in itself for most visitors: a village passed through on the drive up from Kingston toward Newcastle. Gordon Town, reached by a different road out of Kingston, leads into the same coffee country from another direction. The road through Irish Town is narrow and climbs steadily, with sharp bends in places, so it is worth driving with care rather than haste. As with the rest of this part of the Blue Mountains, current conditions on the road and at any working estate are best confirmed locally rather than assumed.