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History & Heritage Guide

Fermanagh County Museum Castle Castle Barracks Enniskillen Co. N. BT74 7HL

Tel: + 44 (0) 28 6632 5000 Fax: +44 (0) 28 6632 7342 Email: [email protected] Web:www.enniskillencastle.co.uk Page 1 History & Heritage Guide:

Lower . Photograph by Shay Nethercott. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum.

New Arrivals

About 12,000 years ago the ice, which had covered much of Ireland in the last Ice Age, was in full retreat and a lush meadowland was replacing the frozen, tundra landscape. Trees began to creep into the meadow – first juniper, then willow and birch, occasionally aspen and, on limestone soils,

The Claddagh Glen. Photograph by Shay guelder rose – creating Ireland’s first woodlands. The melting ice left behind Nethercott. Copyright of Fermanagh vast, shallow stretches of open water. A compressed compost of decaying County Museum. plants collected at the shores of these loughs. Encouraged by the warm, wet climate, the decaying material consolidated to form bogs, which extended out into the loughs. Early in this new post-glacial period, Ireland remained joined to Britain and it is conceivable that, not only did plants – especially the trees of Ireland’s new woodlands – and animals cross to Ireland over these land bridges, but also the first settlers. As the climate warmed, ice melted and sea levels rose: gradually Ireland became an island. The first people arrived in Ireland over 9,000 years ago. It was around 6,500 years ago – late in the Middle Stone Age – that people first came to A Mesolithic family gets ready to roast a Fermanagh. They found a landscape of wood and water. The woodland – hare. Diorama by Gordon Johnson. Copyright of Fermanagh County alder, oak and elm on the lowlands, and birch and pine on the uplands – Museum.

Life in the Mesolithic period. Conjectural drawing by D. Warner. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum.

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was tall and very dense and the water became their highway into and through the county. These Stone Age people were hunters and gatherers. Their hunting grounds were mainly at the water’s edge where they caught fish and wildfowl; they also hunted for small mammals of the woodland. They harvested the wild nuts, berries and grasses, which grew around them to complete a resourceful and balanced diet. The relics, which these people left behind, are their stone tools. Very little else of their lifestyle, which was so ephemeral, has survived in Fermanagh. At Cushrush Island on the eastern shore of Lough Macnean seven mudstone axes and a double-pointed pick were uncovered, a significant find for the Mesolithic period in Ireland.

Life in Neolithic times. Conjectural drawing by D. Warner. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum.

First Farmers About 6,000 years ago a new wave of incomers arrived in Fermanagh. They were spearheading a revolution in the Stone Age way of life: they were the first farmers. These pioneer farmers journeyed from Britain and Europe carrying with them seed corn and domestic breeds of cattle, pig, sheep and goats – all they needed to establish a farming community. They found a densely wooded landscape – mature stands of hazel, oak elm and alder, and on the uplands, over 700 feet, pine. The soils laid down in the Ice Age had been enriched and deepened by the searching root systems of the trees of the mature woodland. The first farmers seem to have settled high up where Grinding corn using a saddle quern. the woodland was probably less dense but the soils still fertile. They cleared Copyright of Fermanagh County the woodland, cutting down the trees and burning the stumps – ‘slash and Museum.

Clearing forests, building field walls and preparing the soil for planting are all part of a day’s work for this Neolithic family. Diorama by Gordon Johnson. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum.

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burn’ farming – and used the wood to build their homesteads. Gradually, they imposed an order on the landscape, marking it out into fields with earthen banks and drystone walls. Like all pioneers, though, they adopted the lifestyle of their hunter-gatherer neighbours, fishing, hunting and collecting food. The enduring legacy of these first farmers is their giant stone burial monuments – megalithic tombs. Today in these tombs we find, buried This court tomb in Aghanaglack had four large chambers for cremated burials and alongside the dead, sherds of pottery they used in their households. Through an open court area at either end which much of Ireland, four classes of tomb recur – court tombs, portal tombs, may have been used for funeral ceremonies. Photograph by Mike passage tombs and wedge tombs. All of these tomb classes are present in Hartwell, courtesy of Environment & Fermanagh. The passage tombs – there is a concentration of them in the Heritage Service, DOE. Boyne Valley near – are often spectacular. was surrounded by a brilliant white quartz façade. The sunlight from the winter solstice streamed through a roof box, illuminating the passage and burial chamber of the monument. Passage tombs are scarce in Fermanagh, but court tombs and portal tombs are common here. Extensive trade networks were forged by the first farmers. Stone axes from a quarry in Antrim were sent out along trade routes as far afield as southern .

Life in the Bronze Age. Conjectural drawing by D. Warner. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum.

The Metalworkers

About 4,500 years ago rich veins of gold and copper were found in Ireland by prospectors. The finds sparked a new metal-working industry. Tin – most likely imported from Cornwall or Brittany – was fused with the copper to produce bronze. Bronze and gold objects were traded further afield, through a European wide network. For at least1,500 years, until the discovery of iron , bronze was the workhorse of the Irish metal-working industry – used for making tools and weapons – whilst gold was fashioned into high value personal ornaments.

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Bronze Age Rock Art from the hillside above Boho at , with an impressive design of concentric circles surrounding small round hollows. Photograph by Shay Nethercott. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum.

The tradition of building monuments in stone continued throughout the early part of the Bronze Age. Often the dead were buried, either inhumed or cremated, in graves lined with stone slabs – cists: sometimes the burials were solitary, often they were congregated in cemeteries. Or they were inserted into the megalithic tombs built in the Stone Age. Many of Ireland’s standing stones and stone circles may have been built at this time. The pottery from the period – beakers, food vessels, urns and pygmy cups – is a testament to the great melting pot of people and ideas in Ireland at this time. As metal-working was born, farming on the uplands – the pioneers’ heartland In the Bronze Age, Stone Circles like this – went into decline. Ceaseless clearance and intensive farming exhausted one from Drumskinny, may have been places for religious ceremonies, perhaps the soil precipitating the growth and spread of blanket bog. The farming rituals involving sun worship. Copyright communities were forced down on to the densely wooded lowlands and of Fermanagh County Museum. heavy clay soil. As the agricultural community re-asserted itself in the lowlands, the bronze and gold working tradition blossomed out into an age of achievement. Between 1200BC and 600 BC prestigious, luxury items were wrought by the master craftsmen of the Bronze Age: bronze cauldrons, buckets and trumpets, gold torcs, dress fasteners, earrings and bracelets. During this Later Bronze Age period farming also reached new heights. Metal farm tools – such as bronze socketed sickles and axes – were available. The ox-drawn cart was brought into use. But the critical step forward was the introduction of the wooden ard plough. Hill forts and ritual enclosures began to appear on the landscape, on sites which later became the seats of the ancient kings of : Knockaulin This Early Bronze Age gold lunula was found in a bog at Cooltrain, north-east of (Dun Ailinee, the ancient capital of ), Rath na Ríogh at Tara and Site Enniskillen. Photograph reproduced by A at Navan (Emain ) are ritual enclosures. These grand monuments the kind permission of the Trustees of the National Museums and Galleries of suggest that Bronze Age society had split between warrior aristocracy and . commoner, with hill-forts being strongholds of society’s echelons. Exotic finds

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from these enclosures – Scandinavian amber beads for example – suggest a society with solid cultural and trade links far into Europe. Lake dwellings – early crannogs – were also built in this epoch, consolidating a tradition which continued in the 17th century AD. Lough MacNean’s crannogs have yielded material from the Later Bronze Age.

Boa Island in the Iron Age. Conjectural drawing by D. Warner. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum.

The and The Age of Iron

For three hundred years after about 600BC the society and culture of the Later Bronze Age decayed. During this hiatus, the first breath of Celtic influence was felt in Ireland. By about 300Bc some Celtic adventurers had arrived. nd These beads, made of imported amber, In the 2 century AD, the Greek geographer, Ptolemy, made a map of were found alongside the bronze knife the known world and its people. Ireland occupied the western edge of this and chisel in a bog in Killycreen West, th th near . Photograph reproduced map. In the 7 and 8 centuries AD, Christian monks transcribed the ancient by the kind permission of the Trustees of legends from the spoken tradition of the people of Ireland. Both these artefacts the National Museums and Galleries of Northern Ireland. – the map and the transcription of ancient legends – are windows, through which the Ireland of the Early Iron Age is visible, albeit from the far distance of several centuries. The legends – especially the , the Táin Bó Cúailgne – celebrate the heroes of a society dominated by the túath (tribe), each with its rí (king), druids and cuire (priestly cast). Chariot warfare, beheading, feasting and cattle-raiding were the everyday exploits which occupied the heroes. The heroes of these legends are epic, supernatural figures, not mortals, and their exploits reveal very little about contemporary Ireland. But, Early Iron Age This small gold fastener from Tattykeel Lower, near Kesh and the gold bracelet society was capable of great achievements. Two massive earthworks, the from Cleenaghan, near Dorsey and Black Pig’s Dyke – a portion of which is found running along the are good examples of the well-designed jewellery produced in the Late Bronze Age. border between Fermanagh and Leitrim – stretch across tracts of the Ulster Photograph reproduced by the kind countryside. The earthworks not only reveal a society with the capacity to permission of the Trustees of the National Museum of Ireland. recruit and organise a huge labour force, but also implies one of whose

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leaders were marking out and preparing to administer and defend their dominion. In archaeology, the coming of the Celts is heralded by the appearance, applied to ornaments and weapons, of artwork, inspired by the pan-European Celtic art tradition named from a Swiss find at La Tène. The engraving on the Boho spearhead is a fine example of Celtic art.

Ogham stone from Topped Mountain. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum.

The stones notched with ogham script – finds from the 5th century AD – reveal the flowering of the new language spoken by the Celts in Ireland. The beliefs of the Celts – a pageant of pagan gods – are expressed in the stone heads, wooden figures and votive offerings of the period. The Celts also brought with them the technology for making iron and launched the Iron Age in Ireland. Tools and weapons were now forged in iron, whilst bronze was used for decoration and fine objects. In the new Iron Age society, the iron-working blacksmith was venerated for his special skills and the supernatural powers which were said to accompany these. During the early Iron Age cereal This bronze brooch designed like a modern safety pin was found in cultivation declined, perhaps the result of co-incidence of soil exhaustion Modeenagh, near Tempo, and was used from over-production in the Later Bronze Age, and climatic deterioration. in the Iron Age. Photograph reproduced by the kind permission of the National Certainly the climate was wet, and passage through stretches of the kingdoms Museum of Ireland. of Ireland was across trackways raised above bogs.

This is the upper stone of a decorated beehive quern found in Fermanagh. Called a rotary quern, the corn was poured through a hole in the upper stone and by the revolving motion of the upper stone on the lower one was ground easily into fine flour. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum.

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Devenish Island. Conjectural drawing by D. Warner. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum.

Christianity Comes To Ireland

Christianity came to Ireland in the 5th century AD – to Fermanagh in the 6th and 7th centuries AD. Christian belief and practice were overlaid on a highly structured Celtic society, in which a religious and artistic class was integrated into the hierarchy of king, royal kin, aristocrat, free farmer and bondsman. Ulster was divided into a network of kingdoms, whose kings were interlinked by kinship. The monastic communities – Devenish is a famous example – were hubs of life in a newly converted Ireland. They evolved into seats of learning and the monks became patrons of the arts. They commissioned many works of art, to enhance their churches, celebrating the lives of the saints and the Christian message. The St. Molaise book shrine, Soiscél Molaise, is one example. In the early Christian period agriculture was restored to its former glory: this resurgence was consolidated by the widespread adoption of iron tools. Farming was mixed. Barley, oats and wheat were grown but in Fermanagh, as in the rest of Ireland, cattle farming was always more important than cultivation. Here cattle were raised for milk rather than beef. The historical evidence underlines the economic importance of cattle: a man’s social standing was vested in his herd; in law, compensation was paid with cattle; the value of land was measured by the number of cattle it could support. It was only in the eighteenth century that farmers first started to save hay and overwinter their cattle in byres. In Early Christian Ireland to conserve pastureland for the bleak winter months, the cattle were driven in Summer into the mountains to graze. There, they were looked after by herdsmen working from summer shelters. This custom, widespread throughout Northern Europe, has become known as ‘booleying’, a term probably derived from the Irish, bó (cow). Drawing by Henry Glassie of detail from Farming families in the Early Christian period lived in isolated St. Molaise’s Shrine.

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settlements. They built crannogs (artificial islands) in the loughs and wetlands, and defended their homesteads on dry land with an earthen bank (raths) or a drystone wall (cashels). Most of the raths and cashels were simple enclosures rather than well defended citadels. In some of them underground artificial caves (souterrains) can be found which were useful for storage as well as defence. On the other hand crannogs and promontory forts were all built as strongholds. So, defence was prominent in the concerns of the Life on a Crannog. Diorama by Gordon Johnson. Copyright of Fermanagh population – probably because of the cattle-raiding, which was endemic in County Museum. that period. Cultural traditions born at this time were sustained and enriched in the following centuries. Patterns of settlement, laid down in this epoch, continued. This period reaches out to touch many contemporary beliefs and practices. An enduring legacy of the Early Christian period is the advent of literacy. The stories of the Viking raids, Norman invasions and the Plantation is largely told through written accounts of these events in the Annals of Ulster, drafted between 1439-1510. These two manuscripts, neither complete, are housed in Trinity College, Dublin and in Oxford, the latter with additions until 1588.

This horn, made between the 8th and 10th centuries AD, might have been played at a religious service, at an entertainment or perhaps, to lead an army into battle. Musicians playing similar horns are shown in scripture scenes on High Crosses. Made of yew with a copper mouthpiece and bronze mounts, it was found in the River rne at Coolnashanton, south of Enniskillen. Photograph reproduced by the kind permission of the Trustees of the National Museums and Galleries of Northern Ireland.

The Vikings and the Ulster Kings

At the height of their strength, the Norsemen (the people we call Vikings) charted a route across the Atlantic to discover and establish a foothold on Greenland and Newfoundland. They swept down the western seaboard of Europe and penetrated deep into the heart of Russia. The ‘men from the North’ are immortalised in folk legend throughout Europe as ruthless, marauding raiders and their own sagas – mythological accounts of Viking exploits – certainly promote this image. Undoubtedly, the Vikings were consummate and feared warriors. However, their summer expeditions were not alone hit and run raids. The Vikings were also traders and they occasionally colonised the lands they plundered, merging with native society and culture. Their legacy is made with the ploughshare as well as the sword.

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The first Viking raids on Ireland, between 790AD and 835AD, were sea-borne coastal attacks. In the fifty years after 835AD the Vikings raided deep into the Irish countryside on inland waterways. The Annals of Ulster record an attack on Lough Erne’s monasteries, including Devenish, in 837AD. A century later, in 924AD, the Vikings overwintered at Caol Uisce near Belleek before, once again, sailing up Lough Erne. But, by then, the Viking grip on Ireland was relaxing. Their attention was diverted to the colonisation of Iceland, Northern France and England. Until their final defeat by the Irish Kings in 1014AD, there was a period of intense warfare, but the Viking star was inexorably on the wane throughout this period. Front panel of the book-shrine, the The impact of Viking attacks on Ulster was not strongly felt. Secular ‘Soiscel Molaise’, made in the early 11th century to hold the gospel book of the St. and church life was hardly interrupted and there is little evidence that the Molaise of Devenish. It shows the symbols Vikings tried to settle in the province. Round towers appear in this period. of the four evangelists - the man for St. Matthew, the lion for St. Mark, the calf for They housed bells which rang out a warning of attack or in peaceful times a St. Luke and the eagle for St. John - call to prayer. Valuable monastic reliquaries – books and treasures – were above and below the arms of a ringed cross. A plain bronze box inside this box secreted in the towers during a raid. There is an impressive round tower was amde in the 8th century. Photograph within the Devenish Island monastic complex: it is over 80 ft. high. Yet, the reproduced by the kind permission of the National Museum of Ireland. Devenish round tower is much later – a relic of century. Ironically, it was in the trade of objects and ideas that the Vikings left their mark on Fermanagh. The Soiscél Molaise, a silver book shrine embellished between 1001AD and 1027AD, appears to betray Nordic influence in its decorative motifs. Throughout the Viking years and into the 12th century, Ulster’s myriad of competing aristocratic lineages were resolving into vast kingdoms. The Cinéal Eoghain – a fusion of the O’Neill and MacLochlainn lineages- achieved dominion over what are today the counties of , Tyrone and Londonderry. The first stronghold of the Cinéal Eoghain was the spectacular Grianan fort in north , the ruins of which are still visible from Topped Mountain in north Fermanagh. Later, in the 11th century, the seat of this kingship was moved to conquered lands in Tullahogue, Co. Tyrone. The Cinéal Connaill held sway over Donegal and competed with Cinéal Eoghain for the prize of the high kingship of Ireland. In the east the Ulaid – sometimes described as the original Ulstermen – were in power with the tribe of Dál Fiatach in control. Fermanagh was squeezed uncomfortably between the Cinéal Connaill to the west and Cinéal Eoghain to the north, and the Breifne to the south and was, therefore, perpetually disputed territory. The Annals of Ulster record the Oriel or Airghialla tuaths – a collection of minor tribes – displaced by the Uí Devenish Round Tower. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum. Neill in Tyrone, establishing a new foothold in Fermanagh. The Airghialla

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ejected the indigenous tribes, Fir Manach and the Cinéal Eanna, who sank into oblivion. The Airghialla leaders declared themselves in 1009AD, though they never established an outright title to Fermanagh. Instead they forged and governed a loose federation of minor lineages, which survived on its diplomatic footwork around the far more powerful Cinéal Connaill or Cinéal Eoghain. Throughout the 11th and 12th centuries the Kings Page from the Annals of Ulster. Photograph courtesy of The Board of of Fermanagh – O’hEignigh, O’Maolruanaidh and O’Dubhdara – were drawn . from the Airghialla – its Clann Lugainn branch. By the time Muircheartach MacLochlainn of the Uí Neill – descendants of Cinéal Eoghain – had secured for Uí Neill the coveted high throne of Ireland, the Airghialla were in thrall to them. Yet, thirty years later, the Airghialla territories had been ceded to the O’Donnells, descendants of Cinéal Connaill, who were mortal enemies of the Uí Neill. The O’Neills and MacLochlainns the two aristocratic lineages in the Uí Neill – had quarrelled and Hugh O’Neill made an unholy alliance with the O’Donnells to defeat his cousins, the MacLochlainns. The price of O’Donnell support was Fermanagh. Yet in 1208AD O’hEignigh, the Airghialla King of Fermanagh squared up to the O’Donnells and defeated them in battle. This was the beginning of the rise of the Fermanagh kings.

Norman Motte. Reproduced with the permission of the Environment and Heritage Service, DOE.

The Normans and Kings of Fermanagh

The invasion of the Normans had a profound impact on the eastern seaboard of Ireland. They came to Ireland without romantic or high-minded impulse: they were colonists, seeking simply rich farm land to feed the booming populations of England and Europe. But the overlaid new, feudal political and social structures and new cultural motifs on to the Gaelic order: they began an Anglicisation of Ireland.

Page 11 In 1177AD, John de Courcy created the Earldom of Ulster along the east coast. The pivotal point of the Earldom and English Ulster was Castle. The Norman barons, the loyal core of the Earl’s retinue, held substantial tracts of land throughout the earldom. In return, they were the Earl’s officers in war and administrators and advisers in peace. The Annals of Ulster record the Normans’ arrival in Clones in 1212 Maguire clan inauguration site (Sciath Gabhra) at Cornashee, . and, a year earlier, at Caol Uisce, near Belleek. Bishop John de Grey of Photograph courtesy of Stuart Moore. Norwich – King John’s Justician or chief minister – and Gilbert de Costello built a castle, most likely a motte and bailey, in Belleek, but O’hEignigh, in alliance with the O’Neills, burnt it in 1212 and drove the Normans from Fermanagh. Gilbert de Costello was killed. The Normans returned forty years later to rebuild their stronghold in Belleek. This time Godfrey O’Donnell attacked and razed the fort, expelling, for the last time, the Normans. The Norman colonisation of Ulster was only a partial success. A quarter of the province was conquered and incorporated into the Earldom. The remainder was out of reach and the Pale was harried by the neighbouring Gaelic order. By the fourteenth century, colonisation was without purpose – the plague had so decimated the population of Europe that the grain store colonies were no longer required. The social experiment was fitful. The old order was not assimilated into a European feudalism. But the infrastructure within the Pale was altered and towns – centres of commerce and a linchpin of the feudal order – were born. Fermanagh was removed from the Norman experience. Meanwhile, the – Donn Maguire – had arrived. He died about 1302AD. The original Maguire stronghold was at . Donn’s son, Auley, from whom the territory of descends, extended the Maguire protectorate to Lisnaskea where the Maguire inauguration seat was established on the site of an ancient mound. By 1395, Philip of the Battle Axe had defeated the powerful Clan Mhuircheartaigh of the O’Connors at Drumsroohill to consolidate the Maguire grip on Fermanagh and ruled a kingdom which stretched south to and . Thomas the Great, (Tomas Mor) who reigned from 1395 to 1430, and his brother, Hugh the Hospitable, (Aodh) enjoyed a period of relative stability when the Gaelic order was rejuvenated. The Gaelic orthodoxy in the west of Ulster, though it remained immune to Norman overtures, was not a throwback. Nor was it culturally insular. As early as 1111AD the Church in Ireland had

Hugh the Hospitable Maguire, builder of been freed from secular control, brought out from under the wing of the Gaelic Enniskillen Castle. Conjectural drawing aristocratic lineages, and re-connected to Rome. This opened a cultural by D. Warner. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum. dialogue with continental Europe. The Romanesque doorway on White Island,

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the frieze of heads along the top of the round tower at Devenish and the foliage designs carved on the angles of St. Molaise’s house all betray European influence. Nor were the Gaelic aristocracy rooted in Irish soil observing the European renaissance from a distance. Thomas the Great’s son and successor, Thomas the Younger, (Tomas Og) made several pilgrimages to Compostella in Spain, with Hugh his uncle, and to Rome in Crowning of a Maguire chieftain at 1450 when he was king. Cornashee, near Lisnaskea. Conjectural drawing by D Warner. Copyright of During the reign of Thomas the Younger from 1430 to 1471 the Maguires Fermanagh County Museum. were pitched once again into the struggle between the Gaelic titans – the O’Neills and the O’Donnells. Thomas the Younger allied the Maguires to the O’Neills. He achieved the subjugation of the last surviving chieftains in Fermanagh and finally routed the O’Rourkes of Breifne. His brother, Ross, was Bishop of between 1447 and 1483 and the Maguire grip on the secular and spiritual life of Fermanagh was complete. Yet Thomas’ brother, Philip, made overtures to the O’Donnells and began to establish a rival base in Enniskillen Castle. His son, Tarlach joined the O‘Donnells and the Maguires splintered into a junior branch, descending from Philip. The seat of the senior branch was the original stronghold at Lisnaskea, that of the junior branch was at Enniskillen Castle. The kingship was by election agreement rather than primogeniture and so they alternated regularly between both branches.

Maguire stronghold at Lisnaskea in 15th During the reign of John I between 1484 and 1503 the junior Maguires century. Conjectural drawing by D were in the ascendant. Despite his branch’s natural sympathy for the Warner. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum. O’Donnells, John used his diplomatic skills to broker a temporary cessation of hostilities between the O’Donnells and O’Neills. Yet this did not save him from attack by the O’Neills. Conor the Great, ruling from 1503 to 1527, was of the senior line and this re-established the alliance with the O’Neills. Despite another peace accord between the O’Neills and the O’Donnells, brokered by Conor the Great – one which confirmed the grant to the O‘Donnells of Fermanagh by the O’Neills – the O’Donnells invaded Fermanagh in 1515 and forced the Maguires to submit to them. Seven years on, Conor the Great joined the O’Neills to drive out the O’Donnells. Conor’s son, Giolla Patrick was deposed by Conn O’Neill in 1540 and John II of the junior line was installed as the ruler of Fermanagh. From the reign of John II, the fortunes of the Maguires and Fermanagh are indivisible from changes in the political landscape of England. Following King Thomas Maguire the younger. his break from Rome, Henry VIII had the Dublin Parliament, controlled by an Conjectural drawing by D Warner. Anglo-Irish elite, declare him head of the Irish Church in 1537 and by 1541 Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum. he was King of Ireland. Conn O’Neill and Manus O’Donnell surrendered

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their land to the English crown in return for a regrant with English tenure conditions. The Maguires did not submit at this stage, though in 1560, by which time sat on the English throne, John led a mercenary band against Shane O’Neill for which the English paid him £16.13.4. However, two years later in 1563, O’Neill made his peace with the English and, as part of that accord, the Maguires were commanded to pay a tribute to the O’Neills. Maguire Castle, Enniskillen. Conjectural drawing by D Warner. Copyright of John refused and O’Neill invaded deposing him and setting Cúchonnacht Fermanagh County Museum. Maguire, John’s brother, on the throne. Cúchonnacht was a consummate diplomat. He resolved the O’Neill and O’Donnell claim to Fermanagh and thus removed the ever-present threat of invasion by marrying daughters of Shane O’Neill and Manus O’Donnell. He kept peace with the English by surrendering Fermanagh to the Crown in 1585 to receive it back in perpetuity a year later, and by accepting the conditions of the Council of Trent, the imposition of an English presence in Fermanagh. Meanwhile, he built the Franciscan Abbey at Lisgoole. It is hard to imagine peering through this window of tranquillity in the Maguire history that 11 years after Cúchonnacht’s death the Maguire star would fall.

King Hugh Maguire, the first of the Irish lords to rebel in 1593. Conjectural drawing by D. Warner. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum.

Rebellion and Plantation

Alone, the story of the rise of Hugh Maguire to the chiefdom of Fermanagh has guaranteed his status in the mythology of the Gaelic order. In 1586, he killed Conn O’Neill in single combat to advertise his warrior mettle. Later, he displayed the statesmanship required of his aristocratic rank by marrying the daughter of Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone – and this despite being a cousin of Red Hugh O’Donnell! Though Hugh Maguire was consummate in the An attack on a crannog. From an illustrated map by Bartlett, circa 1602A.D. prized skills of warrior and diplomat, he was the last Maguire to know dominion

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Siege of Enniskillen Castle, 1594 by John Thomas. From later copy of the original map which is in the British Library.

of Fermanagh. Scarcely a century after his ascent in 1589 to the chiefdom, the Maguires were scattered to the four winds, victims of the irrepressible tide of English and European politics. The first loss of Maguire power came after a failed Rebellion of the Gaelic aristocracy – the Nine Years War (1594 – 1603). The Gaelic order in Ulster had remained aloof from the creeping colonialism of the English Crown, perhaps to the point of self-deception, since Ulster had been brought into the English fold by the division of the Province into shires and the overlay of a colonial administration. In the 1580s a statesmanlike embrace of the English masked preparations to rebel and challenge the Elizabethan ascendancy. The figurehead of this rebellion was Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone. He embodied the complex and often contradictory character of the Gaelic order. Reared in England, he understood the English Crown but he turned his face to Catholic Europe, where he was The Defence of Enniskillen Castle 1594. Conjectural drawing by D. Warner. a supporting player on the vast stage of European politics. Copyright of Fermanagh County It was Maguire who inaugurated the Rebellion by harbouring his fugitive Museum. cousin, Red Hugh O’Donnell, expelling Fermanagh’s sheriff, Captain Willis, and invading Sir George Bingham’s territory. Ironically, Hugh O’Neill was employed by Elizabeth I to appease Maguire and then ordered to march with Bingham against him. Maguire’s army was put to flight at the Battle of Belleek, though this was something of a mock battle, with O’Neill’s men fighting on both sides! In February 1594, an English army took and garrisoned Enniskillen. The fort was promptly besieged by Hugh Maguire, Red Hugh O’Donnell and Cormac McBarron O’Neill (Hugh O’Neill’s brother). A relief army with Sir Henry Duke at its head was ambushed on the River and routed by Maguire in the Battle of the Ford of the Biscuit: a poignant title which commemorates

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the sight of English rations floating down the Arney. By now the Rebellion was in full swing with Hugh O’Neill at its head and victories followed for the Ulster armies. In 1597 came the inevitable English backlash with major campaigns against Ulster, but a year later, at the Yellow Ford on the Blackwater River, Hugh Maguire led the Irish cavalry in a stunning victory against the English. With this rout the Rebellion caught fire throughout Ireland. Fallen Irish soldier from Derricke’s Image of Ireland. In 1600, Hugh O’Neill went on the campaign trail through Ireland canvassing support for the Rebellion. At Cork, Hugh Maguire made a speculative raid against the English and was met by Sir Warham Saint Leger and Sir Henry Power. He was killed in combat with Saint Leger and is buried in Cork. Maguire’s death precipitated an internecine feud for the succession in Fermanagh. Conor Rua was pitched against Cúchonnacht Og. O’Donnell supported Cúchonnacht Og and Conor Rua promptly went over to the English. The network of alliances within the Gaelic order which had sustained and extended the Rebellion was beginning to fragment in 1601 when the army pledged to the cause by Phillip II of Spain disembarked at Kinsale. Hugh O’Neill marched the length of Ireland through a winter landscape to relieve the pitifully supplied Spanish army of 4,000 men. The Battle of Kinsale, fought on Christmas Eve 1601, ended the all-Ireland Rebellion and the Ulster Gaelic chieftains headed home. O’Neill surrendered to the English at Mellifont in March, 1603. Meanwhile, as the Rebellion disintegrated, battle for the Maguire chieftainship was joined between Conor Rua, sponsored by the English, and Cúchonnacht Og. Cúchonnacht, now alone, became dispirited with the contest and left Ireland for a journey to continental Europe. He returned fleetingly with the boat which carried the upper echelons of the Gaelic aristocracy to exile in Europe – the . Cúchonnacht died in Genoa. English Soldiers from Derricke’s Image of Ireland The Crown’s response to the Rebellion was uncompromising. James I embarked on a colonial experiment, designed to break decisively the Gaelic order’s hold on the land and the culture of Ulster. The rebels’ land was confiscated and the ancient brehon laws which structured Gaelic society were revoked. A new elite of English and Scottish colonists was planted at the top of Ulster society. Conor Rua Maguire, of the senior branch, retained most of the land in the Barony of Magherasteffany, but he had lost much more than he held. The junior branch of the Maguires was granted a large estate which included Tempo and Tullyweel near . The remainder of Fermanagh was apportioned to English and Scots undertakers and to

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servitors – British soldiers rewarded for their part in the campaign against the Rebellion. Plantation estates over 2,000 acres were to be protected by a strong castle and bawn and to include a village in an imitation of the English settlement pattern. Estates over 1,000 acres were to be overseen from a large fortified house.

Sir William Cole, Constable of Enniskillen This colonial experiment installed some of the family names which were Castle. Photograph courtesy of John to comprise Fermanagh’s 18th century planter gentry: Atkinson, Cole, Cathcart. Blennerhasset, Archdale, Hume, Balfour. But the experiment was only a fitful success. It was surrounded by the resentment and discontent of the dispossessed. Conor Rua Maguire became embittered and began to court the rebel cause. The Gaelic culture survived, though it went partially underground. Fermanagh had been renowned in the Gaelic world as a seat of learning. That devotion to Gaelic literature and culture continued. The ‘Four Masters’ worked at Lisgoole Abbey from September to December 1631 to complete ‘The Book of Invasions’. The Plantation was compromised too by the planter population, which began to merge into the primordial Gaelic background: intermarriage between the two communities became common. Many of the original Planter undertakers became absentee landlords. Ironically, the Plantation was consolidated by the actions of Charles I. His exchequer demanded revenue and Charles attempted to squeeze the Planters. They agreed to pay an increase in dues to the Crown in exchange Illustration of Enniskillen Castle from map for perpetual title to their land. The Confederate War, which was launched by of Ulster by John Speede, published in the 1641 Rising, was fought on two fronts. In Ulster, the Gaelic order was 1610. once again on the march. The grievance they held was against the Plantation – against the deed and the people who enforced the new order. The Rising was precipitated by the creeping colonialism of the Crown, which had continued to swallow their territory. The remnants of the Gaelic order – ironically, the families who had allied themselves to Elizabeth I in the Nine Years War and thus retained their territory – rose up to protect the last enclaves of its power. Meanwhile a Civil War was brewing in England. The assumption that the King should enjoy absolute power was being challenged by the Puritans in England and tHe Covenanters in Scotland. The Gaelic order in Ulster was as afraid of the advance of Puritanism and its threat to their faith as they were embittered by the irrepressible tide of the Plantation and the grip in which Charles I held Ireland. Fast approaching was a time when the champions of the Plantation, themselves, would have to choose between King and Parliament in England. So, the Rising and the Confederate war in Ireland Map of the Barony Of Magheryboy, Co. often became a surrogate for the battle between autocratic monarchy and Fermanagh by Sir Josias Bodley, 1609.

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Parliamentary democracy in England, and loyalties were confused and allegiances perpetually shifting. Conor Maguire – he now held the title of Lord Enniskillen, a badge of his absorption into the Plantation background – was Fermanagh’s leading rebel. He set out in 1641 to capture Dublin Castle. This daring act was to

The building of the Watergate in 1611. open the Rising. But the plot was betrayed and Conor Maguire was captured. Drawing by Philip Armstrong courtesy of He was taken to England and, four years later, he was hanged. the permission of the Environment and Heritage Service, DOE. However, despite the failure of the centrepiece of the Rising the spark of rebellion lit a fire throughout Ulster. Alone, the Plantation garrison in Enniskillen held out against the forces of the Rising. Rory Maguire, Conor Maguire’s brother, himself affiliated to the planter community by marriage to Edward Blennerhassett’s daughter, led the people’s revolt in Fermanagh. He opened his campaign with a theatrical ruse to capture the cream of the planter aristocracy in Fermanagh. He invited them all to dinner at his Crevenish stronghold, but they were tipped off. Rory Maguire orchestrated the capture of the planter houses throughout Fermanagh. It was a ruthless, sometimes a savage campaign as the peasantry wreaked revenge on their incomer neighbours. It culminated in the bloody capture of Lisgoole and . Through the winter and spring of 1642 the Rising foundered. It was Enniskillen Castle and town c. 1620. joined by the Anglo-Irish aristocracy who, preoccupied with events in England, Conjectural drawing by D Warner. Copyright of Fermanagh County diluted the unity of purpose and action amongst the Gaelic order in Ulster. Museum. The Ulster planters’ determined Laggan Army, bolstered by a contingent of itinerant Scots soldiers, routed the rebel army at Glenmaquin. In June of 1642, the Ulster chiefs gathered as Glaslough to seek a way out of the conflict. Suddenly, though, Eoghan Rua O’Neill arrived on the scene to renew their resolve. Eoghan O’Neill was the nephew of Hugh O’Neill the expatriate Earl of Tyrone. He had won renown fighting for the Spanish army against the French. With this pedigree and reputation he was ideally cast in the heroic mould and he was a suitably charismatic leader of the Gaelic order. But, his energies were dissipated in a new rainbow coalition – a Confederacy of the rebelling Irish. At Kilkenny on 22nd October 1642, a shadow government with a two tier Assembly – an upper house of lords and bishops and a lower house of the people’s representatives – was established and adopted a model democratic constitution. But the Confederacy was inevitably compromised by the English Civil War. In 1645, the assembly split into Nunciists – supporters of the Papal Nuncio Rinuccini who journeyed from Rome to advocate simplicity in the aims of the war, returning Ireland to its Catholic rootstock and Ormondists, who

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favoured entering the English Civil War and declaring for King Charles I. In 1646, O’Neill won for the Confederation and its Nunciist wing a stunning victory at the Battle of Belturbet but, a month later, the Ormondists had manoeuvred the Confederation into a pact with the King. The Confederation splintered in 1647 and Ormond relinquished Dublin to the Parliamentarians. For two years O’Neill and the Ulster chiefs were in limbo, Monea Castle. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum. unsure of the next move. In that time, Rory Maguire, who had been one of O’Neill’s staunchest allies, was killed in battle at Jamestown. His death was commemorated by the Gaelic bards and is recorded as an ominous loss for the Ulster army. Cromwell’s landing at Ringsend in 1649 united the Irish rebels once again, this time not in hope but in fear. Soon after, O’Neill was killed at Belturbet and passed into legend. Heber McMahon, the Bishop of Clogher, succeeded him as leader of the Ulster army, but his generalship lasted only three months before his army was routed at Scarriffhollis, outside Letterkenny, Co. Donegal. McMahon was betrayed by Brian Maguire of Tempo, who had remained aloof from the Rising, and he was hanged on the Broadmeadow, Enniskillen. The Bishop was then beheaded and his head impaled on a spike at the Castle – a trophy of the planter and parliamentarian victory. Many of the Ulster Scots had sided with the crown in the Civil War – Enniskillen was divided, though William Cole was able to pull the town to the parliamentarian cause. For a decade after the end of the Confederate War, Cromwell consolidated the Plantation, declaring all lands of the Irish rebels forfeit. Maguire land at Magherasteffany was given to the Brooke family. Only Brian Maguire survived in place with his estate at Tempo intact. The restoration of the monarchy and the ascension of Charles II to the throne of England did little other than preserve the status quo – even though Charles II did return to Catholicism. The next flashpoint occurred in 1688 when Charles’ successor, James II, was deposed. This time the Gaelic Order in Ulster came out for the King, who had restored Catholicism in England. Only the plantation towns of and Enniskillen closed their gates in time to hold back the flood of rebellion. In Enniskillen there was panic as planter families from the rural hinterland and from the neighbouring counties of , Leitrim and sought refuge in the town, carrying rumours of massacre. A defence committee was elected with Gustavus Hamilton at its head. Catholics were expelled. On March 11th 1689, Hamilton formally declared Enniskillen for William of Orange. A day later, James II landed at Kinsale seeking to win, with victory King William of Orange after Kneller. in Ireland, the springboard for an assault on England. Throughout that month, Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum. Page 19 History & Heritage Guide:

the Enniskilleners harassed the rebels, sending out lightning raids from their island stronghold: 200 soldiers marched to relieve Captain Crichton at Crom Castle and they defeated Lord Galmoy’s besieging army. After this defeat, Brian Maguire, who was released from captivity by Crichton, abandoned the rebel cause. Galmoy had hanged Captain Dixey, who should have been exchanged for Maguire’s release. A patriot parliament was set up in Dublin to legitimise the rebel cause. Planters were declared outlaws and orders were sent to confiscate their land. The rebels marched on Fermanagh: Sarsfield from Connacht, the Duke of Berwick from and Lord Mountcashel from Belturbet. On July 13th, they engaged the Enniskilleners at Cornagrade. It was a modest rebel victory, their last. Mountcashel attacked Crom Castle with 3,000 men, but lost too

Crest of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. many men to press home the action. Then, 400 Enniskillen infantry disengaged from the defence of to relieve Crom. They attacked the rebels at Lisnaskea and later annihilated them in the Battle of . Mountcashel was injured and captured in a defeat which sealed the fate of James II’s campaign in Ireland. It also opened an illustrious chapter in Enniskillen’s military history. Out of this war the Inniskilling Dragoons and Fusiliers Regiments were born. It is well to remember that Ireland was neither created nor destroyed in House in 1786 from a print 1690. That year and the has become a watershed in the by Malton. Photograph courtesy of Mr J th th Nawn. sectarian hagiography of Northern Ireland. But, events in the 18 and 19 century made an equally strong impact on contemporary society. The friction caused by the shifting relationship between the natives of Fermanagh and the stream of incomers – English and Scots settlers – continued to spark conflict. But, the lines of that conflict were never drawn with absolute precision between Gael and Planter. The United Irishmen of the last years of the 18th century were endowed with many of the ironies and contradictions which litter Irish history. The movement was begun in by a coalition of Protestant and Catholic, enthused by the creed of the French Revolution. Castlecoole, Enniskillen. Copyright of They sought to carry over the universalist and republican ideals of the French Fermanagh County Museum. revolution into Irish politics. In the 18th century, the Plantation aristocracy has revitalised by an injection of Georgian grandeur into its arteries. The Great Houses of Fermanagh which have been acquired by the National Trust, restored and opened to the public – Castlecoole and Florencecourt House – are relics of the political and cultural self-confidence they discovered in the 18th century. Meanwhile, in the aftermath of a century of failed rebellion, the Catholics of Fermanagh fought to sustain their faith and preserve their Church through a

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succeeding century of the . The poor – Catholic and Protestant – always faced a struggle to survive. Their nadir came with the famine of the 1840s.

This drawing by Nicola Gill, based on an old photograph, shows the railway line at Belleek Pottery. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum.

The Industrial Revolution: Inland Waterways and Railways

Visionary ideas of the 18th and 19th centuries swept across to the west of Ireland on the tide of the industrial revolution. A canal-building boom in the mid 1700s pulled Ulster into the mainstream of industrialisation in England. Canals were to be the super highways of the day – a route between the coalfields, which fuelled the engine house of this industrial revolution, and the factory, and between the factory and the ports, from where manufactured goods were shipped to destinations in Europe and the Empire. Ulster’s coalfield was in the heart of Tyrone and thus it was which became the nucleus of the canal network. Belfast city warmed to the glow of the industrial revolution, whilst Dublin clung to its elevated cultural status as the second city of the empire. But, Fermanagh remained largely immune to the clarion call of the factory and industry. Nevertheless, a canal was dug between Lough Neagh and the southern reaches of Lough Erne, connecting Fermanagh with Belfast, and, in 1860, the Erne-Shannon link was secured by the / canal. So, Fermanagh was joined to Dublin on the umbilical cord of the Shannon navigation. However, there was virtually one-way traffic on these canals -–agricultural produce carried from Fermanagh to feed the growing workers’ population in the cities of the eastern seaboard. Fermanagh did

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John Caldwell Bloomfield and Lord James Butler. J.C. Bloomfield was born in 1823 and inherited Castle Caldwell Estate in 1849. In 1857 he established a pottery for manufacture at Belleek. Bloomfield was a prominent Unionist politician and landlord. He died in 1897. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum.

witness the birth of an industry which made its mark in the heartland of nineteenth century Europe and the new world – America, Canada and – and even reached Queen Victoria’s parlour. The Belleek Pottery was the brainchild of the plantation aristocrat, John Caldwell Bloomfield of castle Caldwell, who prospected for and found seams of industrial quality clay near Belleek. His zeal was matched by an investment of £40,000 from David Birney, a wealthy Dublin merchant and the financial and artistic acumen of Robert Williams Armstrong, the Pottery’s first manager. Together, in 1857, they launched Belleek Pottery onto the international market place where, in a little over ten years, it gained a firm foothold. Belleek Pottery did not travel to its city markets along the canals. It was taken by steamer, the Erne Packet, along the length of Lower Lough Erne to a railhead at Enniskillen. The advent of the railways quickly hastened the demise of the canals. Legend has it that the Erne-Shannon link was graced by only eight boats in its short and troubled operating life. The Pottery’s kilns had an insatiable appetite for coal. The coal might have been carried from the Arigna mines in Leitrim along the Ballinamore/ Ballyconnell canal, or from the Tyrone coalfields along the canal from Lough Neagh. But, when the

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Great Northern Railway was driven through Belleek to an Atlantic railhead at the port of , where huge supplies of coal were landed, it inaugurated a fast, reliable transport highway taking coal to the factory gate and Belleek Pottery to the World. For over a century, the railway remained Fermanagh’s artery to the world. During that time, and to this day, Fermanagh’s principal exports were agricultural produce and its people. In 1941 the closed and in1957 Fermanagh lost its surviving rail links to Belfast and Dublin. However, the canals are making a comeback – the Ballinamore/ Ballyconnell canal has been re- opened joining the Erne and the Shannon to create one of Europe’s largest inland waterways.

Fermanagh’s Farm Economy

Fermanagh’s economy, through the heyday of the and the industrial revolution – the 18th and 19th centuries – remained rooted in the soil and, today, the farm economy is still the mainstay of everyday life. However,

Traditional kitchen on display at the making of that farm economy is often a tale of the unexpected. Fermanagh County Museum. Copyright of A strain of the infant industrial revolution did seep into the farm economy Fermanagh County Museum. of the 17th century, with the birth of a linen industry in Fermanagh. Linen making was the first cottage industry – the farmers grew and harvested flax, which was spun, boiled, ‘wound’ and woven into linen at home, usually by the women. Flax and linen, anything from the raw cloth to a fine, bleached textile, was sold on the town markets – mainly in Enniskillen, Fermanagh’s modern capital. The linen industry was never particularly stable – boom and bust throughout the eighteenth century, as it adjusted to the whim of industrial markets. There was a particularly steep decline in the 1770s, but this cottage industry survived until the second quarter of the 19th century, when it finally succumbed to the unerring logic of the industrial revolution as linen weaving became centralised in urban factories. For a short time, the linen industry did confer on the rural people of Fermanagh a small measure of comfort and security and the benefits from this cottage industry were, for that era, spread relatively equitably. However, rural society was immutably hierarchical and the tenant farmer at the foot of the social tree suffered in the shadows cast by his more elevated peers. Fermanagh’s plantation aristocracy enjoyed the rarified atmosphere and panoramic view of the world from the top of that social tree. However, Fermanagh’s aristocratic families, as a rule, recognised and were directed

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by a sense of social responsibility – they did not become absentee landlords, notorious in Irish and Scottish history. Whilst residents on their estates, many of Fermanagh’s landlords let tracts of their land to middlemen (terney begs or tiarnaí beaga) who, in turn, sub-let land at inflated rents to smaller tenant farmers. Inevitably, these middlemen became the target of farmers’ unrestrained scorn and rage, being regarded as nothing better than usurers. Gradually, through the 18th century, the middlemen vanished, to be replaced by landlord’s agents and a class of well-to-do tenant farmers, who were the heartland of the landlord’s support. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, farmers who were considered to be amongst the affluent lived on anything from 15 to 30 acres: they kept some cattle, grew cereals – wheat, oats and barley – flax and the ubiquitous potato. There was an underclass of cottiers who let only an acre, on which they grew potatoes, and laboured on others’ land to live, and the irredeemable poor – labourers with no land. The 1845 – 47 Famine attacked the farming underclass. Many died of starvation or, hunger-ravaged, of typhus epidemics against which they had no resistance. Others emigrated – one quarter of the Fermanagh population disappeared between 1841 and 1851. Some fled the countryside to the town workhouses. The affluent farmers were insulated from famine by a diverse cropping regime. However they did not emerge from this turmoil unscathed. The repeal of the Corn Laws saw Irish cereals uncompetitive on the export market and they began to concentrate increasingly on livestock. The famine is an indelible stain on Irish history. From that time, farmers – from ‘yeoman’ to ‘cottier’ – understood that only they would be reliable guardians of their future, and they sought salvation from famine is a series of land reforms. Historians mark the late 19th century as a platform of radical political and social change in Ireland. The impact of the Land League and the land reform of the 1880s is sometimes underestimated. More than any other political event, the concessions of the ‘three fs’ – fair rent, free sale and fixity of tenure and compulsory land purchase at the turn of the century and after the Partition, have shaped the social values of people in rural Fermanagh. Today, a farming community, owning the land and sure of its place in the scheme of things, is the backbone of rural Fermanagh.

Author Iain Macauley Copyright Fermanagh District Council

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