final history & heritage guide - enniskillen castle

History &HeritageGuide

Fermanagh County MuseumEnniskillen CastleCastle BarracksEnniskillenCo. FermanaghN. IrelandBT74 7HL

Tel: + 44 (0) 28 6632 5000Fax: +44 (0) 28 6632 7342Email: [email protected]:www.enniskillencastle.co.uk

New ArrivalsAbout 12,000 years ago the ice, which had covered much of Ireland in thelast Ice Age, was in full retreat and a lush meadowland was replacing thefrozen, tundra landscape. Trees began to creep into the meadow – firstjuniper, then willow and birch, occasionally aspen and, on limestone soils,guelder rose – creating Ireland’s first woodlands. The melting ice left behindvast, shallow stretches of open water. A compressed compost of decayingplants collected at the shores of these loughs. Encouraged by the warm,wet climate, the decaying material consolidated to form bogs, which extendedout into the loughs.

Early in this new post-glacial period, Ireland remained joined to Britainand it is conceivable that, not only did plants – especially the trees of Ireland’snew woodlands – and animals cross to Ireland over these land bridges, butalso 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 around6,500 years ago – late in the Middle Stone Age – that people first came toFermanagh. They found a landscape of wood and water. The woodland –alder, oak and elm on the lowlands, and birch and pine on the uplands –

History & Heritage Guide:

Lower Lough Erne. Photograph by Shay Nethercott. Copyright of FermanaghCounty Museum.

The Claddagh Glen. Photograph by ShayNethercott. Copyright of FermanaghCounty Museum.

A Mesolithic family gets ready to roast ahare. Diorama by Gordon Johnson.Copyright of Fermanagh CountyMuseum.

Life in the Mesolithic period. Conjecturaldrawing by D. Warner. Copyright ofFermanagh County Museum.

was tall and very dense and the water became their highway into and throughthe county. These Stone Age people were hunters and gatherers. Theirhunting grounds were mainly at the water’s edge where they caught fish andwildfowl; they also hunted for small mammals of the woodland. Theyharvested the wild nuts, berries and grasses, which grew around them tocomplete a resourceful and balanced diet. The relics, which these peopleleft behind, are their stone tools. Very little else of their lifestyle, which was soephemeral, has survived in Fermanagh. At Cushrush Island on the easternshore of Lough Macnean seven mudstone axes and a double-pointed pickwere uncovered, a significant find for the Mesolithic period in Ireland.

First FarmersAbout 6,000 years ago a new wave of incomers arrived in Fermanagh. Theywere spearheading a revolution in the Stone Age way of life: they were thefirst farmers. These pioneer farmers journeyed from Britain and Europecarrying with them seed corn and domestic breeds of cattle, pig, sheep andgoats – all they needed to establish a farming community. They found adensely 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 Agehad been enriched and deepened by the searching root systems of the treesof the mature woodland. The first farmers seem to have settled high up wherethe woodland was probably less dense but the soils still fertile. They clearedthe woodland, cutting down the trees and burning the stumps – ‘slash and


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

Clearing forests, building field walls andpreparing the soil for planting are allpart of a day’s work for this Neolithicfamily. Diorama by Gordon Johnson.Copyright of Fermanagh CountyMuseum.

Grinding corn using a saddle quern.Copyright of Fermanagh CountyMuseum.

burn’ farming – and used the wood to build their homesteads. Gradually,they imposed an order on the landscape, marking it out into fields with earthenbanks and drystone walls. Like all pioneers, though, they adopted the lifestyleof their hunter-gatherer neighbours, fishing, hunting and collecting food.

The enduring legacy of these first farmers is their giant stone burialmonuments – megalithic tombs. Today in these tombs we find, buriedalongside the dead, sherds of pottery they used in their households. Throughmuch of Ireland, four classes of tomb recur – court tombs, portal tombs,passage tombs and wedge tombs. All of these tomb classes are present inFermanagh. The passage tombs – there is a concentration of them in theBoyne Valley near Dublin – are often spectacular. Newgrange wassurrounded by a brilliant white quartz façade. The sunlight from the wintersolstice streamed through a roof box, illuminating the passage and burialchamber of the monument. Passage tombs are scarce in Fermanagh, butcourt tombs and portal tombs are common here.

Extensive trade networks were forged by the first farmers. Stone axesfrom a quarry in Antrim were sent out along trade routes as far afield as southernEngland.

The Metalworkers

About 4,500 years ago rich veins of gold and copper were found in Irelandby prospectors. The finds sparked a new metal-working industry. Tin – mostlikely imported from Cornwall or Brittany – was fused with the copper toproduce bronze. Bronze and gold objects were traded further afield, througha European wide network.

For at least1,500 years, until the discovery of iron , bronze was theworkhorse of the Irish metal-working industry – used for making tools andweapons – whilst gold was fashioned into high value personal ornaments.


This court tomb in Aghanaglack had fourlarge chambers for cremated burials andan open court area at either end whichmay have been used for funeralceremonies. Photograph by MikeHartwell, courtesy of Environment &Heritage Service, DOE.

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

The tradition of building monuments in stone continued throughout the earlypart of the Bronze Age. Often the dead were buried, either inhumed orcremated, in graves lined with stone slabs – cists: sometimes the burialswere solitary, often they were congregated in cemeteries. Or they wereinserted into the megalithic tombs built in the Stone Age. Many of Ireland’sstanding stones and stone circles may have been built at this time. Thepottery from the period – beakers, food vessels, urns and pygmy cups – is atestament 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– went into decline. Ceaseless clearance and intensive farming exhaustedthe soil precipitating the growth and spread of blanket bog. The farmingcommunities were forced down on to the densely wooded lowlands andheavy clay soil.

As the agricultural community re-asserted itself in the lowlands, thebronze and gold working tradition blossomed out into an age of achievement.Between 1200BC and 600 BC prestigious, luxury items were wrought by themaster 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 theintroduction of the wooden ard plough.

Hill forts and ritual enclosures began to appear on the landscape, onsites which later became the seats of the ancient kings of Ulster: Knockaulin(Dun Ailinee, the ancient capital of Leinster), Rath na Ríogh at Tara and SiteA at Navan (Emain Macha) are ritual enclosures. These grand monumentssuggest that Bronze Age society had split between warrior aristocracy andcommoner, with hill-forts being strongholds of society’s echelons. Exotic finds

Bronze Age Rock Art from the hillside above Boho at Reyfad, with an impressivedesign of concentric circles surrounding small round hollows. Photograph byShay Nethercott. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum.

In the Bronze Age, Stone Circles like thisone from Drumskinny, may have beenplaces for religious ceremonies, perhapsrituals involving sun worship. Copyrightof Fermanagh County Museum.

This Early Bronze Age gold lunula wasfound in a bog at Cooltrain, north-east ofEnniskillen. Photograph reproduced bythe kind permission of the Trustees of theNational Museums and Galleries ofNorthern Ireland.


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

The Celts and The Age of Iron

For three hundred years after about 600BC the society and culture of theLater Bronze Age decayed. During this hiatus, the first breath of Celtic influencewas felt in Ireland. By about 300Bc some Celtic adventurers had arrived.

In the 2nd century AD, the Greek geographer, Ptolemy, made a map ofthe known world and its people. Ireland occupied the western edge of thismap. In the 7th and 8th centuries AD, Christian monks transcribed the ancientlegends from the spoken tradition of the people of Ireland. Both these artefacts– the map and the transcription of ancient legends – are windows, throughwhich the Ireland of the Early Iron Age is visible, albeit from the far distance ofseveral centuries.

The legends – especially the Ulster Cycle, the Táin Bó Cúailgne –celebrate the heroes of a society dominated by the túath (tribe), each with itsrí (king), druids and cuire (priestly cast). Chariot warfare, beheading, feastingand cattle-raiding were the everyday exploits which occupied the heroes.The heroes of these legends are epic, supernatural figures, not mortals, andtheir exploits reveal very little about contemporary Ireland. But, Early Iron Agesociety was capable of great achievements. Two massive earthworks, theDorsey and Black Pig’s Dyke – a portion of which is found running along theborder between Fermanagh and Leitrim – stretch across tracts of the Ulstercountryside. The earthworks not only reveal a society with the capacity torecruit and organise a huge labour force, but also implies one of whose


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

These beads, made of imported amber,were found alongside the bronze knifeand chisel in a bog in Killycreen West,near Belcoo. Photograph reproducedby the kind permission of the Trustees ofthe National Museums and Galleries ofNorthern Ireland.

This small gold fastener from TattykeelLower, near Kesh and the gold braceletfrom Cleenaghan, near Ballinamallardare good examples of the well-designedjewellery produced in the Late Bronze Age.Photograph reproduced by the kindpermission of the Trustees of the NationalMuseum of Ireland.

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

The stones notched with ogham script – finds from the 5th century AD – revealthe flowering of the new language spoken by the Celts in Ireland. The beliefsof the Celts – a pageant of pagan gods – are expressed in the stone heads,wooden figures and votive offerings of the period. The Celts also broughtwith 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 fordecoration and fine objects. In the new Iron Age society, the iron-workingblacksmith was venerated for his special skills and the supernatural powerswhich were said to accompany these. During the early Iron Age cerealcultivation declined, perhaps the result of co-incidence of soil exhaustionfrom over-production in the Later Bronze Age, and climatic deterioration.Certainly the climate was wet, and passage through stretches of the kingdomsof Ireland was across trackways raised above bogs.


This bronze brooch designed like amodern safety pin was found inModeenagh, near Tempo, and was usedin the Iron Age. Photograph reproducedby the kind permission of the NationalMuseum of Ireland.

This is the upper stone of a decorated beehive quern foundin Fermanagh. Called a rotary quern, the corn was pouredthrough a hole in the upper stone and by the revolvingmotion of the upper stone on the lower one was groundeasily into fine flour. Copyright of Fermanagh CountyMuseum.

Ogham stone from Topped Mountain. Copyright of FermanaghCounty 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 highlystructured Celtic society, in which a religious and artistic class was integratedinto the hierarchy of king, royal kin, aristocrat, free farmer and bondsman.Ulster was divided into a network of kingdoms, whose kings were interlinkedby kinship. The monastic communities – Devenish is a famous example –were hubs of life in a newly converted Ireland. They evolved into seats oflearning and the monks became patrons of the arts. They commissionedmany works of art, to enhance their churches, celebrating the lives of thesaints and the Christian message. The St. Molaise book shrine, SoiscélMolaise, 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 thancultivation. Here cattle were raised for milk rather than beef. The historicalevidence underlines the economic importance of cattle: a man’s socialstanding 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 hayand overwinter their cattle in byres. In Early Christian Ireland to conservepastureland for the bleak winter months, the cattle were driven in Summerinto the mountains to graze. There, they were looked after by herdsmenworking from summer shelters. This custom, widespread throughout NorthernEurope, has become known as ‘booleying’, a term probably derived fromthe Irish, bó (cow).

Farming families in the Early Christian period lived in isolated


Devenish Island. Conjectural drawing by D. Warner. Copyright of FermanaghCounty Museum.

Drawing by Henry Glassie of detail fromSt. Molaise’s Shrine.

settlements. They built crannogs (artificial islands) in the loughs and wetlands,and defended their homesteads on dry land with an earthen bank (raths) ora drystone wall (cashels). Most of the raths and cashels were simpleenclosures rather than well defended citadels. In some of them undergroundartificial caves (souterrains) can be found which were useful for storage aswell as defence. On the other hand crannogs and promontory forts were allbuilt as strongholds. So, defence was prominent in the concerns of thepopulation – probably because of the cattle-raiding, which was endemic inthat period.

Cultural traditions born at this time were sustained and enriched in thefollowing 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. Thestories of the Viking raids, Norman invasions and the Plantation is largelytold through written accounts of these events in the Annals of Ulster, draftedbetween 1439-1510. These two manuscripts, neither complete, are housedin Trinity College, Dublin and in Oxford, the latter with additions until 1588.

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 onGreenland and Newfoundland. They swept down the western seaboard ofEurope and penetrated deep into the heart of Russia. The ‘men from theNorth’ are immortalised in folk legend throughout Europe as ruthless,marauding raiders and their own sagas – mythological accounts of Vikingexploits – certainly promote this image. Undoubtedly, the Vikings wereconsummate and feared warriors. However, their summer expeditions werenot alone hit and run raids. The Vikings were also traders and theyoccasionally colonised the lands they plundered, merging with native societyand culture. Their legacy is made with the ploughshare as well as the sword.


This horn, made between the 8th and 10th centuries AD, might have beenplayed at a religious service, at an entertainment or perhaps, to lead an armyinto battle. Musicians playing similar horns are shown in scripture scenes onHigh 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 NationalMuseums and Galleries of Northern Ireland.

Life on a Crannog. Diorama by GordonJohnson. Copyright of FermanaghCounty Museum.

The first Viking raids on Ireland, between 790AD and 835AD, weresea-borne coastal attacks. In the fifty years after 835AD the Vikings raideddeep into the Irish countryside on inland waterways. The Annals of Ulsterrecord an attack on Lough Erne’s monasteries, including Devenish, in 837AD.A century later, in 924AD, the Vikings overwintered at Caol Uisce near Belleekbefore, once again, sailing up Lough Erne. But, by then, the Viking grip onIreland was relaxing. Their attention was diverted to the colonisation of Iceland,Northern France and England. Until their final defeat by the Irish Kings in1014AD, there was a period of intense warfare, but the Viking star wasinexorably on the wane throughout this period.

The impact of Viking attacks on Ulster was not strongly felt. Secularand church life was hardly interrupted and there is little evidence that theVikings tried to settle in the province. Round towers appear in this period.They housed bells which rang out a warning of attack or in peaceful times acall to prayer. Valuable monastic reliquaries – books and treasures – weresecreted in the towers during a raid. There is an impressive round towerwithin the Devenish Island monastic complex: it is over 80 ft. high. Yet, theDevenish round tower is much later – a relic of the twelfth century. Ironically,it was in the trade of objects and ideas that the Vikings left their mark onFermanagh. The Soiscél Molaise, a silver book shrine embellished between1001AD and 1027AD, appears to betray Nordic influence in its decorativemotifs.

Throughout the Viking years and into the 12th century, Ulster’s myriadof competing aristocratic lineages were resolving into vast kingdoms. TheCinéal Eoghain – a fusion of the O’Neill and MacLochlainn lineages- achieveddominion over what are today the counties of Armagh, Tyrone andLondonderry. The first stronghold of the Cinéal Eoghain was the spectacularGrianan fort in north Donegal, the ruins of which are still visible from ToppedMountain in north Fermanagh. Later, in the 11th century, the seat of this kingshipwas moved to conquered lands in Tullahogue, Co. Tyrone. The CinéalConnaill held sway over Donegal and competed with Cinéal Eoghain for theprize of the high kingship of Ireland. In the east the Ulaid – sometimesdescribed as the original Ulstermen – were in power with the tribe of DálFiatach in control.

Fermanagh was squeezed uncomfortably between the Cinéal Connaillto the west and Cinéal Eoghain to the north, and the Breifne to the south andwas, therefore, perpetually disputed territory. The Annals of Ulster record theOriel or Airghialla tuaths – a collection of minor tribes – displaced by the UíNeill in Tyrone, establishing a new foothold in Fermanagh. The Airghialla


Front panel of the book-shrine, the‘Soiscel Molaise’, made in the early 11thcentury to hold the gospel book of the St.Molaise of Devenish. It shows the symbolsof the four evangelists - the man for St.Matthew, the lion for St. Mark, the calf forSt. Luke and the eagle for St. John -above and below the arms of a ringedcross. A plain bronze box inside this boxwas amde in the 8th century. Photographreproduced by the kind permission of theNational Museum of Ireland.

Devenish Round Tower. Copyright ofFermanagh County Museum.

ejected the indigenous tribes, Fir Manach and the Cinéal Eanna, who sankinto oblivion. The Airghialla leaders declared themselves Kings of Fermanaghin 1009AD, though they never established an outright title to Fermanagh.Instead they forged and governed a loose federation of minor lineages, whichsurvived on its diplomatic footwork around the far more powerful CinéalConnaill or Cinéal Eoghain. Throughout the 11th and 12th centuries the Kingsof Fermanagh – O’hEignigh, O’Maolruanaidh and O’Dubhdara – were drawnfrom the Airghialla – its Clann Lugainn branch.

By the time Muircheartach MacLochlainn of the Uí Neill – descendantsof 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 territorieshad been ceded to the O’Donnells, descendants of Cinéal Connaill, whowere mortal enemies of the Uí Neill. The O’Neills and MacLochlainns thetwo aristocratic lineages in the Uí Neill – had quarrelled and Hugh O’Neillmade an unholy alliance with the O’Donnells to defeat his cousins, theMacLochlainns. The price of O’Donnell support was Fermanagh. Yet in1208AD O’hEignigh, the Airghialla King of Fermanagh squared up to the

O’Donnells and defeated them in battle. This wasthe beginning of the rise of the Fermanagh kings.

The Normans and Maguire Kings of Fermanagh

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


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

Page from the Annals of Ulster.Photograph courtesy of The Board ofTrinity College Dublin.

Maguire clan inauguration site (SciathGabhra) at Cornashee, Lisnaskea.Photograph courtesy of Stuart Moore.

Hugh the Hospitable Maguire, builder ofEnniskillen Castle. Conjectural drawingby D. Warner. Copyright of FermanaghCounty Museum.

In 1177AD, John de Courcy created the Earldom of Ulster along theeast coast. The pivotal point of the Earldom and English Ulster wasCarrickfergus Castle. The Norman barons, the loyal core of the Earl’s retinue,held substantial tracts of land throughout the earldom. In return, they werethe Earl’s officers in war and administrators and advisers in peace.

The Annals of Ulster record the Normans’ arrival in Clones in 1212and, a year earlier, at Caol Uisce, near Belleek. Bishop John de Grey ofNorwich – King John’s Justician or chief minister – and Gilbert de Costellobuilt a castle, most likely a motte and bailey, in Belleek, but O’hEignigh, inalliance with the O’Neills, burnt it in 1212 and drove the Normans fromFermanagh. Gilbert de Costello was killed. The Normans returned fortyyears later to rebuild their stronghold in Belleek. This time Godfrey O’Donnellattacked and razed the fort, expelling, for the last time, the Normans.

The Norman colonisation of Ulster was only a partial success. A quarterof the province was conquered and incorporated into the Earldom. Theremainder was out of reach and the Pale was harried by the neighbouringGaelic order. By the fourteenth century, colonisation was without purpose –the plague had so decimated the population of Europe that the grain storecolonies were no longer required. The social experiment was fitful. The oldorder was not assimilated into a European feudalism. But the infrastructurewithin the Pale was altered and towns – centres of commerce and a linchpinof the feudal order – were born.

Fermanagh was removed from the Norman experience. Meanwhile,the Maguires – Donn Maguire – had arrived. He died about 1302AD. Theoriginal Maguire stronghold was at Knockninny. Donn’s son, Auley, fromwhom the territory of Clanawley descends, extended the Maguire protectorateto Lisnaskea where the Maguire inauguration seat was established on thesite of an ancient mound. By 1395, Philip of the Battle Axe had defeated thepowerful Clan Mhuircheartaigh of the O’Connors at Drumsroohill toconsolidate the Maguire grip on Fermanagh and ruled a kingdom whichstretched south to Belturbet and Swanlinbar.

Thomas the Great, (Tomas Mor) who reigned from 1395 to 1430, andhis brother, Hugh the Hospitable, (Aodh) enjoyed a period of relative stabilitywhen the Gaelic order was rejuvenated. The Gaelic orthodoxy in the west ofUlster, though it remained immune to Norman overtures, was not a throwback.Nor was it culturally insular. As early as 1111AD the Church in Ireland hadbeen freed from secular control, brought out from under the wing of the Gaelicaristocratic lineages, and re-connected to Rome. This opened a culturaldialogue with continental Europe. The Romanesque doorway on White Island,

the frieze of heads along the top of the round tower at Devenish and thefoliage designs carved on the angles of St. Molaise’s house all betrayEuropean influence. Nor were the Gaelic aristocracy rooted in Irish soilobserving the European renaissance from a distance. Thomas the Great’sson and successor, Thomas the Younger, (Tomas Og) made severalpilgrimages to Compostella in Spain, with Hugh his uncle, and to Rome in1450 when he was king.

During the reign of Thomas the Younger from 1430 to 1471 the Maguireswere pitched once again into the struggle between the Gaelic titans – theO’Neills and the O’Donnells. Thomas the Younger allied the Maguires to theO’Neills. He achieved the subjugation of the last surviving chieftains inFermanagh and finally routed the O’Rourkes of Breifne. His brother, Ross,was Bishop of Clogher between 1447 and 1483 and the Maguire grip on thesecular and spiritual life of Fermanagh was complete. Yet Thomas’ brother,Philip, made overtures to the O’Donnells and began to establish a rival basein Enniskillen Castle. His son, Tarlach joined the O‘Donnells and theMaguires splintered into a junior branch, descending from Philip. The seatof the senior branch was the original stronghold at Lisnaskea, that of thejunior branch was at Enniskillen Castle. The kingship was by electionagreement rather than primogeniture and so they alternated regularly betweenboth branches.

During the reign of John I between 1484 and 1503 the junior Maguireswere in the ascendant. Despite his branch’s natural sympathy for theO’Donnells, John used his diplomatic skills to broker a temporary cessationof hostilities between the O’Donnells and O’Neills. Yet this did not save himfrom attack by the O’Neills. Conor the Great, ruling from 1503 to 1527, was ofthe senior line and this re-established the alliance with the O’Neills. Despiteanother peace accord between the O’Neills and the O’Donnells, brokeredby Conor the Great – one which confirmed the grant to the O‘Donnells ofFermanagh by the O’Neills – the O’Donnells invaded Fermanagh in 1515and forced the Maguires to submit to them. Seven years on, Conor the Greatjoined the O’Neills to drive out the O’Donnells. Conor’s son, Giolla Patrickwas deposed by Conn O’Neill in 1540 and John II of the junior line wasinstalled as the ruler of Fermanagh.

From the reign of John II, the fortunes of the Maguires and Fermanaghare indivisible from changes in the political landscape of England. Followinghis break from Rome, Henry VIII had the Dublin Parliament, controlled by anAnglo-Irish elite, declare him head of the Irish Church in 1537 and by 1541he was King of Ireland. Conn O’Neill and Manus O’Donnell surrendered


Crowning of a Maguire chieftain atCornashee, near Lisnaskea. Conjecturaldrawing by D Warner. Copyright ofFermanagh County Museum.

Maguire stronghold at Lisnaskea in 15thcentury. Conjectural drawing by DWarner. Copyright of Fermanagh CountyMuseum.

King Thomas Maguire the younger.Conjectural drawing by D Warner.Copyright of Fermanagh CountyMuseum.

their land to the English crown in return for a regrant with English tenureconditions. The Maguires did not submit at this stage, though in 1560, bywhich time Elizabeth I sat on the English throne, John led a mercenary bandagainst 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 partof that accord, the Maguires were commanded to pay a tribute to the O’Neills.John refused and O’Neill invaded deposing him and setting CúchonnachtMaguire, John’s brother, on the throne.

Cúchonnacht was a consummate diplomat. He resolved the O’Neilland O’Donnell claim to Fermanagh and thus removed the ever-present threatof invasion by marrying daughters of Shane O’Neill and Manus O’Donnell.He kept peace with the English by surrendering Fermanagh to the Crown in1585 to receive it back in perpetuity a year later, and by accepting theconditions of the Council of Trent, the imposition of an English presence inFermanagh. Meanwhile, he built the Franciscan Abbey at Lisgoole. It ishard to imagine peering through this window of tranquillity in the Maguirehistory that 11 years after Cúchonnacht’s death the Maguire star would fall.

Rebellion and Plantation

Alone, the story of the rise of Hugh Maguire to the chiefdom of Fermanaghhas guaranteed his status in the mythology of the Gaelic order. In 1586, hekilled Conn O’Neill in single combat to advertise his warrior mettle. Later, hedisplayed the statesmanship required of his aristocratic rank by marrying thedaughter of Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone – and this despite being a cousinof Red Hugh O’Donnell! Though Hugh Maguire was consummate in theprized skills of warrior and diplomat, he was the last Maguire to know dominion


Maguire Castle, Enniskillen. Conjecturaldrawing by D Warner. Copyright ofFermanagh County Museum.

An attack on a crannog. From anillustrated map by Bartlett, circa 1602A.D.

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

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 tideof English and European politics. The first loss of Maguire power came aftera failed Rebellion of the Gaelic aristocracy – the Nine Years War (1594 –1603). The Gaelic order in Ulster had remained aloof from the creepingcolonialism of the English Crown, perhaps to the point of self-deception, sinceUlster had been brought into the English fold by the division of the Provinceinto shires and the overlay of a colonial administration. In the 1580s astatesmanlike embrace of the English masked preparations to rebel andchallenge the Elizabethan ascendancy. The figurehead of this rebellion wasHugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone. He embodied the complex and oftencontradictory character of the Gaelic order. Reared in England, he understoodthe English Crown but he turned his face to Catholic Europe, where he wasa supporting player on the vast stage of European politics.

It was Maguire who inaugurated the Rebellion by harbouring his fugitivecousin, Red Hugh O’Donnell, expelling Fermanagh’s sheriff, Captain Willis,and invading Sir George Bingham’s Connacht territory. Ironically, Hugh O’Neillwas employed by Elizabeth I to appease Maguire and then ordered to marchwith Bingham against him. Maguire’s army was put to flight at the Battle ofBelleek, though this was something of a mock battle, with O’Neill’s men fightingon both sides!

In February 1594, an English army took and garrisoned Enniskillen.The fort was promptly besieged by Hugh Maguire, Red Hugh O’Donnell andCormac McBarron O’Neill (Hugh O’Neill’s brother). A relief army with Sir HenryDuke at its head was ambushed on the Arney River and routed by Maguirein the Battle of the Ford of the Biscuit: a poignant title which commemorates


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

The Defence of Enniskillen Castle 1594.Conjectural drawing by D. Warner.Copyright of Fermanagh CountyMuseum.

the sight of English rations floating down the Arney. By now the Rebellionwas in full swing with Hugh O’Neill at its head and victories followed for theUlster armies. In 1597 came the inevitable English backlash with majorcampaigns against Ulster, but a year later, at the Yellow Ford on the BlackwaterRiver, Hugh Maguire led the Irish cavalry in a stunning victory against theEnglish. With this rout the Rebellion caught fire throughout Ireland.

In 1600, Hugh O’Neill went on the campaign trail through Irelandcanvassing support for the Rebellion. At Cork, Hugh Maguire made aspeculative raid against the English and was met by Sir Warham Saint Legerand Sir Henry Power. He was killed in combat with Saint Leger and is buriedin Cork.

Maguire’s death precipitated an internecine feud for the succession inFermanagh. Conor Rua was pitched against Cúchonnacht Og. O’Donnellsupported Cúchonnacht Og and Conor Rua promptly went over to the English.The network of alliances within the Gaelic order which had sustained andextended the Rebellion was beginning to fragment in 1601 when the armypledged to the cause by Phillip II of Spain disembarked at Kinsale. HughO’Neill marched the length of Ireland through a winter landscape to relievethe pitifully supplied Spanish army of 4,000 men. The Battle of Kinsale, foughton Christmas Eve 1601, ended the all-Ireland Rebellion and the Ulster Gaelicchieftains headed home. O’Neill surrendered to the English at Mellifont inMarch, 1603.

Meanwhile, as the Rebellion disintegrated, battle for the Maguirechieftainship was joined between Conor Rua, sponsored by the English,and Cúchonnacht Og. Cúchonnacht, now alone, became dispirited with thecontest and left Ireland for a journey to continental Europe. He returnedfleetingly with the boat which carried the upper echelons of the Gaelicaristocracy to exile in Europe – the Flight of the Earls. Cúchonnacht died inGenoa.

The Crown’s response to the Rebellion was uncompromising. JamesI embarked on a colonial experiment, designed to break decisively the Gaelicorder’s hold on the land and the culture of Ulster. The rebels’ land wasconfiscated and the ancient brehon laws which structured Gaelic society wererevoked. A new elite of English and Scottish colonists was planted at the topof Ulster society. Conor Rua Maguire, of the senior branch, retained most ofthe land in the Barony of Magherasteffany, but he had lost much more thanhe held. The junior branch of the Maguires was granted a large estate whichincluded Tempo and Tullyweel near Fivemiletown. The remainder ofFermanagh was apportioned to English and Scots undertakers and to


Fallen Irish soldier from Derricke’s Imageof Ireland.

English Soldiers from Derricke’s Imageof Ireland

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

This colonial experiment installed some of the family names which wereto comprise Fermanagh’s 18th century planter gentry: Atkinson, Cole,Blennerhasset, Archdale, Hume, Balfour. But the experiment was only a fitfulsuccess. It was surrounded by the resentment and discontent of thedispossessed. Conor Rua Maguire became embittered and began to courtthe rebel cause. The Gaelic culture survived, though it went partiallyunderground. Fermanagh had been renowned in the Gaelic world as aseat of learning. That devotion to Gaelic literature and culture continued.The ‘Four Masters’ worked at Lisgoole Abbey from September to December1631 to complete ‘The Book of Invasions’. The Plantation was compromisedtoo by the planter population, which began to merge into the primordial Gaelicbackground: 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 thePlanters. They agreed to pay an increase in dues to the Crown in exchangefor perpetual title to their land. The Confederate War, which was launched bythe 1641 Rising, was fought on two fronts. In Ulster, the Gaelic order wasonce again on the march. The grievance they held was against the Plantation– against the deed and the people who enforced the new order. The Risingwas precipitated by the creeping colonialism of the Crown, which hadcontinued to swallow their territory. The remnants of the Gaelic order –ironically, the families who had allied themselves to Elizabeth I in the NineYears War and thus retained their territory – rose up to protect the last enclavesof its power.

Meanwhile a Civil War was brewing in England. The assumption thatthe King should enjoy absolute power was being challenged by the Puritansin England and tHe Covenanters in Scotland. The Gaelic order in Ulster wasas afraid of the advance of Puritanism and its threat to their faith as they wereembittered by the irrepressible tide of the Plantation and the grip in whichCharles I held Ireland. Fast approaching was a time when the champions ofthe Plantation, themselves, would have to choose between King andParliament in England. So, the Rising and the Confederate war in Irelandoften became a surrogate for the battle between autocratic monarchy and


Illustration of Enniskillen Castle from mapof Ulster by John Speede, published in1610.

Sir William Cole, Constable of EnniskillenCastle. Photograph courtesy of JohnCathcart.

Map of the Barony Of Magheryboy, Co.Fermanagh by Sir Josias Bodley, 1609.

Parliamentary democracy in England, and loyalties were confused andallegiances perpetually shifting.

Conor Maguire – he now held the title of Lord Enniskillen, a badge ofhis absorption into the Plantation background – was Fermanagh’s leadingrebel. He set out in 1641 to capture Dublin Castle. This daring act was toopen the Rising. But the plot was betrayed and Conor Maguire was captured.He was taken to England and, four years later, he was hanged.

However, despite the failure of the centrepiece of the Rising the sparkof rebellion lit a fire throughout Ulster. Alone, the Plantation garrison inEnniskillen held out against the forces of the Rising. Rory Maguire, ConorMaguire’s brother, himself affiliated to the planter community by marriage toEdward Blennerhassett’s daughter, led the people’s revolt in Fermanagh.He opened his campaign with a theatrical ruse to capture the cream of theplanter aristocracy in Fermanagh. He invited them all to dinner at hisCrevenish stronghold, but they were tipped off. Rory Maguire orchestratedthe capture of the planter houses throughout Fermanagh. It was a ruthless,sometimes a savage campaign as the peasantry wreaked revenge on theirincomer neighbours. It culminated in the bloody capture of Lisgoole andMonea.

Through the winter and spring of 1642 the Rising foundered. It wasjoined by the Anglo-Irish aristocracy who, preoccupied with events in England,diluted the unity of purpose and action amongst the Gaelic order in Ulster.The Ulster planters’ determined Laggan Army, bolstered by a contingent ofitinerant Scots soldiers, routed the rebel army at Glenmaquin. In June of1642, 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 theirresolve.

Eoghan O’Neill was the nephew of Hugh O’Neill the expatriate Earl ofTyrone. He had won renown fighting for the Spanish army against the French.With this pedigree and reputation he was ideally cast in the heroic mouldand he was a suitably charismatic leader of the Gaelic order. But, his energieswere dissipated in a new rainbow coalition – a Confederacy of the rebellingIrish. At Kilkenny on 22nd October 1642, a shadow government with a two tierAssembly – an upper house of lords and bishops and a lower house of thepeople’s representatives – was established and adopted a model democraticconstitution. But the Confederacy was inevitably compromised by the EnglishCivil War. In 1645, the assembly split into Nunciists – supporters of the PapalNuncio Rinuccini who journeyed from Rome to advocate simplicity in the aimsof the war, returning Ireland to its Catholic rootstock and Ormondists, who


The building of the Watergate in 1611.Drawing by Philip Armstrong courtesy ofthe permission of the Environment andHeritage Service, DOE.

Enniskillen Castle and town c. 1620.Conjectural drawing by D Warner.Copyright of Fermanagh CountyMuseum.

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 Ormondistshad manoeuvred the Confederation into a pact with the King. TheConfederation splintered in 1647 and Ormond relinquished Dublin to theParliamentarians. For two years O’Neill and the Ulster chiefs were in limbo,unsure of the next move. In that time, Rory Maguire, who had been one ofO’Neill’s staunchest allies, was killed in battle at Jamestown. His death wascommemorated by the Gaelic bards and is recorded as an ominous loss forthe Ulster army.

Cromwell’s landing at Ringsend in 1649 united the Irish rebels onceagain, this time not in hope but in fear. Soon after, O’Neill was killed at Belturbetand passed into legend. Heber McMahon, the Bishop of Clogher, succeededhim as leader of the Ulster army, but his generalship lasted only three monthsbefore his army was routed at Scarriffhollis, outside Letterkenny, Co. Donegal.McMahon was betrayed by Brian Maguire of Tempo, who had remainedaloof from the Rising, and he was hanged on the Broadmeadow, Enniskillen.The Bishop was then beheaded and his head impaled on a spike at theCastle – 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 theparliamentarian cause. For a decade after the end of the Confederate War,Cromwell consolidated the Plantation, declaring all lands of the Irish rebelsforfeit. Maguire land at Magherasteffany was given to the Brooke family. OnlyBrian Maguire survived in place with his estate at Tempo intact.

The restoration of the monarchy and the ascension of Charles II to thethrone of England did little other than preserve the status quo – even thoughCharles II did return to Catholicism. The next flashpoint occurred in 1688when Charles’ successor, James II, was deposed. This time the Gaelic Orderin Ulster came out for the King, who had restored Catholicism in England.Only the plantation towns of Derry and Enniskillen closed their gates in timeto hold back the flood of rebellion. In Enniskillen there was panic as planterfamilies from the rural hinterland and from the neighbouring counties of Sligo,Leitrim and Cavan 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 Williamof Orange. A day later, James II landed at Kinsale seeking to win, with victoryin Ireland, the springboard for an assault on England. Throughout that month,


Monea Castle. Copyright of FermanaghCounty Museum.

King William of Orange after Kneller.Copyright of Fermanagh CountyMuseum.

the Enniskilleners harassed the rebels, sending out lightning raids from theirisland stronghold: 200 soldiers marched to relieve Captain Crichton at CromCastle and they defeated Lord Galmoy’s besieging army. After this defeat,Brian Maguire, who was released from captivity by Crichton, abandoned therebel cause. Galmoy had hanged Captain Dixey, who should have beenexchanged 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 ofBerwick from Omagh 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 toomany men to press home the action. Then, 400 Enniskillen infantrydisengaged from the defence of Ballyshannon to relieve Crom. They attackedthe rebels at Lisnaskea and later annihilated them in the Battle ofNewtownbutler. Mountcashel was injured and captured in a defeat whichsealed the fate of James II’s campaign in Ireland. It also opened an illustriouschapter in Enniskillen’s military history. Out of this war the Inniskilling Dragoonsand Fusiliers Regiments were born.

It is well to remember that Ireland was neither created nor destroyed in1690. That year and the Battle of the Boyne has become a watershed in thesectarian hagiography of Northern Ireland. But, events in the 18th and 19th

century made an equally strong impact on contemporary society. The frictioncaused by the shifting relationship between the natives of Fermanagh andthe stream of incomers – English and Scots settlers – continued to sparkconflict. But, the lines of that conflict were never drawn with absolute precisionbetween Gael and Planter. The United Irishmen of the last years of the 18th

century were endowed with many of the ironies and contradictions whichlitter Irish history. The movement was begun in Belfast by a coalition ofProtestant and Catholic, enthused by the creed of the French Revolution.They sought to carry over the universalist and republican ideals of the Frenchrevolution into Irish politics.

In the 18th century, the Plantation aristocracy has revitalised by aninjection of Georgian grandeur into its arteries. The Great Houses ofFermanagh which have been acquired by the National Trust, restored andopened to the public – Castlecoole and Florencecourt House – are relics ofthe political and cultural self-confidence they discovered in the 18th century.Meanwhile, in the aftermath of a century of failed rebellion, the Catholics ofFermanagh fought to sustain their faith and preserve their Church through a


Crest of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.

Florencecourt House in 1786 from a printby Malton. Photograph courtesy of Mr JNawn.

Castlecoole, Enniskillen. Copyright ofFermanagh County Museum.

succeeding century of the Penal Laws. The poor – Catholic and Protestant– always faced a struggle to survive. Their nadir came with the famine of the1840s.

The Industrial Revolution: Inland Waterways andRailways

Visionary ideas of the 18th and 19th centuries swept across to the west ofIreland on the tide of the industrial revolution. A canal-building boom in themid 1700s pulled Ulster into the mainstream of industrialisation in England.Canals were to be the super highways of the day – a route between thecoalfields, which fuelled the engine house of this industrial revolution, andthe factory, and between the factory and the ports, from where manufacturedgoods were shipped to destinations in Europe and the Empire. Ulster’scoalfield was in the heart of Tyrone and thus it was Lough Neagh whichbecame the nucleus of the canal network.

Belfast city warmed to the glow of the industrial revolution, whilst Dublinclung to its elevated cultural status as the second city of the empire. But,Fermanagh remained largely immune to the clarion call of the factory andindustry. Nevertheless, a canal was dug between Lough Neagh and thesouthern reaches of Lough Erne, connecting Fermanagh with Belfast, and,in 1860, the Erne-Shannon link was secured by the Ballinamore/ Ballyconnellcanal. So, Fermanagh was joined to Dublin on the umbilical cord of theShannon navigation. However, there was virtually one-way traffic on thesecanals -–agricultural produce carried from Fermanagh to feed the growingworkers’ population in the cities of the eastern seaboard. Fermanagh did


This drawing by Nicola Gill, based on an old photograph, showsthe railway line at Belleek Pottery. Copyright of FermanaghCounty Museum.

witness the birth of an industry which made its mark in the heartland ofnineteenth century Europe and the new world – America, Canada andAustralia – and even reached Queen Victoria’s parlour. The Belleek Potterywas the brainchild of the plantation aristocrat, John Caldwell Bloomfield ofcastle Caldwell, who prospected for and found seams of industrial qualityclay near Belleek. His zeal was matched by an investment of £40,000 fromDavid Birney, a wealthy Dublin merchant and the financial and artistic acumenof Robert Williams Armstrong, the Pottery’s first manager. Together, in 1857,they launched Belleek Pottery onto the international market place where, in alittle over ten years, it gained a firm foothold.

Belleek Pottery did not travel to its city markets along the canals. It wastaken by steamer, the Erne Packet, along the length of Lower Lough Erne toa railhead at Enniskillen. The advent of the railways quickly hastened thedemise of the canals. Legend has it that the Erne-Shannon link was gracedby only eight boats in its short and troubled operating life. The Pottery’s kilnshad an insatiable appetite for coal. The coal might have been carried fromthe Arigna mines in Leitrim along the Ballinamore/ Ballyconnell canal, or fromthe Tyrone coalfields along the canal from Lough Neagh. But, when the


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

Great Northern Railway was driven through Belleek to an Atlantic railhead atthe port of Bundoran, where huge supplies of coal were landed, it inaugurateda fast, reliable transport highway taking coal to the factory gate and BelleekPottery to the World. For over a century, the railway remained Fermanagh’sartery to the world. During that time, and to this day, Fermanagh’s principalexports were agricultural produce and its people.

In 1941 the Clogher Valley Railway closed and in1957 Fermanaghlost its surviving rail links to Belfast and Dublin. However, the canals aremaking a comeback – the Ballinamore/ Ballyconnell canal has been re-opened joining the Erne and the Shannon to create one of Europe’s largestinland waterways.

Fermanagh’s Farm Economy

Fermanagh’s economy, through the heyday of the British Empire and theindustrial revolution – the 18th and 19th centuries – remained rooted in thesoil and, today, the farm economy is still the mainstay of everyday life. However,the making of that farm economy is often a tale of the unexpected.

A strain of the infant industrial revolution did seep into the farm economyof the 17th century, with the birth of a linen industry in Fermanagh. Linenmaking was the first cottage industry – the farmers grew and harvested flax,which was spun, boiled, ‘wound’ and woven into linen at home, usually bythe women. Flax and linen, anything from the raw cloth to a fine, bleachedtextile, was sold on the town markets – mainly in Enniskillen, Fermanagh’smodern capital. The linen industry was never particularly stable – boom andbust throughout the eighteenth century, as it adjusted to the whim of industrialmarkets. There was a particularly steep decline in the 1770s, but this cottageindustry survived until the second quarter of the 19th century, when it finallysuccumbed to the unerring logic of the industrial revolution as linen weavingbecame centralised in urban factories.

For a short time, the linen industry did confer on the rural people ofFermanagh a small measure of comfort and security and the benefits fromthis cottage industry were, for that era, spread relatively equitably. However,rural society was immutably hierarchical and the tenant farmer at the foot ofthe social tree suffered in the shadows cast by his more elevated peers.Fermanagh’s plantation aristocracy enjoyed the rarified atmosphere andpanoramic view of the world from the top of that social tree. However,Fermanagh’s aristocratic families, as a rule, recognised and were directed


Traditional kitchen on display atFermanagh County Museum. Copyright ofFermanagh County Museum.


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 lettracts of their land to middlemen (terney begs or tiarnaí beaga) who, in turn,sub-let land at inflated rents to smaller tenant farmers. Inevitably, thesemiddlemen became the target of farmers’ unrestrained scorn and rage, beingregarded as nothing better than usurers. Gradually, through the 18th century,the middlemen vanished, to be replaced by landlord’s agents and a class ofwell-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 beamongst the affluent lived on anything from 15 to 30 acres: they kept somecattle, grew cereals – wheat, oats and barley – flax and the ubiquitous potato.There was an underclass of cottiers who let only an acre, on which theygrew potatoes, and laboured on others’ land to live, and the irredeemablepoor – labourers with no land.

The 1845 – 47 Famine attacked the farming underclass. Many died ofstarvation or, hunger-ravaged, of typhus epidemics against which they hadno resistance. Others emigrated – one quarter of the Fermanagh populationdisappeared between 1841 and 1851. Some fled the countryside to thetown workhouses. The affluent farmers were insulated from famine by adiverse cropping regime. However they did not emerge from this turmoilunscathed. The repeal of the Corn Laws saw Irish cereals uncompetitive onthe 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 reliableguardians of their future, and they sought salvation from famine is a series ofland reforms. Historians mark the late 19th century as a platform of radicalpolitical and social change in Ireland. The impact of the Land League andthe land reform of the 1880s is sometimes underestimated. More than anyother political event, the concessions of the ‘three fs’ – fair rent, free sale andfixity of tenure and compulsory land purchase at the turn of the century andafter 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 thescheme of things, is the backbone of rural Fermanagh.

Author Iain MacauleyCopyright Fermanagh District Council

final history & heritage guide - enniskillen castle

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