Trip Report Ireland 2004 Part 5 - Fermanagh
- From: B Vaughan<me@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 06 Aug 2005 14:43:09 +0200
[Part V of report on trip to Ireland in June 2004. See lodging and
dining sections for specifics of those topics.]
After our first night at the Omagh Youth Hostel, we headed off towards
Enniskillen, in County Fermanagh, to find my father?s birthplace. I
had seen it in 1986, and had spent some time with the very nice family
who were living there then. It was a lovely thatched cottage, somewhat
expanded since my father?s family left, but very much in its original
condition. Shortly before this most recent trip I had learned that
there had been a fire in the house, that the thatched roof had been
replaced with slate, and that there was a new owner. My informant
couldn?t tell me anything about the whereabouts of the previous family
or if any of them had been hurt in the fire. I was a bit apprehensive,
especially about the family I had met in 1986.
Getting to Enniskillen involved a few more guessing games with the
confusing road signage in Omagh, and when we got to Enniskillen, I
couldn?t find the road I wanted to take leaving the city. I really
wanted to stay on the road we were already on, the A32, which at this
point is the same road as the A4, which goes to Sligo. However, it
merges with several other roads and then splits off again, and I
couldn?t find the splitting point. We ended up retracing our path more
than once. If we turned around, we had no trouble finding the A32 in
the other direction, but it seemed to vanish at Enniskillen, and we
couldn?t find the A4 either. We finally ended up on a smaller road
which was going roughly in the right direction and we stopped in the
town of Sheelin to ask directions.
Sheelin has a museum of lace. Actually, I knew that before I got
there, and our passing through was not entirely a coincidence. I saw
the museum when we stopped and noticed that it had a sign saying to
enquire in the post office if you wanted to visit. We decided we could
also ask in the post office how to find my father?s house. (I was sure
that we were quite near it.)
The post office was inside Sheelin?s grocery store, and the
postmistress sold groceries when she wasn?t posting letters. When she
was doing neither, she ran the lace museum. She told me her husband
would be better at giving directions that she was, and called him. I
mentioned that I was also interested in the museum, so when her
husband arrived, she asked him to mind the store for a while (and also
the post office, I suppose).
At this point, I want to explain a little-known Irish geographical
unit. All of Ireland is divided into small units called ?townlands?.
They have nothing to do with towns, and in fact where there are towns,
the borders of the townlands have often been lost to memory. A
townland may be a single large farm, or a few smaller ones. The size
varies considerably. Each townland has a name, but you won?t find the
names on a map. However, if you get within a few miles of your
destination, and mention the name of the townland, you will likely
find that everyone can tell you where it is.
When we were in Sheelin, I thought we were within a few miles of my
father?s birthplace, so I mentioned the townland of Derrygiff to the
postmistress? husband. Sure enough, he knew it and asked me who I was
looking for. I mentioned the name of the family who used to live
there, and that the last time I saw the house it had a thatched roof.
He knew the house and the former occupants and told me about the fire
and that the family had sold the house. He also assured me that no one
had been injured in the fire. He gave me good directions to the house,
and I went off to visit the lace museum.
The lace museum was very interesting to me, but Marcello decided to
wait outside and watch the delphiniums grow in the garden while I
examined the lace. Incidentally, there was a rather large exhibit of
Carrickmacross lace, from Padraig Breathnach?s town. I would encourage
Padraig to make a trip there to see it. Aside from the extensive
displays, there were antique and modern lace and crochet pieces for
sale. I contented myself with a book on the techniques of Irish
crochet, which was widely used in the past to make a very fine lace.
Before leaving Sheelin, Marcello and I filled up at the Sheelin gas
station and had a nice lunch in the Sheelin pub, and so exhausted all
of Sheelin?s commercial possibilities.
My father?s birthplace was not far away, and driving along the road I
recognized it from my previous visit. No one answered the door, but
there was a garden shed with an open door, so I had a feeling the
occupants were in the vicinity. I called around the property, but no
one answered. So we went to a house across the road and knocked there.
The family who lives here is related by marriage to my family, and I
had met then on my earlier visit. The woman who answered the door had
recently married into the family, but she was able to bring me up to
date on the news. The fire in my father's birthplace hadn?t injured
anyone and hadn?t even caused a great loss of property. It was a
slow-burning fire mostly confined to the thatch. The roof had been
replaced with slate because of the high cost of insuring a house with
a thatch roof. The family had moved to England to be near one of their
daughters. The present owner was from Belfast and was away for a week,
so I would have no opportunity to meet her. I asked if she thought it
would all right for me to take some photos of the house and garden.
She told me she was sure the owner wouldn?t mind. The garden and the
little pond were almost exactly as they were in 1986. The house has
been modified a bit, mostly to reopen an earlier door in the front.
In 1986, we had visited Florence Court, which is a Heritage Trust
property with a large manor house and an extensive garden, and is well
worth a visit. I have reason to believe that some of my ancestors
worked on this estate. I have an old photo, apparently taken for
publication in a newspaper or magazine in the year 1867. It shows a
very old woman posed with two little girls. The two little girls are
identified as Lady Jane Cole and Lady Alice Cole. The elderly woman is
identified as Mary Thompson, and the caption underneath says that she
is 109 years old, 100 years older than one of the little Cole girls.
According to my Aunt Edith, Mary Thompson was an ancestor of her
mother, although she didn?t know how many generations back. Even
though she was born in the 1750s, she was still alive when my
grandmother was born. From her dress and the fact that she isn?t even
given the title of ?Mrs.?, one can deduce that she was of a working
class or peasant family. The Cole family owned Florence Court
Another site that is supposed to be worth visiting in Fermanagh is the
Marble Arch Cavern. I?m not a big cavern enthusiast, and I have a
feeling that the Frassassi caverns near where I live are more
impressive than Marble Arch anyway. If not, I?m sorry to slight Marble
Arch.
After leaving Derrygiff, we set off for a little sightseeing along one
of Fermanagh?s large lakes, Lower Lough Erne. On my earlier trip, I
had taken a very interesting boat tour of the lake, which included a
stop at Devenish island, where there are the remains of several early
Christian churches and abbeys. However, the boats run only in July and
August, so it wasn?t a possibility on this trip.
We drove along the scenic southern shore of Lough Erne. Unfortunately
the scenery is mostly hidden by excessive shrubbery along the road. It
would be nice if every so often a little of it would be cut back to
give a view over the lake. Some of it may be historic hedgerow, but
most of it looked like unruly undergrowth. To the left of the road,
along some stretches, high cliffs rose above the lake. All in all, it
was a pretty road, but probably not worth a long detour.
At the northern end of the lake, we took a road that leads to Boa
Island, which is reached by bridges at either end. We passed very near
the Belleek porcelain factory. I would have stopped, but Marcello
thought that my stop at the lace museum had exhausted my daily quota
for visits that didn?t interest him in the least.
On Boa Island there is a cemetery called Killybeg graveyard, where
among the gravestones you can see several pre-Christian statues. The
best-preserved is called the Janus statue, because, like the Roman god
of entrances and exits, he has faces on both sides. There is a smaller
statue nearby called the Lusty man, not because of his strength or his
libido, but because he is originally from nearby Lusty Beg island. I
don?t know when and why he ended up on Boa island. Marcello was
fascinated by the fact that people leave coins at the base of these
statues.
By now it had begun to rain quite hard. Most of the time, the rain we
had encountered was in the form of brief showers, but this looked to
be a storm that was setting in to stay awhile. It reminded me of the
storms we used to call ?nor?easters? in the eastern USA.
Next I wanted to take a boat to White Island to see a group of
statues, some early Christian, some pre-Christian, that are found
together in a church on the island. The Lonely Planet guidebook
indicated that the ferry left every hour on the hour from Castle
Archdale County Park It was getting near four o?clock and I hoped to
make the ferry. However, there are several roads leading into this
park and when we saw the first one, we took it. It turned out that the
road we wanted was another mile up the main road. Unfortunately, by
the time we learned this, there was no way we could make the four
o?clock ferry. I was supposed to meet my cousin Greta and my friend
Anna in Omagh that evening, and the five o?clock ferry would have made
me late for our meeting. I?ll have to return to Fermanagh once again
to see the Belleek factory and White Island. Maybe I?ll see Marble
Arch Caverns as well.
--
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup
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