This historic building, on the way into Bessbrook was recently demolished. There are very few remaining anywhere in the district. They were located close to rivers where water could be diverted and utilised as a source of power.
Industrial History
The great estates
Small farms continue to predominate in the Ring of Gullion, though fewer than before of those who occupy them any longer practise agriculture as their first occupation. Still their use, or former use, has shaped the landscape.
Fews Mines and Forests
Newtownhamilton, says an old copy of the Armagh County Guide, is named after its founder who in 1770 established a settlement here in the
Butter Market: A Short History
The Butter and Egg Market was erected in 1874 in Market Street, at the foot of High Street. I shall have to make a return visit to my friend, Ben Hughes who still resides in the locality, to revive my memories of those few details of it that he shared last time with me.
Newry Military Barracks
The White Linen Hall in Newry was built about 1783 to promote the direct export from Counties Down and Armagh of linen products manufactured there and to bypass the services of dealers in Dublin. The spinning-wheel motif and the crowned harp on the piers of the gate date from this period. The crowned harp symbolises the involvement of the state with the linen industry of the time.
Poor Law and Tramps
John Mitchel is even today frequently lambasted for claims he made that British policy towards Ireland after the Union was deliberately designed to remove the great mass of poor from their holdings, the land, the country and the face of the earth. Yet Reports from Commissions of Inquiry set up by successive British governments – and action (and inaction) taken as a result – give strong if circumstantial evidence in support of Mitchel’s words.
The Devon Commission of 1833 estimated that of the country’s population of over 8 million, some 2,385,000 were ‘in great need of food’. Its strong recommendations for urgent investment in wealth- and employment-creating schemes went unheeded and the Government went ahead with the Workhouses designed to deter the ‘work-shy’. The subsequent potato failure and Great Hunger, disease, campaign of farm-amalgamation, dispossession, eviction and enforced emigration saw a massive shift in the population profile by the end of the century. The Vice-Regal Commission on Poor Law Reform 1906 blamed famine, disease, eviction and emigration which affected the poorer classes more than most.
The latter Commission in 1906 estimated some 30,000 of a population of four and a half million to be dependent upon Poor Relief. (The numbers again dropped dramatically from 1908 onwards with the introduction of Old Age Pensions). This was less than one per cent compared with thirty per cent of a population twice the size, some seventy years previously.
Where had they all gone? We will soon upload a personal story of an ‘American Wake’. A sizable fraction of those who had not fled the country had died of disease or hunger. The suffering of the poor was hugely disproportionate as a result of deliberate Government policy.
Of the 30,000 mentioned, some 2,000 were classified as vagrant or tramps. The Commission estimated that eighty per cent of these were male. They were of two types, one being old and infirm but basically decent and generally well-known and respected within their own locality. The other type has for centuries been the greatest object of hatred for governments: the ‘young and able, lazy ne’er-do-wells, dishonest and potentially dangerous’. The Commission recommended the setting up of Labour Houses wherein they might be confined to learn ‘habits of sobriety, regularity and industry’.
The Newry Reporter and other local papers reported the activities of tramps in this area – ‘infested with a tramp plague’ was a commonly heard expression – and special courts were frequently convened to deal with the problem. For begging, two months in prison with hard labour was a regular sentence.
Yet then (and before and since!) there was a great deal of local sympathy especially for those tramps who were recognized simply as colourful characters.
We have featured a number. Later a few more.
Ballagh Millstone
On the edge of the Calliagh Berra’s lake on the top of Slieve Gullion is a massive millstone, clearly recognizable in the photo from its circular shape and the hole in the middle. I’ll tell you the story and it’s the God’s truth, for indeed any other attempted explanation would be preposterous.
There was a time when the milling of corn was one of the chief, and indeed the most lucrative enterprises in the country. People have to eat, don’t they, whether in war or in peace? And the owner who has the hardest, and most long-lasting and largest millstone, capable of grinding the greatest quantity of wheat in the shortest space of time and over an extended period of many years, clearly would have the advantage over his rivals.
There was a mill in the Ballagh district one time in need of a new millstone and the owner, one Peter O’Mara was determined to outshine his rivals. He knew that the granite stones that made up the stone-age passage grave on top of Slieve Gullion could not be beaten for their hard and long-lasting qualities. He cared nothing for the customs and long-held beliefs that these graves should not, at any cost, be interfered with. In the middle of the night – for despite his callousness, he cared not to let his neighbours know the source of his new millstone – he arranged to have one of the largest and appropriately shaped granite rocks removed and transported to his mill. It took little shaping to turn it to its new purpose and in no time at all, it was grinding out meal by the ton. Peter’s mill thrived for many a day and he became rich.
But like all before him and since, that dared to interfere with things of the ancestors, bad luck plagued him thereafter. Though his mill thrived, his cattle and indeed his family did not. His cows were dropping off with all sorts of disorders and over the space of a few years he lost his wife and three of his children to strange diseases. It was an oul’ neighbour woman that suggested to him that maybe he had done something to bring the curse of the gentle people upon himself. Then he knew.
He arranged, as fast as he could to right this wrong. But it was easier for the oul’ donkey to carry his heavy load down the mountain than it was to carry it back up again. He was but two hundred metres from the passage grave, at the side of the Calliagh Berra’s lake, when he dropped down dead and the millstone landed in its present location.
But no more harm came to Peter for his intention was good.
And if you can think of a better explanation why that stone is there, well, I’d like to hear it!
Damolly Mill
Up until a generation ago if one was fortunate enough to find work locally as likely as not one worked in the mill.
Damolly Mill closed down twenty five years ago, in 1979. For almost two and a half centuries it – under different guises – had provided employment and community life for ten generations of local people.
Kevin McAllister’s Hiring
I lived outside in the barn in the first house I was hired to, said Kevin McAllister. If you didn’t finish your six months you could be done out of your money. There was no law to back you up. It was rough enough. They took three 2.5d stamps off me, for the letters I wrote home in that time. And 7d for plasters for the boil on the back of my neck.
Was there any difference working for Protestant compared to Catholic employers?
You were treated as well, if not better, by the Protestants. With them there was no work on a Sunday. With your own the real work only started on a Sunday! ‘Seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, and the rest of the time’s your own!’ What kind of work?
Cleaning drains, carting out muck, harrowing (2-3 horses), you were often in sheughs to the eyebrows [I think that’s what he said!]
My next job I was paid