The young 16 year old girl had got a job with the village shopkeeper filling brown paper bags with tea, stocking the shelves and helping the wife in the kitchen. One day the shopkeeper’s son asked her to give him a hand in the store. Soon he had her up against the meal bags and […]

The village of Belleek has become over the years a place of worldwide renown, principally due to the famous Parian China. It has the distinction of meriting the word Belleek in the Webster Dictionary. In compiling the script to be used in a walking tour of the village and its surroundings care needs to be […]

Destroyed in the name of Progress.   Local residents were stunned to put it mildly, to see, as dawn was breaking on Monday morning 9th November a mechanical digger starting to demolish Greyson’s limekiln, which was situated near the Kesh road on the outskirts of the village in the town land of Rathmore. One hoist […]

Fr. Coyle was a native of Three Mile House, Co. Monaghan, born about 1875; he served as Curate in Pettigo, the parish of Carn from 1901 to 1906. Later while serving in Brookborough he came to prominence when in the town land of Cooneen where a local family were terrorised by a supernatural presence in […]

A Fermanagh born comedian once boasted that his home county was the only county in Ireland that rhymed with banana. This admittedly impressive plaudit aside, the area is best known for its waterways; through the high ground surrounding the rugged borderland near villages like Rosslea and Belcoo is every bit as impressive as the Erne. […]

Much has been written about the history of the Castle Caldwell estate but the evictions that took place in it are not so well documented. Major evictions were not common in Fermanagh, never the less they did take place in the county. Benjamin Bloomfield the son of the founder of Belleek Pottery, John C. Bloomfield […]

Royal Tribute to ‘Embroidery Instructress’. –Mr. W.J. Mansfield, principal, Enniskillen Technical School, has received the following letter from Mr. W.H. Holden, Secretary and London Managing Director of the Ivy Linen Corporation, Ltd., London:- “It is a pleasure to inform you that their Imperial Majesties the King and Queen visited and inspected our exhibits here today […]

Bill was born on 11th May 1888 in No. 10 Rathmore Terrace, Belleek, the only child of Edward and Mary Thornhill,  Belleek, Co. Fermanagh.Bill’s mother was a member of the O’Shea family of Druminillar. Eddie Thornhill had one known brother, George Thornhill who lived in what is now the Thatch Coffee shop. It is thought […]

The decline of the Big Houses came during the first half of the 19th century. The difficult years coming before and after the Famine. Some who were an authority on the period anticipated and envisaged with some accuracy the economic collapse of the gentry and the eventual demise of the Big House. Some have traced […]

About the late1960’s early 1970’s a decision was taken by the Government to provide some form of fire cover in the rural areas of the country. It was said that this came about due to the membership of the E.E.C. and that according to law there should be adequate fire cover within a distance of […]