A detour to the parish of Magheraculmoney in County Fermanagh (Northern Ireland)

We had quite a big driving day today. We started in Dublin and ended up in Belfast but with a very lengthy detour along the way. Our first destination was 195 klm NW of Dublin - a fairly unremarkable 18th century stone Church of Ireland church on Ardess Road in County Fermanagh. St Mary's Church, Ardess is located 3 klm east of Kesh in the Parish of Magheraculmoney in Northern Ireland.

While this church would be unremarkable to many, for me it is quite remarkable because of its links to my father's side of the family. Our Ireland trip has given me the opportunity to directly experience a place of significance to members of my family around 180 years ago, at a tumultuous (and often tragic) time in Ireland's history.

The nave and tall tower of St Mary's Church have been dated around 1767, although there is evidence of an earlier building being on this site since Medieval times. The north aisle of the church was added in 1863. 

The marriage of my great-great-great grandparents James Hope and Catherine Robinson was recorded at this church on the 27th January 1835. Their second child Jane Hope, my great great-grandmother, was born in 1837. Her birth was not recorded at this church (although her older brother John's was). Jane Hope married my great-great grandfather Frances Heffernan (born in Dublin) in Renfrewshire Scotland before emigrating to Australia where their daughter Catherine, my great-grandmother, was born (in central Queensland).

Very sadly, my great-great-grandmother Jane, whose family came from this part of Ireland, died in her early thirties (around 1870) after giving birth to twins, no doubt in rough conditions, in country Queensland. 

Her parents, James and Catherine Hope, were married here in this church in 1835.
 

Obviously there are plenty of visitors like us to this church and its ancient graveyard - necessitating this safety conscious message!

This is probably a more accurate picture of the church (a view from the south) as it might have looked in my great-great-great grandparents' day, where the more recent addition of the north aisle is not so apparent.

With family names like Hope and Robinson it is likely my ancestors may have been descendants of the Ulster Plantation era of Scottish and English settlement in Fermanagh County. The names on the gravestones in the oldest part of the churchyard cemetery were all very Anglo too. Family names like Phillips, Thomas, Armstrong, Knox etc etc were the norm ....

There is such a lot of sad history in Ireland. As in the rest of the country County Fermanagh experienced its share of hunger and starvation during the Famine years 1845-1850, losing 25% of its population to death and emigration over those years. 

Sadly, there was a designated Famine Pit in the ancient graveyard at the rear of St Mary's Ardess. We learnt there were over 200 local people buried here, with nothing whatsoever to mark their final resting place, until relatively recent times. 120 feet long and 14 feet wide the parish's Famine Pit had lain derelict and forgotten for over 170 years. But there is now a memorial in place - designed by a local artist and model maker and opened at an ecumenical service here on 17th September 2000.

The inscription says, simply ...... "Within this Famine Pit Lieth the Unknown Dead 1845 - 1850".

I found our visit here today quite sobering. I don't know anything about the lives of my ancestors from Fermanagh County - and why they chose to leave Ireland for a new life in Scotland around 1840 (and subsequently Australia in the course of time) - but I'm glad they did! If they'd stayed on could they have been likely victims of the cruel Famine too?

We spent quite a bit of time absorbing all this and trying to imagine how things might have been for people who are so connected to me through my family history.

This was a view of the church from the West .......

The only picture we have of the interior of the church was taken through a very dirty window pane at the nave entrance.

I took a pic of the long road leading to the church and wondered if my great-great-great grandparents ever travelled on it, on the way to their parish church?

We saw this decaying stone cottage/barn near the road within a kilometre or two of the church and wondered if the Hope/Robinson family might have lived in or near a building like this back in the day?

I also took a few pictures from the car window of the passing countryside as we drove through County Fermanagh (the so called Lakeland of Northern Ireland). Like everywhere else we've seen so far - it's very green with plenty of sheep and dairy cows dotted over the pastures.

We stopped in Enniskillen for lunch, the largest town in the county, located between the Upper and Lower sections of Lough Erne. We wondered if the Hope/Robinson families ever had need to go to Enniskillen all those years ago?

I am lucky to have a historian in my family whose extensive research has enabled me to find this family link in County Fermanagh in Ireland. Jane Hope/Heffernan's daughter Catherine is our common ancestor. I am very grateful to cousin Janice C. for her generous help in this project.

We drove from Ardess eastwards to Belfast this afternoon - around 139 klms, arriving about 3.30pm. We settled into our Tara Lodge in the Queens Quarter and spent a while resting before setting out on an evening stroll around this lively part of Belfast.