North West Ulster

The remote, rugged, rough country of North West Ulster possesses buildings as varied as its landscape. Monuments of the Celtic church - sculptured cross-slabs, high crosses and round towers - and medieval tower houses survive from its earliest centuries. Fortified houses from the Plantation period are succeeded by Georgian mansions, and the richly varied urban and rural buildings of the Victorian period. In its churches both Protestant and Catholic, North West Ulster shows itself no less diverse.

The emigration of people from Ulster (Northern Ireland) and their contributions to the development of the American Colonies.

Surveys the history of the province from the plantations of the early seventeenth century to partition and the formation of Northern Ireland in the early 1920s, and onwards to the 'Troubles' of recent decades. A major contribution to the history of Ireland and to Ulster's contested place in the British and the wider world.

The close ties between the people and the land in Ulster has only, within the last two generations, been replaced by a more urban 'modern'lifestyle. This study of the farms and farming families,on two thousand acres of hilly terrain in two adjacent townlands, Edymore and Cavanlee, south-east of Strabane overlooking the river Mourne, is a model in local studies. The story is based on research in one of the greatest collections of estate records in Britain or Ireland, the Abercorn Papers in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. Before 1600 the land belonged to the great O'Neill clan. After the Plantation, it was granted to the Abercorn family and the land devided into small farms, and over the ensueing centuries the farmers created well-run and profitable mixed farms.At the beginning of the twentieth century families at last had the chance to own the land their forebears had, as tenants,tilled for generations.Some farms expanded,some stayed the same size: what links them all is that the family unit remained as the cement that held them together and bound them to the land. The development of the farms and the lives of four of the longest-surviving families are retraced in absorbing detail, so to is the social fabric which linked town and country. Strabane, less than an hour's walk away, was a focal point for markets, education and social activities. The writer's own family connections with the townlands over the last fifty years provide the homely touch that gives this book such a distinctive charm.

In 1920, the three Ulster counties of Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan were excluded from Northern Ireland. What happens to an abandoned people? And what is the impact on subsequent generations? At a time of uncertainty over the future of Northern Ireland, the history of Ulster loyalists who found themselves on the 'wrong side' of the Irish border is especially relevant. Memories of the violence and betrayal experienced by one generation of protestants in the three counties entrenched an intergenerational Ulster loyalist identity. Subsequently, three-county loyalists who moved across the border played an important role in militant politics. Examining armed resistance in these counties and the radicals who came from them, Edward Burke argues that violence or terrorism perpetrated by 'lost Ulster' loyalists enjoyed considerable success. Spanning the Anglo-Irish War to the Troubles and beyond, Ulster's Lost Counties demonstrates the grip of identity and betrayal since the partition of Ireland.

The dynamic history of North West Ireland can be seen in the richness and variety of it surnames. Mitchell has attempted to compile concise but informative histories of those surnames which are most closely associated, through numerical strength or uniqueness, with North West Ireland.