European Trip Day 11 Irvinestown & Stewartstown

Tracking the Ancestors at Irvinestown & Stewartstown

It's been a real revelation of this trip that Barb has found she has Irish ancestors on both her paternal (Degotardi) and maternal (Abernethy) side of the family. Her great great grandfather John Corrigan, whose daughter Lucy married great grandfather Charles Degotardi, we think came from Irvinestown, County Fermanough. It's just a few miles north of Enniskillen.

Cows next door to Corrigan's Shore House

We went to Irvinestown first thing in the morning after leaving our beautiful lodgings at Corrigan's Shore House. We found the old cemetery in town and went to have a look through the graves to see if we could find a Corrigan headstone. (John Corrigan is buried in Bingara, so it would be his parents or siblings here.) The oldest headstones dating to the early 1800s were almost impossible to discern the writing through wear and tear. Disappointing!

Irvingstown was a pleasant looking place

We came back to Enniskillen but visited Castle Coole just out of town to fill in time, until our 2.15pm appointment with the Fermanagh Geneological Society. This turned out to be a great move. The Castle was more of a grand manor house. It was so big that we would've had to use the panorama setting to get the whole house in the shot. John was dwarfed by the large corinthian columns on the front portico.

The grounds were very extensive too. There was even a sevant's tunnel running from the stable block to the main house. The lady in the visitor centre, upon seeing Barb limping with her stick offered her a motorised buggy for the day. She declined, thinking there were others more needy.

The entrance to the servants' tunnel

We walked down to the ornamental lake, which was pretty overgrown and found the little boatshed complete with row boat there. It was a lovely walk through some beautiful big old trees.

We went back to Enniskillen Castle for our appointment. There we were greeted like long lost family by about half a dozen staff who all knew who we were. Mervyn and a couple of his offsiders did their best to help us. They've given us quite a few possible leads to follow up and were as helpful as they could be. We'll stay in touch with them.

We still had a long drive up to Ballycastle. Our GPS, in her usual awkward style took us off-road through country lanes and by chance we went through Stewartstown which is where Barb's great grandfather James Abernethy was from. It's a real farming town and we had to dodge our way amongst enormous tractors and harvestors just to get through town.

Finally we managed to find our way to a highway and then an A road and made it to Ballycastle just after 6pm. The Old Manse where we are staying is wonderful. We have an entire suite here including a large lounge, bathroom and even our own deck with views to the sea. It has been renovated to its original glory, so we are delighted.

We were encouraged by our host Martin to go to a restaurant called "Thirty Nine" which is, he said, a BYO establishment with great food. Yep! The food was indeed wonderful. What really tickled John was that when he went to pay he was accosted by fellow diner who turned out to be a caretaker at Bay House school where John used to work in Gosport many years ago. They were both delighted to see each other! It's a small world.

John with Young Mike, not to be confused with Mike or Old Mike