We have already seen that Patti Boyd, wife of George Harrison and Eric Clapton, holds ancestral links to the town through the Boyds of Ballymacool. But who were they and why were they in Letterkenny? Following the Ulster Plantation, the dispossession of lands from Irish Catholics continued throughout the 17thand 18thcenturies so that by the
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A key component of the evolution of the market town of Letterkenny was the growth in popularity of the Hiring Fair, or ‘Rabble Days’ as they were also known. Having been a part of the English and Scottish way of life since the fourteenth century, many of the large farmers who had been brought to
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In an open plain near the Potamac River in Virginia on July 21st 1861, the Union Forces of Abraham Lincoln came face to face with the Confederate Army under the command of ‘Stonewall’ Jackson in the first major engagement of the Civil War. A little known fact about that decisive battle though is that one
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In Conwal graveyard today, near the ruins of the old church, lies a burial slab with an ancient Celtic cross carving. This simple engraving is believed to mark the final resting place of one of the most famous chiefs of Tír Chonaill, Godfrey O’Donnell, who died a heroic death in this area in 1258. When
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