Monaghan - History

History

The Battle of Clontibret between the forces of Hugh O'Neill, The O'Neill and the English Crown was fought in northern Monaghan in May 1595. The territory of Monaghan had earlier been wrested from the control of the MacMahon sept in 1591, when the leader of the MacMahons was hanged by authority of the Dublin government; this was one of the events that led to the Nine Years War and the Tudor conquest of Ireland.

On the Hill of Lech, the Hill of the Stone was the inauguration stone of the Mac Mahons. It overlooks Ballagh Lough to the west, which was once known as Lough Leck. Situated 5 kilometres (3 miles) south-west of Monaghan, the petrosomatoglyph was last used in 1595, but was destroyed by a farm owner in 1809. It is said to be built into the wall of a mill.

The Ulster Canal through Monaghan linking the River Blackwater at Moy with the River Erne near Clones was built between 1825 and 1842. By the time it was completed, competition in the form of the Ulster Railway from Belfast to Clones was already under construction. The canal was never a commercial success and was formally abandoned in 1931.

The Ulster Railway linked Monaghan with Armagh and Belfast in 1858 and with the Dundalk and Enniskillen Railway at Clones in 1863. It became part of the Great Northern Railway in 1876. The partition of Ireland in 1922 turned the boundary with County Armagh into an international frontier, after which trains were routinely delayed by customs inspections. In 1957 the Government of Northern Ireland made the GNR Board close the line between Portadown and the border, giving the GNRB no option but to withdraw passenger services between the border and Clones as well. CIÉ took over the remaining section of line between Clones, Monaghan and Glaslough in 1958 but withdrew goods services between Monaghan and Glaslough in 1959 and between Clones and Monaghan in 1960, leaving Monaghan with no railway service.

In February 1919 the first self-consciously proclaimed soviet in the United Kingdom was established at Monaghan Lunatic Asylum. This led to the claim by Joseph Devlin in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom that "that the only successfully conducted institutions in Ireland are the lunatic asylums"

On 17 May 1974 an Ulster loyalist car bomb exploded in the Friday evening rush hour killing seven people. It was detonated outside Greacen's public house on North Road in a car that had been stolen earlier that afternoon in Portadown. The bomb killed Paddy Askin, Thomas Campbell, Thomas Croarkin, Archie Harper, Jack Travers, Peggy White and George Williamson. It also injured scores of civilians and caused extensive damage to the fabric of the town with North Road and Mill Street among the areas worst affected. This was one of the few incidents in the Republic during The Troubles of Northern Ireland; three other bombs exploded on the same day in Dublin in what became known as the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. The Ulster loyalist paramilitary group Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) claimed responsibility in 1993.

A monument in memory of the victims was unveiled by the eighth President of Ireland Mary McAleese on 17 May 2004, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the atrocity. The sandstone and metal column containing seven light wells bearing the names of each of the seven victims of the bombing was designed by Ciaran O'Cearnaigh and stands as a reminder of one of the darkest days in Ireland's modern history.