Tully Castle
Tully Castle ( Irish Caisleán na Tulaí , German: "Castle on the Hill") is a ruined castle near the village of Blaney on Blaney Bay on the south bank of lower Lough Erne in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland . Blaney was named after Sir Edward Blaney , who was a member of the English advance party sent to Fermanagh to organize the Plantation of Ulster .
Tully Castle was a fortified house with a rectangular bawn ( curtain wall ) that Sir John Hume , a Scottish colonist, had built in 1619. The Bawn had four rectangular corner towers. During the Irish Rebellion of 1641 , the Irishman Rory Maguire had made it his mission to recapture his family lands. He arrived at Tully Castle on Christmas Eve with a large retinue and found the castle full of women and children. Most of the men were gone. Lady Mary Hume handed over the castle to him, believing that she would have secured safe conduct for all in her care, but on Christmas Day the maquires killed 60 women and children and 15 men and only spared the Humes. The castle was burned down and the Humes never came back there. Captain Patrick Hume later gave testimony of what happened on Christmas Day 1641:
“And later that day the rebels tore the clothes off all Protestants (with the exception of Lady Hume); they locked them up in the vaults or cellars of the said castle, where they were kept under strict guard all night; and on the next morning, the Lord's Day and December 25, 1641, they took the Lady Hume, Alexander Hume, John Grier and yours truly with their wives and children away from the rest of the prisoners, away from said castle, and brought them into John Goodfellow's barn in said Tully, a stone's throw from the castle, and stirred up hope that they would be taken to Monea Castle on prepared horses , but then they were left at Tully Castle like the rest of the [prisoners] ; the rebels told those in the barn to follow them on foot to said Monea Castle. But immediately thereafter, on December 25, 1641, at Tully Castle and within and around the Bawn and Vaults thereof in County Fermanagh, the rebels committed the cruelest and most barbaric murders of the Protestants, of a number of men and sixty women and children, or one similar number; the names of the murdered follow here: e.g. Francis Trotter, Thomas Trotter, Alexander Sheringfield, Alexander Bell, George Clearnside, Robert Black, James Barry, Thomas Anderson, Robert Lawdon, John Brooke, David Anderson, James Anderson and many others - men, women and children - whose names this sworn witness does not know or now does not remember. Most of the people involved in this massacre, say yours truly, have since died or were slain, as I heard, and of those who survived, yours truly no longer remembers the names. And yours truly say, after the said rebels looted and robbed the said castle, they burned it down on said day in said year. And furthermore, yours truly leaves nothing tangible. "
Thereafter, the Hume family moved to the new family seat Castle Hume Hall nearby, which had been designed by Richard Cassels .
Tully Castle and location are State Care Historic Monuments in the townland of Tully in District Fermanagh and Omagh .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Tully Castle. (No longer available online.) In: Environment and Heritage Service NI - State Care Historic Monuments. Archived from the original on July 22, 2012 ; accessed on October 28, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Web links
Coordinates: 54 ° 27 ′ 28.8 " N , 7 ° 48 ′ 21.6" W.