Ancient Irish Site Keenaghan Abbey Threatened by Development

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Ancient Irish Site Keenaghan Abbey Threatened by Development - How You Can Help

A petition has been launched to protect the historic landscape and the Irish heritage site of Keenaghan Lough and Keenaghan Abbey in Co Fermanagh.

Eamon O'Caoineacha IrishCentral 29 NOV 2023
















Every Irish family has a personal story that they are told as children about how their family is connected to an important place in Irish history.


I will tell one of my family’s stories that was told to me when I was a young lad, standing by the ancient historical shore of Keenaghan Lough right by Keenaghan Abbey—a spiritual place of peace—bearing history to my family’s name.


Although this is my family’s story, it will also resonate with other Irish families because, as James Joyce reminds us, “in the particular is contained the universal."

Keenaghan Lough and Keenaghan Abbey in Co Fermanagh are symbolic touchstones for this story of generational memory, this story of a family of faith, this story of protecting Irish history and preserving Irish identity.

Maybe in telling this story and sharing it with a transatlantic Irish audience throughout the world, it can play a part in helping to protect and preserve Keenaghan Lough and Keenaghan Abbey.

These natural and historic monuments are currently under attack from the proposed development of a glamping pod site with large amenity buildings, and a car park for almost 100 vehicles that will destroy the natural environment and desecrate the historic landscape.

My story begins with my great, great grandad James ‘Black’ Keenaghan, the grandson and son of two other Jameses. His grandad appears on the Flax Growers List, 1796 who grew half an acre of flax earning himself two spinning wheels. His dad appears in the Tithe Applotment Books, 1834, and was a farmer and well-known weaver.

Sometime around Halloween in 1873, Black James coolly rode his horse and cart from his home in Rathmore, Ballyshannon, Co Donegal to Rathmore, Belleek, Co Fermanagh—from one great rath to another. His nickname ‘Black’ James is a bit of a mystery. Maybe it was borne out of the fact that he was born in 1847, the blackest year of the Irish Famine when a million Irish people died, and a million Irish people were forced to emigrate.

Maybe it was colored by his jet-black hair, which was so striking you could not see his sable strands on a dark night, or maybe it was his childlike love of riding wild black horses bareback around Rathmore.
As Black James’ two black horses and gold cart wheels were spinning and weaving through Cloghore, the place of the gold stone, he was nearing Belleek’s old bridge, but he was not alone.

He was riding along with his newly married wife Jane Mc Cauley, the daughter of Daniel Mc Cauley, a farmer and shoemaker, and she was cradling their first-born daughter, Mary. Jane had worked as a housemaid in the Rock of Bundoran, while James had worked as a farm servant herding cattle in Maghercar, Bundoran. Black James was a loveable rogue and a pure rebel heart—an Irish cowboy.

It was during one lively St. Patrick’s Day by the bridge over the Bradóge River in Bundoran when James and Jane first met, and they courted around the long strand of Rougey in high passion. Belleek offered a new life and opportunity for this young family to settle down and make it their home.

James already had family in Belleek. His uncle Edward lived on Main Street during the Griffith’s Valuation, 1862 through the 1870s. Edward was a laborer and stone mason and sometime during the 1830s-1850s, he was one of the construction laborers involved in building Maghermenagh Castle and Belleek Pottery. James’ sister Catherine was a flowerer artisan in the pottery, too.

Many of James and Jane's sons and daughters, including my own great grandad, Jack, would later work in the pottery as recorded in the Census of Ireland 1901/1911 up until Jack’s brother, Eddie ‘Cute’, retired from there in the 1950s.

Stories of Eddie ‘Cute’ were told to me by Belleek historian, Joe O’Loughlin, who was his neighbor in the Commons, Belleek. ‘Cute’, like his father, was a “loveable Irish rogue- of good sound character.”