THURSDAY AUGUST 9th

Except where stated, all events will take place at
Corick House Hotel, Clogher.
www.corickcountryhouse.com

Cost
£25/€30 including lunch and tea/coffee break

Season ticket £175/€240/$270
or concession £145/€185/$225

10.00am Registration

10.30am Carleton and his
Contemporaries
Tour of region led by William Carleton Society
President Jack Johnston
Lunch and Tea / Coffee en route.
Visit to birthplace of Archbishop John Hughes of New York and to Omagh.

This year’s tour focuses on some of Carleton’s better known contemporaries here in the Clogher Valley –Archbishop John Hughes(1797-1864), James Trimble of Clogher (1784-1874) Joseph Birney (1760-1832) and his son John and George Brackenridge (formerly Trimble) whose mausoleum still dominates the landscape.

Carleton makes no reference to Hughes though their paths must have crossed at some point and they were close in age. Hughes was born at Annaloughan, Parish of Clogher in 1797 and lived at Dernaved, Parish of Trough in the first decade of the C19. He had a job in the garden at Favor Royal in the employ of John Corry Moutray, the Valley’s premier landlord in the years before he emigrated to America. His job as a gardener’s boy enabled him to find similar work in the Seminary of Emmitsburg in Pennsylvania. It was an opening that led him to being enrolled as a student for the priesthood. His rise was meteoric after that and he became a bishop after just eleven years in the Church. In 1850  he became the first Catholic archbishop of New York. Hughes returned to Ireland four times and on one visit (1846) he preached to a large congregation in St Macartan’s Church (The Forth Chapel). There is a stained glass window here to his memory .Our tour will take in Annaloughan, Dernaved, The Forth and Omagh where there is a portrait in the Sacred Heart Church, and where there is a portrait in the County Club of John Corry Moutray his first employer. His home at Dernaved was re-erected by the Ulster American Folk Park and the tour will finish there. Our visit to Omagh will also provide an opportunity for a visit to the grave of Benedict Kiely one of the original patrons of the Summer School and the author of Poor Scholar (1947) a seminal work on Carleton.

James Trimble was a wealthy linen and woollen draper in Clogher and a cultured man. Recently two letters from Carleton to him have come to light with the discovery of a Trimble album in Belfast last year. In one letter Carleton asks Trimble to supply blankets to his brother and to help out a cousin as well. The other letter refers to James’s younger cousin – George Charles Brackenridge (1814-1879) who had just changed his name that year. Carleton suggested that the Trimbles give him a ‘collection of plate’ for having disowned their honoured name!

James Trimble lived where the Ulster Bank is today while his cousin Brackenridge lived at Ashfield Park Our tour will pass their houses and the folly in Ballyscally which Brackenridge built in Black 47 –partly to give employment but also to serve as his own tomb. He is Councillor Crackenfudge in Carleton’s narrative.

Carleton dedicated one of his novels to John Birney of Oakley Park, Downpatrick, (1800-1874) a solicitor and land agent.  Birney was the son of Joseph Birney a prosperous linen merchant who lived in Clogher where the Rural Centre is today. His son John who grew up in Clogher was an early patron of Carleton and remained his friend for many years.

6.00pm Return

Photo by Michael Fisher
Archbishop Hughes memorial window,
St Macartan’s (Forth) Chapel