Monaghan

History

The Menapii Celtic tribe are specifically named on Ptolemy's 150 AD map of Ireland, where they located their first colony – Menapia – on the Leinster coast . They later settled around Lough Erne, becoming known as the Fir Manach, and giving their name to Fermanagh and Monaghan. Mongán mac Fiachnai, a 7th-century King of Ulster, is the protagonist of several legends linking him with Manannan mac Lir. They spread across Ireland, evolving into historic Irish (also Scottish and Manx) clans. The Battle of Clontibret, fought between the forces of The Earl of Tyrone, An Ó Néill (The O'Neill), of Tír Eoghain, and the English Crown, was fought in northern County 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. In 1801, Monaghan Town, along with the rest of the Rossmore Estate, became the property of the Westenra family. The Rossmore Estate was inherited in August of that year by Warner Westenra, 2nd Baron Rossmore, from his uncle. The canal was never a commercial success and was formally abandoned in 1931. The Ulster Railway linked Monaghan with and Belfast in 1858 and with the Dundalk and Enniskillen Railway at Clones in 1863. This led to the claim by Joseph Devlin in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom 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,…