Eglinton is a village in
County Londonderry
County Londonderry (Ulster Scots dialects, Ulster-Scots: ''Coontie Lunnonderrie''), also known as County Derry (), is one of the six Counties of Northern Ireland, counties of Northern Ireland, one of the thirty-two Counties of Ireland, count ...
,
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland ( ; ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, part of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It has been #Descriptions, variously described as a country, province or region. Northern Ireland shares Repub ...
. It lies east-north-east of
Derry
Derry, officially Londonderry, is the second-largest City status in the United Kingdom, city in Northern Ireland, and the fifth-largest on the island of Ireland. Located in County Londonderry, the city now covers both banks of the River Fo ...
, to which it serves as a
sleeper village, and west-south-west of
Limavady
Limavady (; ) is a market town in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, with Binevenagh as a backdrop. Lying east of Derry and southwest of Coleraine, Limavady had a population of 11,279 people at the 2021 Census. In the 40 years between 1 ...
. It resides within
Derry and Strabane district. The
City of Derry Airport, also known as Eglinton Aerodrome and formerly as Londonderry Eglinton Airport, lies a short distance from the village.
Eglinton still has an elegant church, former market house, trees around a green and four oaks which started life in
Windsor Great Park. The River Muff flows through the village with the afforested Muff Glen being situated just south of the village. At an embankment of
Lough Foyle
Lough Foyle, sometimes Loch Foyle ( or "loch of the lip"), is the estuary of the River Foyle, on the north coast of Ireland. It lies between County Londonderry in Northern Ireland and County Donegal in the Republic of Ireland. Sovereignty over t ...
,
birdwatchers can find the feeding ground of many
seabird
Seabirds (also known as marine birds) are birds that are adaptation, adapted to life within the marine ecosystem, marine environment. While seabirds vary greatly in lifestyle, behaviour and physiology, they often exhibit striking convergent ...
s and
wader
245px, A flock of Red_knot.html" ;"title="Dunlins and Red knot">Dunlins and Red knots
Waders or shorebirds are birds of the order Charadriiformes commonly found wikt:wade#Etymology 1, wading along shorelines and mudflats in order to foraging, ...
s on the mud flats at low tide.
History
The village of Eglinton was originally known as ''(the) Muff'', and alternatively as ''(the) Moigh'' or ''Mough''.
These come
and were the names of the
townland
A townland (; Ulster-Scots: ''toonlann'') is a traditional small land division used in Ireland and in the Western Isles of Scotland, typically covering . The townland system is of medieval Gaelic origin, predating the Norman invasion, and mo ...
in which the village began.
The village was founded in 1619 by the
Grocers' Company of London. As part of the
Plantation of Ulster
The Plantation of Ulster (; Ulster Scots dialects, Ulster Scots: ) was the organised Settler colonialism, colonisation (''Plantation (settlement or colony), plantation'') of Ulstera Provinces of Ireland, province of Irelandby people from Great ...
,
James I had granted a large area (15,900 acres) of Faughanvale parish to the Grocers in 1609. The Grocers did not farm it themselves but leased this area to Edward Rone of Essex in 1615 with the stipulation that he built a
bawn
A bawn is the defensive wall surrounding an Irish tower house. It is the anglicised version of the Irish word ''bábhún'' (sometimes spelt ''badhún''), possibly meaning "cattle-stronghold" or "cattle-enclosure".See alternative traditional s ...
and 12 houses by 1619. The yearly rent being £116-13s-4d. Rone died in 1618 but his brother-in-law Robert Harrington took over and by 1619 a castle and bawn, as well as eight houses were erected in the townland of Muff (now Eglinton) and by 1622 the stipulated building was completed
The castle (really a castellated house and bawn with 4 flanker towers) was besieged in 1641 during the English Civil War by the insurgents under Colonel McDonnell and defended by the garrison during the winter of that year. It was relieved the following summer by troops from Derry but it afterwards fell into the hands of the parliamentarians by whom it was dismantled. During the
Siege of Derry
The siege of Derry in 1689 was the first major event in the Williamite War in Ireland. The siege was preceded by an attempt against the town by Jacobite forces on 7 December 1688 that was foiled when 13 apprentices shut the gates. Thi ...
, the castle was briefly occupied by troops of King James while they were foraging for supplies.
The ruins were standing and occupied until 1823 when the present Rectory was built on the site. The only remains of the castle today being the cellars under the rectory.
The
Church of Ireland
The Church of Ireland (, ; , ) is a Christian church in Ireland, and an autonomy, autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. It is organised on an all-Ireland basis and is the Christianity in Ireland, second-largest Christian church on the ...
was represented within the village by the Parish Church of Faughanvale which was built in 1626. It was later superseded by a new Parish Church constructed in 1821 with the ruins of the old church being extant within the adjacent graveyard.
The Presbyterian Church was represented in the village with the building of the first church in 1730. Prior to this, the congregation formed part of the Glendermott Congregation in the city of Derry. The original church was built in the townland of Tullanee just east of the village. The existing much larger church, Faughanvale Presbyterian Church, was built in 1894 with the help of donations from fellow citizens of the congregation who had some time earlier emigrated to the United States. Nothing remains of the original church which stood in what is now the Presbyterian Church graveyard immediately to the rear of the new church.
There were several other places called ''Muff'' at the time, especially
one nearby in Donegal which created much confusion. The residents of the village resolved to afford of the opportunity to change the name. Therefore, on 19 August 1858, the village of ''Muff'' became ''Eglinton'' in honour of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the
13th Earl of Eglinton who was visiting the nearby Templemoyle Agricultural School at the time. The school was opened in 1826 aimed at teaching new agricultural methods but eventually closed in 1865. The building remained disused for many years before being converted into a nursing home in the 1990s.
Tom Gallaher (1840–1927), the miller's son of Templemoyle, was the founder of the famous tobacco firm of Gallahers, now the
Gallaher Group
Gallaher Group, referred as Gallaher's Tobacco, or simply Gallaher's, was a United Kingdom-based multinational tobacco company which traded on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index, prior to its acquisition by A ...
. His relatives lived in The Glen House in the centre of Eglinton village until the 1950s.
One of the oldest buildings, if not the oldest standing today, is Foyle Park House. Foyle Park was built in 1813 by David
Babington who rented his land from the
Worshipful Company of Grocers. The mansion was built when Babington started to make land improvements in the west of the village between 1805 and 1836 when he planted 172,000 trees, mainly to shelter the house. Babington used the house as a literary school for a while. When Babington's lease expired, the Grocers didn't renew the lease so the Literary School then closed its doors and Foyle Park then became the new Grocers' Hall. It was used as the Grocers' Hall until the 1870s when James Davidson, a customs and exports worker, bought the entire village from the Grocers' Company. This included the Foyle Park Estate. Davidson lived at Foyle Park and the Manor House. His son, James William Davidson then lived in Foyle Park after him. Davidson's grandson sold Foyle Park to H. Whiteside in 1920 and the house fell out of the Davidson family. The house was re-acquired by the family when Lt. Col. Kenneth Davidson bought the house back in the 1960s. The house remained with the family until it was finally sold off in 2011, after over 100 years of ownership.
Another of the oldest buildings today is the Erasmus Smith schoolhouse built in 1814 beside the old national school of 1886 both now private residences. The Grocers did not resume active management of the estate until 1823 when they rebuilt the village. Among the buildings erected by the company in 1823-5 were the Rectory, a Courthouse or Market house ( an unusually well designed building by Nicholson which included a dispensary (the wall plaques outside the former courthouse are the Grocers and David Babingtons coat of arms)), a Manor house for the Grocers agent and the Glen house. All of which are still to be seen today. They also built a row of cottages for local widows which was known until quite recently as Widow's Row (now renamed Cottage Row) and tradesmen's houses along Main Street. The millers house opposite the Happy Landing public house became the old R.I.C. barracks until the present police station was built. The Grocers sold the village in 1874 to James Davidson from Brechin, Scotland; his descendants still reside in the manor house to this day.
During the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
RAF Eglinton was home to many
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the Air force, air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the World War I, First World War on 1 April 1918, on the merger of t ...
and later to
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...
personnel. Many old buildings currently in a state of disrepair, evidence their presence, and can still be seen dotted around the outskirts of the village. The airfield was a major airfield for flights over the North Atlantic, their tasks included searching for U-boats and acting as air cover for convoys. Several aircraft crashed in the vicinity of the village and the nearby airfield with several pilots and aircrew being buried locally in the Parish Church and Presbyterian Church graveyards.
Shane Crossagh O'Mullan was born and lived in the townland of Tullanee in Eglinton (then Muff), where his father held land on the Grocers Estate.
[McKeefry, Rev. J., ''Shane Crossagh, The County Derry Rapparee''. Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland] The same townland where the Faughavale Presbyterian Church resides.
[McKeefry, Rev. J., ''Shane Crossagh, The County Derry Rapparee''. Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland] The
Glenshane Pass is named after Shane.
Shanes father, Donal, was evicted after a bailiffs son was allegedly insulted at their home. When Shane returned to the family home he was accused of trespassing, and the family were forced to flee to the hills above
Claudy
Claudy () is a village and townland (of 1,154 acres) in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. It lies in the Faughan Valley, southeast of Derry, where the River Glenrandal joins the River Faughan. It is situated in the civil parish of Cumber ...
to avoid prosecution.
[McKeefry, Rev. J., ''Shane Crossagh, The County Derry Rapparee''. Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland] Many families had been driven there to make way for settlers.
[McKeefry, Rev. J., ''Shane Crossagh, The County Derry Rapparee''. Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland] After a confrontation with two soldiers, Shane was a marked man. Together with his family and local schoolmaster, he was advised to hand himself to the magistrate for a more leniant sentence.
[McKeefry, Rev. J., ''Shane Crossagh, The County Derry Rapparee''. Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland] Shane refused, and spent his next years as a
Raparee, where he stole from wealthy settlers and landlords with the support of others who were dispossessed.
[McKeefry, Rev. J., ''Shane Crossagh, The County Derry Rapparee''. Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland] Shane along with his two sons, Rory and Paudreen, where hanged in the Diamond in
Derry
Derry, officially Londonderry, is the second-largest City status in the United Kingdom, city in Northern Ireland, and the fifth-largest on the island of Ireland. Located in County Londonderry, the city now covers both banks of the River Fo ...
in the 1720s.
[McKeefry, Rev. J., ''Shane Crossagh, The County Derry Rapparee''. Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland]
Transport
*
Eglinton railway station opened on 29 November 1852 and finally closed on 2 July 1973.
*
City of Derry Airport, formerly RAF Eglinton, is located nearby.
*The A2 between City of Derry Airport and Maydown was recently upgraded to Dual Carriageway standard which road runs between the village and the city of Derry.
*Derry city bus stops within Eglinton mainstreet.
*The
Belfast–Derry line on
Northern Ireland Railways has trains running through but not stopping, as the station is not yet reopened.
Demography
2021 Census
On Census day (21 March 2021) there were 3,571 people living in Eglinton. Of these:
*57.69% were from a
Catholic
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
background and 37.19% were from a
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes Justification (theology), justification of sinners Sola fide, through faith alone, the teaching that Salvation in Christianity, salvation comes by unmerited Grace in Christianity, divin ...
or other Christian background.
2011 Census
On Census day (27 March 2011) there were 3,679 people (in 1,315 households) living in Eglinton
an increase of 16% on the 2001 Census population of 3,165.
Of these:
*25.5% were aged under 16 and 9.6% were aged 65 and over
*49.8% of the population were male and 50.2% were female
*53.3% were from a
Catholic
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
background and 42.7% were from a
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes Justification (theology), justification of sinners Sola fide, through faith alone, the teaching that Salvation in Christianity, salvation comes by unmerited Grace in Christianity, divin ...
or other Christian background
*4.9% of people aged 16–74 were unemployed
Notable people
*
Jason Smyth, Paralympic gold medalist
*
Shane Crossagh O'Mullan, Community Outlaw /
Raparee
See also
*
List of villages in Northern Ireland
This is an alphabetical list of towns and villages in Northern Ireland. For a list sorted by population, see the list of settlements in Northern Ireland by population. The towns of Armagh, Lisburn and Newry are also classed as cities (see city st ...
*
List of localities in Northern Ireland by population
References
Sources
GeographiaCulture Northern Ireland
External links
Eglinton.comA History of Eglinton
{{authority control
Villages in County Londonderry
Derry and Strabane district