Manorhamilton

transcribed at

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In ancient times the feudal lords of Ireland built castles for their own residences.  Houses were built near this for their retinue and so towns sprung up.

The castle at Manorhamilton was built by Sir Fredrick Hamilton, a Scotsman from Paisley.

'Manor' was the name given to the land of the feudal period and the term was given to the residence of the land-lord thus Manorhamilton the residence of Hamilton.

The castle is built near the river Bonet which rises in the Glenade Mountains passes a mill or two + comes to Manorhamilton, commanding a wide stretching plain towards Benbo Mt.  The castle was built of stone

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and was 105 feet long 93 feet broad and 40 feet high.  It had a leaden roof.  It was built about the year 1609.

Sir Fredrick was an Undertaker of 500 acres of fertile land and 10,000 acres of mountain.  He must have been a wealthy man to be able to build such as castle with Sligo a flourishing town on one side only 15 miles away and Enniskillen on the other 24 miles away.

Dromahair at that time was merely a location of a monastery called Carrick Patrick at the head of Lough Gill as well as of O Rourke's Castle.  The O Rourke's were really the strongest house in Connaught and had their stronghold at Dromahair but Sir Fredrick conquered it.

Sir Fredrick was in Derry

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in 1641, and hastened home at the outbreak of the rebellion, found his castle in flames set fire to by the enemy named MacDonagh, who laid siege with 1,000 men destroying the hamlet and mills.  Sir Fredrick in revenge captured Sligo and later vanquished O Rourke who had attempted to march on M.H. in 1643.  At this Sligo Cavant Breffny and Killargy combined under Owen Roe O'Neill who had been secretly training armed companies in North Leitrim with the object of expelling or driving out the Scotsman.

A certain young lady known as the "Wild Rose of Lough Gill" had been captured by Sir Fredrick Hamilton and was kept in the Castle.  He admirer, a hero

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was a young simpleton called Marty MacSharry.  He knew she was in the castle and gladly came to Owen Roe's assistance in order to free her.  There is an old ruins of a church at the "Commons" and from this to the castle there runs a sub-passage, so through this Marty led Owen Roe's men up to the castle, who overcame the Scotch Guard by suddenness of attack, stabbed the sentinels and set the castle on fire.  At this time it was destroyed and never since tenanted.

It is said that the mortar which built the castle was wet with the blood of heads.  These heads were taken by force from the local people.  This Sir Fredrick Hamilton was a very

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cruel man.  He thought little of human life and very little of the human beings who occupied the lands over which be ruled.  He is always taken of with the greatest of hatred, and well deservedly too.

His followers were all Scots and were weavers who worked in his mill.  Among them we find the names of Scott, Niscon, Thompson, Stephenson, Algeo, Liberry, Pye and Elliott.