Cahill is born in Belfast on May 19, 1920. He is educated at St. Mary’s Christian Brothers’ Grammar School. At age 14 he leaves school to assist in his father’s print shop. Soon after, he joins the Catholic Young Men’s Society, which campaigns on social issues with a focus on eradicating moneylenders from working-class areas of Belfast, as they often charge usurious interest rates. At the age of seventeen, he joins Na Fianna Éireann, a republican-orientated Scouting movement. Na Fianna Eireann is regarded as the “Junior Irish Republican Army.”
Cahill joins the local Clonard-based ‘C’ Company of the Belfast Brigade of the Irish Republican Army in 1938. Four years later, during an anniversary march by the IRA for the Easter Rising, he gets into a shootout with five other IRA men against four Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers. Several men are wounded, and Constable Patrick Murphy is killed. Cahill and four of the other men spend time in prison in Belfast. The IRA declares a formal ceasefire in 1945. Afterwards, republican prisoners begin to be released. Cahill is released in October 1949.
The IRA launches a new campaign in 1956. The IRA border campaign attacks ten targets in six counties, damaging bridges, courthouses and border roads. By 1957, three RUC officers and seven republicans have been killed during the campaign. Cahill is arrested and interned in January 1957 with several other republicans. He is released from internment in April 1961. Following his release from prison, he is disappointed at the direction of the IRA and resigns from the organisation around 1962.
In 1969, Cahill is a key figure in the founding of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. During his time in the Provisional IRA, he helps import weapons and raise financial support. He serves as the Chief of Staff in 1972 but is arrested the following year when a ship importing weapons is intercepted.
After his release, Cahill continues to serve on the IRA Army Council and leads all financial dealings for Sinn Féin. In the 1990s, the IRA and Sinn Féin begin to work on seeking peace. Cahill serves on the council that calls a cessation on July 21, 1996. He attends several of the talks that finally lead to the Good Friday Agreement on April 10, 1998. Shortly after the agreement is made, he resigns as treasurer of Sinn Féin. To honour his service, he is made honorary Sinn Féin Vice-President for life. He serves the Republican movement in Ireland all his life, as one of the longest-serving political activists in Ireland of any political party.
Cahill dies at age 84 in Belfast on July 23, 2004. He had been diagnosed with asbestosis, which he probably developed while working at the Harland & Wolff shipyards in his twenties. He and several other former shipyard workers later sue the company for their exposure to the dangerous substances but only win minimal compensation.
Paisley is born on April 6, 1926, in Armagh, County Armagh. He becomes a Protestant evangelical minister in 1946 and remains one for the rest of his life. In 1951, he co-founds the fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster and is its leader until 2008. He becomes known for his fiery speeches and regularly preaches and protests against Catholicism, ecumenism and homosexuality. He gains a large group of followers who are referred to as “Paisleyites.”
Paisley becomes involved in Ulster unionist/loyalist politics in the late 1950s. In the mid-late 1960s he leads and instigates loyalist opposition to the Catholic civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. This leads to the outbreak of the Troubles in the late 1960s, a conflict that engulfs Northern Ireland for the next thirty years. In 1970, he becomes Member of Parliament for North Antrim and the following year he founds the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which he leads for almost forty years. In 1979, he becomes a Member of the European Parliament.
In 2005, Paisley’s DUP becomes the largest unionist party in Northern Ireland, displacing the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), which has dominated unionist politics since 1905. In 2007, following the St. Andrews Agreement, the DUP finally agrees to share power with republican party Sinn Féin and consent to all-Ireland governance in certain matters. He and Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness become First Minister and deputy First Minister respectively in May 2007. He steps down as First Minister and DUP leader in May 2008 and leaves politics in 2011. He is made a life peer in 2010 as Baron Bannside.
In November 2011, Paisley announces to his congregation that he is retiring as a minister. He delivers his final sermon to a packed attendance at the Martyrs’ Memorial Hall on December 18, 2011, and finally retires from his religious ministry on January 27, 2012.
Paisley dies in Belfast on September 12, 2014. He is buried in Ballygowan, County Down on September 15 following a private funeral and a public memorial for 800 invited guests is held in the Ulster Hall on October 19. An obituary in The New York Times reports that late in life Paisley had moderated and softened his stances against Roman Catholics but that “the legacies of fighting and religious hatreds remained.”
McCracken is born in Belfast on August 31, 1767, into two of the city’s most prominent Presbyterian industrial families. He is the son of a shipowner, Captain John McCracken and Ann Joy, daughter of Francis Joy, of French Huguenot descent. The Joy family makes their money in linen manufacture and founds theNews Letter. He is the older brother of political activist and social reformer Mary Ann McCracken, with whom he shares an interest in Irish traditional culture.
In 1792, McCracken helps organise the Belfast Harp Festival which gathers aged harpists from around Ireland and helps preserve the Irish airs by having them transcribed by Edward Bunting. Bunting, who lodges in the McCracken’s Rosemary Lane home, is a classically trained musician.
McCracken becomes interested in republican politics from an early age and along with other Protestants forms the Society of United Irishmen in 1795 which quickly makes him a target of the authorities. He regularly travels throughout the country using his business as a cover for organising other United Irish societies but is arrested in October 1796 and imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin. While imprisoned with other leaders of the United Irishmen, he falls seriously ill and is released on bail in December 1797.
Following the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 in Leinster in May 1798, the County Antrim organisation meets on June 3 to decide on their response. The meeting ends inconclusively with a vote to wait for French aid being passed by a narrow margin. A new meeting of delegates is held in Templepatrick on June 5 where McCracken is elected general for Antrim, and he quickly begins planning military operations.
McCracken formulates a plan for all small towns in Antrim to be seized after which rebels will converge upon Antrim town on June 7 where the county’s magistrates are to hold a crisis meeting. Although the plan meets initial success and McCracken leads the rebels in the attack on Antrim, the Catholic Defenders group whom he expects assistance from are conspicuous by their absence. The mainly Ulster Scots rebels led by McCracken are defeated by the English forces and his army melts away.
Although McCracken initially escapes with James Hope, James Orr, and James Dickey and is supported in his month-long period of hiding by his sister Mary Ann, a chance encounter with men who recognize him from his cotton business leads to his arrest. He is offered clemency if he testifies against other United Irishmen leaders, but he refuses to turn on his compatriots.
McCracken is court martialed and hanged at Corn Market, Belfast, on land his grandfather had donated to the city, on July 17, 1798. According to historian Guy Beiner, his corpse is spared the indignity of decapitation in order not to provoke renewed agitation. He is buried in the Parish Church of St. George in Belfast, but a few years later the grave is demolished.
McCracken’s remains are believed to have been re-interred by Francis Joseph Bigger in 1909 at Clifton Street Cemetery, Belfast, alongside his sister Mary Ann. His illegitimate daughter Maria, whose mother is speculated to have been Mary Bodell, is raised by her aunt Mary Ann McCracken.
Lenny is appointed parish priest in Mullavilly in 1972. Less than two years later he is named coadjutor bishop of Armagh, receiving his episcopal consecration with the titular see of Rotdon from Cardinal Conway on June 16, 1974. Financial secretary to the Bishops’ Financial and General Purposes Committee, upon Conway’s death, he becomes vicar capitular of the archdiocese until Tomás Ó Fiaich is named his successor.
Lenny is a well-known canonist, and it is he who transfers a major relic of Saint Oliver Plunkett from Downside Abbey to Ireland in 1975, and is presently preserved in Oldcastle, County Meath, Plunkett’s birthplace.
A man of great charity and deep disposition, Lenny experiences great opposition from members of the Protestant community of Mullavilly, refusing to leave the village despite threats he receives. His bungalow is maliciously set on fire, and he dies at the early age of forty-nine on July 16, 1978, the fourth anniversary of his episcopal consecration, from injuries received complicated by a heart attack. Dressed in chasuble and mitre, he is laid to rest in a simple solid oak coffin following the celebration of a Funeral Mass celebrated at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Armagh, presided by Archbishop Ó Fiaich which sees the participation of thousands.
Napier joins the Ulster Liberal Party, rising to become Vice President by 1969. That year, he leads a group of four party members who join the New Ulster Movement, accepting the post of joint Chairman of its political committee. The Liberal Party promptly expels him, but, working with Bob Cooper, he uses his position to establish a new political party, the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, which seeks to become a political force that can command support from across the divided communities of the province, but remain pro-union. This aims to offer an alternative to what he describes as the sectarianism of the Ulster Unionist Party. Despite his faith he is a supporter of the Union.
Napier serves as the party’s joint leader from 1970 until 1972, then as its sole leader from 1973 to 1984. Under his leadership Alliance participates in successive assemblies that seek to solve the debate on the province’s position, including the Northern Ireland Assembly, 1973 in which he is a minister in the power-sharing Executive. In 1979 he comes closer to winning a seat in the Westminster Parliament than any other Alliance candidate up to that point when he is less than a thousand votes behind Peter Robinson‘s winning total in Belfast East in a tight three-way race. This record is beaten in 2010, when Naomi Long ousts Robinson from the same seat. When Napier steps down as leader in 1984 he receives many plaudits for his work. The following year he is knighted and in 1989 he stands down from Belfast City Council, seemingly to retire.
Napier dies at the age of 75 on July 2, 2011. He is survived by his wife, Briege, whom he marries in 1961, three sons and five daughters, and 23 grandchildren. A son predeceases him.
Potter is born in Belfast on September 22, 1918, to a Presbyterian family who, oddly, lives on the Falls Road, a republican (Catholic) stronghold. His father is a church organist and piano tuner who has been blind since childhood. His mother is, in Potter’s own words, “a raging alcoholic.” He escapes a rather grim childhood when he goes to live with an aunt in Kent, England.
Potter had already started composing chamber and vocal music before the war. Now, established in Dublin, he chooses the orchestra as his principal means of expression. His early pieces, such as Rhapsody under a High Sky and Overture to a Kitchen Comedy, show that he has absorbed Vaughan Williams’ pastoral style and his love of folk music. In 1952, both pieces are awarded Radio Éireann‘s “Carolan Prize” for orchestral composition by the adjudicatorArnold Bax. A year later Potter repeats this success when his Concerto da Chiesa, a concerto for piano and orchestra, also wins the Carolan Prize.
In 1955 Potter is appointed Professor of Composition at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, where he becomes an effective administrator and inspiring teacher.
In the 1960s, Potter turns to ballet, writing four orchestral scores for the Cork Ballet company. The first of these, Careless Love, becomes the composer’s own favourite of all his compositions. Several years later, following a successful battle with alcoholism, he writes what some regard as his magnum opus, Sinfonia “de Profundis” (1969). The première is given at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin on March 23, 1969, in a performance by the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Albert Rosen. The Irish Times refers to the concert as a “major national event.” In December 1969, he receives a Jacob’s Award for the composition.
Potter’s last substantial work, an opera entitled The Wedding, receives its first public performance in Dublin in 1981, almost a year after his death.
Potter dies suddenly at his home in Greystones, County Wicklow on July 5, 1980, at the age of 61. He is buried in the nearby Redford cemetery.
Bridget “Bridie” Gallagher, Irish singer affectionately known as “The Girl from Donegal,” reaches No. 1 in the Irish Singles Chart with “The Boys From The County Armagh” on July 2, 1957. She is widely regarded as “Ireland’s first international pop star.”
Gallagher is born on September 7, 1924 in Creeslough, County Donegal. She starts her singing in the Creeslough Hall with a local Céilí band started by Bill Gallagher. The Creeslough Hall is owned by Jim McCaffrey and Bridie makes many more visits to the Creeslough Hall in her home town throughout her long and successful career. Her talent is soon spotted in the 1950s by Billy Livingstone who is a talent scout for Decca Records. She goes to Belfast, which becomes her base, where she marries Robert (Bob) Livingstone (no relation to Billy Livingstone) and has two boys, Jim and Peter. Peter dies in a motor accident in 1976 and Jim later goes on to tour with her.
Gallagher shoots to fame in 1956 with her recording of “A Mother’s Love’s A Blessing” and achieves international acclaim with her legendary rendition of “The Boys From County Armagh.” During her career, which spans over six decades, she appears in many leading venues across the globe. She also makes songs such as “The Homes of Donegal” famous.
Gallagher holds the record for the largest number of people in attendance in the Royal Albert Hall in London, with over 7,500 people, a record that is never equaled as it goes on to become an all-seater venue. She becomes world-famous and travels all over the world, United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and is known as “The Girl from Donegal.” She plays in many of the world’s best known theatres, including London’s Royal Albert Hall, Sydney Opera House and Carnegie Hall in New York City. She sings mainly ballads or as they later became known as Country and Irish. One of her best known songs is “The Boys From The County Armagh,” which sells over 250,000 copies, the biggest-selling Irish single at that time.
Gallagher lives in Belfast for most of her life. She is honoured by the people of Creeslough on July 10, 2000 with an event to celebrate her career. Members of her family from Creeslough and Donegal attend the event along with her two sisters and their families who travel from Glasgow to be there along with an estimated crowd of 2,500 fans. A plaque paying tribute to her is unveiled. The following day she is honoured by Donegal County Council when they hold a Civic Reception for her. “Bridie blazed the trail for many artists who followed after her and I’m sure that many of them looked upon her as a role model as they started their careers in the music world,” council chairman Charlie Bennett says at the ceremony.
Gallagher dies at her home in Belfast on January 9, 2012 at the age of 87. Her burial takes place in her native Creeslough.
Hutton becomes a Queen’s Counsel in 1970. From 1979 to 1989, as Sir Brian Hutton, he is a High Court judge. In 1989, he becomes Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, becoming a member of the Privy Council of Northern Ireland, before moving to England to become a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary on January 6, 1997. He is consequently granted a life peerage as Baron Hutton, of Bresagh in the County of Down.
On March 30, 1994, as Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, Hutton dismisses Private Lee Clegg‘s appeal against his controversial murder conviction. On March 21, 2002 he is one of four Law Lords to reject David Shayler‘s application to use a “public interest” defence as defined in section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1989 at his trial.
Hutton represents the Ministry of Defence at the inquest into the killing of civil rights marchers on “Bloody Sunday.” Later, he publicly reprimands Major Hubert O’Neil, the coroner presiding over the inquest, when the coroner accuses the British Army of murder, as this contradicts the findings of the Widgery Tribunal.
Hutton also comes to public attention in 1999 during the extradition proceedings of former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet had been arrested in London on torture allegations by request of a Spanish judge. Five Law Lords, the UK’s highest court, decide by a 3-2 majority that Pinochet is to be extradited to Spain. The verdict is then overturned by a panel of seven Law Lords, including Hutton, on the grounds that Lord Lennie Hoffmann, one of the five Law Lords, has links to human rights group Amnesty International which had campaigned for Pinochet’s extradition.
In 1978, Hutton defends the UK at the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Ireland v United Kingdom, when the court decides that the interrogation techniques used were “inhuman and degrading” and breached the European Convention on Human Rights, but do not amount to “torture.” The court also finds that the practice of internment in Northern Ireland had not breached the Convention. He sentences ten men to 1,001 years in prison on the word of “supergrass” informer Robert Quigley, who is granted immunity in 1984.
Hutton is appointed by Tony Blair‘s government to chair the inquiry on the circumstances surrounding the death of scientist David Kelly. The inquiry commences on August 11, 2003. Many observers are surprised when he delivers his report on January 28, 2004 and clears the British Government in large part. His criticism of the BBC is regarded by some as unduly harsh with one critic commenting that Hutton had given the “benefit of judgement to virtually everyone in the government and no-one in the BBC.” In response to the verdict, the front page of The Independent newspaper consists of one word, “Whitewash?”
Peter Oborne writes in The Spectator in January 2004: “Legal opinion in Northern Ireland, where Lord Hutton practised for most of his career, emphasises the caution of his judgments. He is said to have been habitually chary of making precedents. But few people seriously doubt Hutton’s fairness or independence. Though [he is] a dour Presbyterian, there were spectacular acquittals of some very grisly IRA terrorist suspects when he was a judge in the Diplock era.”
Hutton retires as a Law Lord on January 11, 2004. He remains a member of the House of Lords until retiring under the House of Lords Reform Act 2014 on April 23, 2018.
William of Orange, King of Holland, and recently declared King William III of England, arrives with his fleet in Belfast on June 14, 1690. He remains for twelve days, departing on June 26. For his part he likes what he sees. “This country is worth fighting for,” he says.
William’s departure from London is held up by parliamentary business until the end of May, when he announces that he can wait no longer and adjourns Parliament. He sets out early in the morning of June 4, reaching Northampton before nightfall. On Sunday, June 8, he attends divine service in Chester Cathedral and goes on to inspect the ships at Hoylake on the tip of the Wirral Peninsula.
For two days the wind is contrary, but on June 11 he embarks on board the yacht “Mary” with a fleet escorted by Sir Cloudesley Shovell‘s squadron. On June 14 the hills of Ireland come in sight and in the afternoon the fleet casts anchor off Carrickfergus. He is rowed ashore in the Rear Admiral’s barge and at about 3:30 p.m. lands at the Old Quay under the shadow of the great Norman Castle.
The Garrison of the Castle has drawn up a Guard of Honour and the townspeople add their applause. The chosen spokesman is a Quaker, whose principles forbid him to doff his hat or use such titles as Sir and Majesty. He gets around the difficulty by taking off his hat and laying it on a stone and then stepping forward and saying “William, thou art welcome to thy Kingdom” which pleases the King so much that he replies, “You are the best-bred gentleman I have met since I came to England.” With these words he mounts his horse and sets off for Belfast.
Halfway along the shore is the little port of Whitehouse, where most of the army disembarks. The Commander-in-Chief, Frederick Schomberg, 1st Duke of Schomberg, and his senior commanders are waiting here to welcome the King. To cover the disembarkation, earthworks have been thrown up by the engineers at Fort William and garrisoned by troops ready for action.
In 1690 Belfast consists of about 300 houses in five streets. It has two churches, the Parish Church, where St. George’s Church still stands in the High Street, and the Presbyterian Meeting House in Rosemary Lane. The town had been surrounded by a rampart in 1642 and had been captured by Colonel Robert Venebles for Oliver Cromwell after a four-day siege and an assault on the North Gate in 1649.
It is at the North Gate that King William enters Belfast where North Street now crosses Royal Avenue. Here he is welcomed by the magistrates and burgesses in their robes and by the Rev. George Walker, now Bishop-elect of Derry. A Royal Salute is fired from the Castle and is echoed and re-echoed by the guns which Schomberg had placed at wide intervals for the purpose of conveying signals from post to post. Wherever it is heard it is known that King William has come. Before midnight all the heights of Antrim and Down are blazing with bonfires.
The next day being Sunday, William attends church at the Corporation Church, now St. George’s Church. On Monday, June 16, addresses of loyalty are presented on behalf of the Church of Ireland and Presbyterian Church clergy, the civic authorities of the city of Londonderry, the town of Belfast and by the Sheriffs, Justices of the Peace and Gentlemen of the Counties of Down and Antrim. The next two days are spent in military preparation.
In the previous season Schomberg had conducted a slow and cautious campaign but William says he has not come to Ireland to let the grass grow under his feet. He orders a general muster of the army in the Parish of Aghaderg which includes Scarvagh and on Thursday, June 19, begins his southward march from Belfast Castle.
The line of march continues along Upper Malone by the Old Coach Road and past the ruins of both Drumbeg and Lambeg Parish Churches which had been burned down in 1641. William reaches Schomberg’s headquarters in Lisburn Castle for lunch on the same day that he left Belfast Castle. The afternoon and evening are spent inspecting troops on Blaris Moor, and then on to Hillsborough Castle for the night.
The cavalcade moves on through the little round hills of County Down, crosses the Upper Bann between Huntly and Ballievey by ford over the hill of Banbridge and on to the rendezvous on the northwest of Loughbrickland.
After the disappointments of the previous season and the appalling loss of life through disease, Schomberg had dispersed his army into winter quarters all over Ulster. The Derry and Enniskillen men had gone home to pick up the threads of their lives. Now the farmers among them have the crop in and are recalled to the colours and ready to be reviewed. There are four regiments of Enniskillen men – Wynns, Tiffins, Lloyds and Cunninghams, one of foot and three of horse. There is only one regiment of Derry men, St. John’s, commanded by Mitchelburne with Rev. George Walker as chaplain.
On June 22, William sits in the saddle for hours reviewing his 36,000 men. Marching past are 10,000 Danes, some of whom came from Norway and Sweden, and even Finland, 7,000 Dutch and Brandenburgers, 2,000 French Huguenots, 11,000 English and Scots, 800 Derrymen, 4,500 Inniskilleners and two companies from Bandon, County Cork.
On June 24, an advance party reaches beyond Newry to the edge of Dundalk and brings intelligence that the deposed King James II has fallen back on Ardee. The following day the main army advances to Newry and camps on the side of a hill. On June 25, with the King at their head, wearing an Orange colour sash, they go through the Moyry Gap and pass out of Ulster en route to the Boyne.
St. Mary’s Church, Belfast, a Roman Catholic church located in Chapel Lane/Smithfield area of Belfast, Northern Ireland, opens for public worship on May 30, 1784. It is mother church for the city. At the time, it is the only Roman Catholic church in the then town of Belfast after the relaxation of some of the Penal Laws. The church grounds contain an undistinguished grotto dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes.
In the census of 1782, there are only 365 Catholics recorded living in Belfast. Following a collection from the local Church of Ireland and Presbyterian congregations, funds are donated to the building of St. Mary’s Church.
The first Mass is celebrated on Sunday, May 30, 1784, by Father Hugh O’Donnell, the first Parish Priest of Belfast. In the opening ceremony, a company of the Irish Volunteers line the chapel yard and escort Father O’Donnell into the building.
In 1813, the church’s pulpit is donated by the Anglican Vicar of Belfast, Canon Turner, continuing the positive relationship between the Roman Catholic church and the local Protestant congregations. Later, in 1815, St. Patrick’s Church is built to accommodate the growing Catholic population of the city.
As Belfast’s Catholic population grows after the famine, the church is deemed too small and thus architect John O’Neill is contracted to design a church big enough for the burgeoning congregation. Although none of the original church can be seen, in 1868 the church is enlarged and renovated into a new Romanesque style building.
In the Marian Year of 1954 a Grotto to Our Lady of Lourdes is established under the auspices of the then Administrator, Fr. Bernard MacLaverty, an uncle of the Belfast novelist of the same name. The grotto is created in the gardens surrounding the church by the Belfast architect Padraic Gregory.
To mark the bicentenary the sanctuary is renovated in 1983 with work by artist Roy Carroll, a favourite of Cahal Daly. Much of this timber furniture is later removed after Daly’s departure from the Diocese of Down and Connor.
In May–August 2017, the church undergoes substantial renovation work to repair the roof and walls, and to repave the grotto area.
For almost forty years the church is served by clergy from the Mill Hill Fathers, the last of whom leave in 2019. The current Administrator is Fr. Timothy Bartlett assisted by a range of retired clergy. The church holds two masses a day on Sunday and Monday, and three a day on Friday and Saturday. The 6:00 p.m. Mass on both Friday and Saturday are held in the Irish language.
seamus dubhghaill 