'Hiring Fairs and Market Places' by May Blair, published by Appletree Press

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extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair.

COUNTY FERMANAGH

There were at least six fairs in the villages north of the lower lake, most of them again dating back to Plantation times. They included Irvinestown (once known as Lowtherstown), Lisnarick, Ballinamallard, Kesh, Lack and Ederny. Local farmers would also have attended the fairs in Pettigo and West Tyrone. All but Lack and Ederny had from three to five established fairs in 1745. The most successful of these were at Kesh and Irvinestown, both of which sustained fairs and markets continuously from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Kesh was built by Thomas Blennerhassett and planted with six British families in the reign of Charles I (1625-1649). At the same time he established fairs and a regular Wednesday market. These improved with the coming of the railway which was used for transporting cattle on the first stage of their journey to Scotland. The fairs were dealt a heavy blow when the railway closed in 1945. In fact fairs ceased altogether in Kesh at that time. The best remembered character in the village was Johnny Black, who ‘minded’ cattle from the time they were sold until they left the town. For this he charged threepence a head. Animals were never released until the threepence was paid.
Irvinestown had similar beginnings, though in its case the lands changed hands several times between 1611 and 1615, in which year they were bought by Sir Gerald Lowther who gave his village the name of Lowtherstown. It changed to Irvinestown when bought by Sir Christopher Irvine in 1667. In the early days Irvinestown and Kesh had four and five fairs respectively each year, but by the nineteenth century they were being held regularly on the fourth and eighth day of every month. In the beginning cattle, yarn and the small surpluses of the farms were the main commodities on offer. By the nineteenth century both places were being frequented by travelling merchants dealing in soft goods and by pedlars and artisans selling articles of husbandry, coarse furniture, household utensils, rope, shoes and fruit. Later a board of trustees was set up in Irvinestown to look after the fairs and markets. They levied a charge on each stall-holder – £1 for anyone selling rope or boots and shoes; five shillings for a stall selling second-hand clothes, half-a-crown if you wanted to sell farm produce and so on. Markets were also established in Irvinestown for fowl, pork, flax, potatoes, corn and other produce. There was a small cloth market. Cattle were sold at the Fair Green, along the Main Street and beside the Methodist Church in Pound Street. A mart was started outside the town when fairs ceased in 1959. It survived a few years but eventually closed down.
Of the other villages Ballinamallard and Lisnarick had three and five fairs respectively, increasing to twelve for the sale of cattle and yarn in the 1830s, but they were said to be badly attended in both places and died out altogether around the middle of the century. For all that, hiring is said to have taken place in Lisnarick up until World War I for the purpose of hiring help for hay-making and potato gathering. The centrepiece of the village is its lovely old fair green surrounded on its three sides by tall trees. That of 12 February in Ballinamallard was known as a good horse fair.
Ederny (like Holywell) existed as a meeting place long before the Plantation, possibly because it was on the route for pilgrims on their way to Lough Derg, where on an island Saint Patrick is believed to have had a vision of Purgatory. An old cross, thought to date from the seventh century, stands sentinel on a nearby hill and must have guided the path of many a weary traveller in the distant past. Monthly fairs were held there and in nearby Lack in the nineteenth century. By the end of the century Lack had just one (held on 30 September) while those in Ederny prospered and continued to be held monthly until fairs ceased. Some furniture and other articles for domestic use were sold in Ederny as well as the usual farm produce. However, a mart started in 1960 lasted just a few years.
By far the most important market town in Fermanagh was Enniskillen. Before 1600 the town was ruled by the Maguires who built the original castle, the remains of which are embodied in the castle of today. The Plantation and the arrival of William Cole displaced the Maguires, just as the Maguires had displaced the Devines and the Devines others before them. Cole and his heirs were empowered to hold a Thursday market and fair on Lammas Day and they were also appointed clerks of the market and were to keep the toll book. No persons except the freemen of the town were allowed to sell or retail within three miles of it. William brought with him twenty English families as required under the terms of his grant, and on arrival in Enniskillen built a town. This included a church, a cemetery, a gaol and a market house (at the Diamond on the site of the present town hall). On another piece of ground he was required to build ‘a public schoole together with a court and garden to the said schoole adjoining.’ All this resulted in an immediate improvement to the town, especially to its fairs and markets. It started off with just three fairs in the year but by the nineteenth century these had increased to thirteen, one on the tenth of every month and one on 26 October. Later an extra fair was held on 26 May, making fourteen in all. The Fair Green was in the vicinity of Gaol Square and animals of all descriptions were brought there to be sold, until fairs ceased in 1950. These included black cattle (milch cows, heifers, bullocks); live pigs of various breeds, i.e. Berkshire, Dutch and Irish, the price of which was generally governed by the price of pork in the export market; sheep, usually of Half-Leicester, Irish or Scotch breed; a small breed of ass which was rarely used in draught but in the conveyance of turf, butter in casks, young calves and pigs to market, all of which were transported at one time in creels; also goats and horses. Tommy Kerr reminisces again:

The fairs was once a month, the tenth of every month. We took three or four horses at a time to Enniskillen. We mostly walked them – cattle too. During the war we walked them. Then there got to be more lorries on the road. Northern Ireland Transport used to draw them. They drew a lot of stock. Where we sold the horses in Enniskillen, we used to call it Gaol Square. Coming from Garrison it was off the main street on the right-hand side. Cattle was sold first and then the horses later. The horses didn’t come ’til roughly eleven or twelve o’clock. The cattle would be nearly all gone at that stage. In the old times that was part of the Fair Green. It’s partly paled off now for market day – Thursday – flowers and all that kind of stuff.
The old Fair Green was where the first mart went up – on both sides of the road. Then they transferred it out of town; about a mile out the Tempo Road. I still go. There’s a sheep sale every week at this time of year (October). But any horses I have to sell now I would sell about home.

Cattle sales included a big influx of animals in transit from such places as Sligo, Leitrim and Roscommon to the ports of Down and Antrim from which they were shipped to southern Scotland. This movement of animals from the south and west of Ireland to the north and east went on for centuries, a drover sometimes spending months at a time on the road with nothing but oatcake in his pocket for sustenance on the way. (This pattern was interrupted at the end of the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth when the English government banned the import of Irish animals in the interests of its own farmers.) Drovers and their cattle were a common sight on Ulster roads even in the twentieth century, though by then many were being moved by rail and lorry.

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