6th January The Night of the Big Wind in Ballyshannon, Bundoran and Rossnowlagh 1839

        Most property in Rossnowlagh-Coolmore destroyed in

Night of the Big Wind

210,021 Hits worldwide on Ballyshannon Musings .com since it started in 2012. Thanks to all who have followed it including the new viewers on Facebook. I will publish the top ten most popular blogs of all time on Facebook in the next 10 days. See if any you liked made the list. Number one and most popular is “The Night of the Big Wind”. No.2 will follow tomorrow.

This was Ireland’s most famous storm and locally it did a lot of damage in the Ballyshannon, Bundoran and Rossnowlagh areas. After a calm day on Sunday 6^th January 1839 which was dull, cold, with snow showers, the winds started to pick up on Sunday evening. A westerly gale got stronger by midnight and there were hurricane force winds between 2 and 4 o’clock on Monday morning. As the storm took place in darkness it was more frightening for local people.  Nationwide  the depression and the hurricane force winds were raging until things started to calm down around 5 a.m. Oíche na Gaoithe Móire as it was called in Irish was used as a point of reference in 1909 when the old age pension was introduced. People who could prove they were over the age of 70 were entitled to a yearly pension of £13. Many people had no written evidence of their age as record keeping was not always the best. If a person could prove that they remembered or were around on the Night of the Big Wind then they got the pension. In the Ballyshannon area the frightening cholera epidemic raged in 1832, followed by the destruction to property caused by the Great Wind in 1839 and the 1840s brought the Great Famine. Small wonder that people at the time felt that the end of the world was near. Two of the churches in Ballyshannon, St. Anne’s and St. Patrick’s had to be rebuilt as a result of the storm. Surviving records only focus on buildings like churches but the damage to private property and agriculture was also very severe. In Bundoran the bathing boxes were nearly all blown down or unroofed. Several private residences were also severely damaged. The “The Derry Journal” gave a report on local conditions:

We have not heard of any lives (man or beast) being lost in the town. The country was not so fortunate----several families buried beneath the ruins of their dwellings. Along the sea coast the destruction of property is melancholy.

Bathing boxes destroyed at Bundoran in Night of the Big Wind

St. Anne’s Church on Mullaghnashee had to be replaced

This church stands on the highest ground in Ballyshannon, overlooking the channel from which the hurricane force winds battered the building. The building was so badly damaged that it was beyond repair. Curiously the only part of the church that was salvaged was the tower (on which there is a clock today). The tower belongs to the earlier church which had been built in 1735. Church services had to be held elsewhere as the huge task of building a new church began. The new church was built speedily by 1841 at a cost of roughly £3,500.  This new building was attached to the original tower, but the new building was wider than the building destroyed on the Night of the Big Wind. This meant that some tombstones had to be removed and a visit to the inside of the church today, reveals two plaques on the south facing wall which refer to this. A plaque to the Allingham family and one to the Major family who would have resided at Camlin, mentions that the people named were buried underneath the new church walls.

     St. Anne's  Church (left) and St. Patrick's Church (right) had to be rebuilt. They are

the two highest buildings at the top of this painting by Maud Allingham

St. Patrick’s Church had to be rebuilt 

The roof of St. Patrick’s Church on Chapel Street was very badly damaged and this church was rebuilt with the foundation stone laid in 1842 by Rt. Rev. Dr. McGettigan, three years after the Night of the Big Wind. Daniel Campbell from Pettigo built the new church at a cost of £1,380 with additional costs to window glazers and other sub-contractors. Amongst the fund-raising for the new church was the visit to “The Big Meadow” by Fr. Matthew the great Temperance crusader who drew an estimate crowd of 20,000 to the church and “The Big Meadow”. Even before the Night of the Big Wind, Fr. Cummins P.P. had started to fundraise to rebuild the church which had been built on the site in 1795. The church was in a poor state and undoubtedly the Night of the Big Wind made matters worse and speeded up the building of the present church.

St. Joseph’s Church Damaged/The Methodist Preaching House on the Mall damaged

St. Joseph’s Church on the Rock which had only been built in 1835 suffered much damage and this must have been disheartening to the congregation as they had raised funds for the new building just four years earlier. All this destruction and rebuilding came just as the Great Famine was about to begin in 1844. The present Methodist Church on the Mall (now houses a veterinary practise) was built in 1899 and so the building damaged on The Night of the Big Wind, the Methodist Preaching House on the Mall , was an earlier building.

     St. Joseph's Church was only built 4 years when it was badly

damaged in the Night of the Big Wind

The End of the World feared

On the sandbanks at the bar in Ballyshannon, because of the great movement of sand, the banks were the lowest they had ever been. Boats could now pass to areas where the tide had not reached before. Indeed boats could reach areas a half a mile from where they had ever been before. The shifting of sand saw immense volumes blown nearly two miles up to the town of Ballyshannon. Cartloads of sand could be gathered in the immediate vicinity of the town. At Bundoran the bathing boxes were nearly all blown down or unroofed.  In the countryside any hay or grain was destroyed and this led to a crisis in fodder for animals and anxiety over how people would survive.

The sea rose to such a height from Bundoran to Rossnowlagh and Coolmore that people did feel that the end was nigh. Houses and barns were torn down and in the  Rossnowlagh-Coolmore areas there was scarcely a house left standing. Local people in Bundoran, Rossnowlagh and Ballyshannon feared that the hurricane was a sign that the end of the world was near. This was a natural enough reaction to the fiercest storm in living memory and the fears of people who found it  hard to understand.

Read about local events in the 1918 Election, the War of Independence,  the Civil War and the Boundary Commission which established the border in Ballyshannon Genealogy and History. Also includes lots of local history on Kilbarron and Magh Ene areas.

A Local History book available in a quality limited  hardback edition with dustcover as above in : A Novel Idea Bookshop Ballyshannon, Local Hands and Four Master's Bookshop Donegal Town and for postal delivery contact the author anthonyrbegley@hotmail.com

A Famous Ballyshannon Ghost Story

The scene of the ghostly appearance was the barracks on the left of this photo.

The Goblin Child, Lord Castlereagh and the Barracks at Ballyshannon

The barrack’s building at the bridge in Ballyshannon County Donegal is considered to be the oldest and most interesting building in the town. It is an historic military building which has been central to the history of the town for over 300 years. A detached six-bay building of two-storeys over a basement, the barracks was built in 1700. The building was planned as a T-shaped building and this outline can still be seen today The keystone over the central archway, records the date of erection of the barracks which can be viewed today on the front of the building and the interior of the building had a long spinal corridor 8 foot wide and 110 foot long. Alistair Rowan considered it to have been the work of Colonel Thomas Burgh who took over the role of Surveyor General in Ireland in 1700. Burgh who designed Collins Barracks in Dublin in 1701 was an ancestor of well -known singer Chris De Burgh. 

The interior of the building has been renovated and reconstructed and today the most authentic features are to be seen on the facade. The barracks was constructed for the British military to protect a very strategic crossing point into Ulster. Located beside the bridge over the Erne, the barracks in its early years had a checkpoint on the bridge to control all movement into County Donegal. Local people for generations have identified the building as the ghostly home of both The Green Lady and The Goblin Child. The story of The Green Lady centres on an officer’s wife who defied her husband by attending a ball in the town. On her return to the barracks an altercation developed with her husband and he threw her to her death down the stairs. The lady had been wearing a green dress and right up to present times local people believe that she haunted the barracks, particularly around the Harvest Fair day in September.

The Radiant Boy seen in Ballyshannon by Lord Castlereagh

The Goblin Child of Ballyshannon is also associated with the barracks and this event was known in various parts of Ulster, in the 19^th century, as ‘the radiant boy,’ but few sources identified the location of the apparition as Ballyshannon. The story of the Goblin Child concerns the supernatural appearance of a boy in the barracks at Ballyshannon, and is one of the most authenticated ghost stories in the area. The tale centres on Robert Stewart, Lord Castlereagh, who arrived in Ballyshannon barracks following military manoeuvres. Having retired upstairs to his bedroom, in which a fire was still glowing in the fireplace, he went into a fitful sleep. During the night he was awakened from his sleep and claimed that he saw the image of a naked child emerging from the fireplace and coming across to the foot of his bed. The child did not speak and the apparition receded back into the fireplace. Robert Stewart is reputed to have later recounted the tale to Sir Walter Scott, the famous Scottish novelist in 1815- “It is certain he related several strange circumstances many years after, at a dinner party in Paris, one of those present being Sir Walter Scott who afterwards referred to it in his writing.”  Scott said only two men had ever told him that they had seen a ghost, and that both had ended their own lives. One of these men was Lord Castlereagh. In other accounts of the apparition, Robert Stewart, Lord Castlereagh, was said to have been out hunting when the weather turned bad and he sought shelter in a gentleman’s house. One source called the child ‘a radiant boy’ and recounted that the incident happened somewhere in Ireland. Perhaps the reason that the event has not been generally identified with Ballyshannon is, that the ghostly apparition is mainly referred to as the ‘radiant child’ but William Allingham the poet refers to it as the Goblin Child. Francis Joseph Bigger M.R.I.A placed the ghostly appearance of the boy in the barracks at Ballyshannon in 1796, whilst referring to the apparition as ‘the radiant boy’ and recounted how Lord Castlereagh had told the story to Sir Walter Scott and to the Duke of Wellington. There is also strong anecdotal evidence to locate the strange happening at the barracks beside the river Erne in Ballyshannon. 

The Curse of the Goblin Child

Who was Lord Castlereagh? He was born Robert Stewart in Dublin in 1769, the son of a Presbyterian landowner and Member of Parliament, who built Mount Stewart near Newtownards in Co. Down. By a strange coincidence he had a Ballyshannon connection, as he was married to Lady Emily Hobart, who was a relative of William Conolly, the Speaker of the Irish Parliament, who was born in Ballyshannon in 1662. By a strange quirk of location the Speaker’s birthplace was just across the street from the barracks where Robert Stewart saw the apparition. Stewart later rose to prominence as Chief Secretary, War Minister, Foreign Secretary and Leader of the Commons during the Napoleonic Wars. He is remembered in Ireland for his suppression of the 1798 Rebellion and for forcing through The Act of Union. In 1822 he cut his throat at his residence in Kent. An added piece of information about the Goblin Child was that when the boy/child appeared to anyone, that person would rise to high prominence but would have a violent death.  Castlereagh’s violent death leaves one to wonder about the curse of the Goblin Child, as Castlereagh rose to high office but then met a violent death.,

William Allingham heard the story of the Goblin Child in his Youth

The account of the story in William Allingham’s narrative poem, The Goblin Child of Ballyshannon, graphically describes the appearance of the child to Lord Castlereagh and locates this unusual tale at the barracks in Ballyshannon.  The room in which the event occurred in the barracks was, for many years, referred to as Lord Castlereagh’s Chamber. It is significant that the Allingham family lived close to the barracks at Ballyshannon, when the apparition occurred in the late 1700’s, and that the poet William Allingham who was born in 1824, published his poem on the occurrence in 1850. He would have been familiar with the story, growing up, and in the extract from his poem quoted at the end of this blog, describes the apparition and names Lord Castlereagh as the person who saw the Goblin Child in Ballyshannon barracks.

    Ideal Christmas Gift 

 "Ballyshannon Genealogy and History" available to purchase in The Novel Idea, Ballyshannon Museum, O'Neills, Clearys and Local Hands in Ballyshannon.Available also in Four Master's Bookshop in Donegal Town. For postal details contact anthonyrbegley@hotmail.com

When   suddenly – Oh Heaven! – the fire

Leaped up into a dazzling pyre,

And boldly from the brightened hearth

A Naked Child stepped forth.

  

                                                                       With a total, frozen start,

A bound – a pausing of the heart,

He saw.  It came across the floor,

Its size increasing more and more

At every step, until a dread

Gigantic form stood by his bed.

Glaring for some seconds’space

Down into his rigid face –

Back it drew, with steadfast look.

Dwindling every step it took,

Till the Naked Child returned

To the fire, which brightly burned

To greet it: then black sudden gloom

Sunk upon the silent room,

Silent, save the monotone

Of the river flowing down

Through the arches of the bridge,

And beneath his casement ledge.

This happened when our island still

Had nests of goblins left, to fill

Each mouldy nook and corner close,

Like spiders in an ancient house,

And this one read within the face

Intruding on its dwelling-place,

Lines of woe, despair, and blood,

By spirits only understood;

As mortals now can read the same

In the letters of his name,

Who in that haunted chamber lay,

When  we call him – Castlereagh.

Fears of a French invasion during the Napoleonic era resulted in a new barracks being built on higher ground overlooking Ballyshannon in 1798. Traces of this barracks can still be seen at East Rock in the town. In the 1890s Finner Camp was constructed as a training camp for the Boer War and the First World War. The barracks at the bridge, where the Green Lady and the Goblin Child had appeared, had ceased to be used for military purposes since before the Great Famine. The building was suggested as a site for a workhouse but was not considered suitable. From the 19^th century to the present day the barracks building at the bridge in Ballyshannon has been used as commercial premises and currently houses an auctioneer’s premises, a computer shop and a music store. This barracks still stands, beside the bridge over the Erne at Ballyshannon, and has a rich ghostly history, which is believed to be the location of Castlereagh’s ghostly vision of the radiant or goblin child.