Qualla: Belcoo

Belcoo: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1718, a Fermanagh man named John Dolan wrote down what was already old knowledge: 'Near Belcoo is a holy well consecrated by St Patrick wherein are miracles yearly wrought upon devout persons by performing their stations with true devotion are often restored to sight and limb and of other distempers by virtue of ye said water and by ye grace of God.' Pilgrims still climb to Dabhach Phadraig today. The village of Belcoo sits at a narrow neck of water between Upper and Lower Lough MacNean, on the border between County Fermanagh and County Cavan, where two place names that mean nearly the same thing, 'the wood of the narrow strip of land' and 'the hill of the narrow strip of land,' show how literally the local landscape shaped its own naming.

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Belcoo: Belcu and the Hound

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The oldest surviving reference to Belcoo is in an Ulster saga called 'Argain Belcon Breifne,' or the Massacre of Belcu Brefne. The tale describes a trap set for the great Ulster hero Conall Cernach by a Breifne chief named Belcu. Conall managed to reverse the trap and caused Belc...

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Belcoo: Belcowe Fort

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

During the Irish Rebellion of 1641, the English Army built a fort at Belcoo that appears on the Down Survey maps of 1655. When the Irish surrendered at Cavan on 27 April 1653, paragraph seven of the Articles of Surrender specifically required Colonel Hugh McGuire's regiment to la...

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Belcoo: The IRA Raid

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

With the partition of Ireland in 1921, Belcoo became a border village. On 28 March 1922, during the turbulent post-truce period that would lead to the Irish Civil War, a column of fifty Irish Republican Army volunteers crossed from County Cavan and attacked the Royal Irish Consta...

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Belcoo: Gardenhill

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

About two miles northeast of Belcoo, in the townland of Gardenhill, an old derelict homestead sits on a hillside off the side road to Boho. Parts of it possibly date from the early years of the Plantation of Ulster in the early seventeenth century. It was rented and later owned b...

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Belcoo: Holy Well, Border Crossing

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Saint Patrick's Holy Well, Dabhach Phadraig, still draws pilgrims annually as it has done for at least three centuries. The pilgrimage involves the traditional 'stations,' a series of prayers performed at specific points around the well. The site has been studied by folklorists a...

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