Qualla: Carrickmore

Carrickmore: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kenneth Allen, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 18 April 1854, in the small Church of Ireland parish church of St Columbkille in Carrickmore, Samuel Cobane married Letitia. The marriage register would have been filed and forgotten in some Tyrone records office if not for what happened next. Twenty-one years later, in 1875, the couple left Inishatieve townland and emigrated - first to Canada, then to Washington state. Their fifth-generation descendant was Kurt Cobain, lead singer of Nirvana. A small plaque now marks the connection outside Patrician Hall in the centre of the village. It is one of the stranger threads to find in this tiny rocky hill town in County Tyrone, where Neolithic farmers were burying their dead five thousand years before the Cobane wedding and where political speeches from the steps of Quinns Corner have shaped Irish history for more than a century.

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Image: Kenneth Allen | CC BY-SA 2.0

Carrickmore: McGurk's Sanctuary

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alun Salt, CC BY-SA 2.0. Carrickmore's older name is Termon Rock. Termon - tearmann in Irish - means a sanctuary, a place of refuge granted by the church. The McGurks were the coarbs, the hereditary lay custodians of the parish's church lands, and the parish name Termonmaguirk literally means 'McGurk's s...

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Image: Alun Salt | CC BY-SA 2.0

Carrickmore: Saints and Glassmakers

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mulnagore, CC BY-SA 4.0. Saint Colmcille founded a monastery at Mullinalap in 550 AD, on a site that had been Celtic before him. Pilgrims came to the holy well there from across Ireland and Europe. A short distance away, Dunmisk Fort - excavated in the 1980s - turned out to be one of Early Christian Irel...

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Image: Mulnagore | CC BY-SA 4.0

Carrickmore: Quinns Corner

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kenneth Allen, CC BY-SA 2.0. On the corner of Main Street and Creggan Road stands an elevated platform that was once a hotel and later a public house, now derelict. Quinns Corner has been the speaking-spot for half the most famous figures in Irish nationalism: Michael Davitt, Roger Casement, Constance Markie...

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Image: Kenneth Allen | CC BY-SA 2.0

Carrickmore: The Tree of Fortune and the Nally Stand

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Liam Hughes from Milwaukee, WI, USA, CC BY 2.0. There is an old tree beneath the Mullinalap monastic settlement that locals say covers a portal to the otherworld. The Fear Dubh - the dark man - is said to have once appeared there and offered mortals a betting game; win and your wishes were granted, lose and your soul was his. ...

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Image: Liam Hughes from Milwaukee, WI, USA | CC BY 2.0