Qualla: County Fermanagh War Memorial

County Fermanagh War Memorial: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dean Molyneaux, CC BY-SA 2.0. The soldier on the plinth is not at attention. His head is bowed, his rifle is turned downward in the gesture called arms reversed, and he has stood that way on Belmore Street in Enniskillen since 1922. Carved into the limestone behind him are 612 names, each one a man from County Fermanagh who did not come home from the trenches of the First World War. For sixty-five years the memorial did what war memorials do: it accepted poppies once a year and stood alone the rest of the time. Then, on a cold Sunday morning in November 1987, a bomb went off behind it, and the cenotaph became something more than a monument to the men of 1914 to 1918. It became evidence.

Image: Dean Molyneaux | CC BY-SA 2.0

County Fermanagh War Memorial: Designing Glorious Dead

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Romeparis, CC BY-SA 3.0. When the County Fermanagh War Memorial Committee placed its notice in the Architect and Building News in 1920, the brief was sober and conventional. They wanted a cenotaph for £1,500, entries by November, a winning design chosen by early 1921. The firm Gaffin and Co. delivered. T...

Image: Romeparis | CC BY-SA 3.0

County Fermanagh War Memorial: Two Wars on One Plinth

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dean Molyneaux, CC BY-SA 2.0. After the Second World War, the cenotaph was altered to hold the names of those who died in the conflict that the men of 1918 had been told would never happen again. Across Ulster the same retrofitting was happening: new panels, new dates, the same grey stone. The Royal Inniskill...

Image: Dean Molyneaux | CC BY-SA 2.0

County Fermanagh War Memorial: The Eighth of November 1987

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dean Molyneaux, CC BY-SA 2.0. The bomb was planted in the empty Reading Rooms above the gable wall, on the side opposite the parade route. The security forces had searched the road but considered the Reading Rooms a secure area and left them. At about ten thirty in the morning, as the parade of Ulster Defence...

Image: Dean Molyneaux | CC BY-SA 2.0

County Fermanagh War Memorial: Renovation and Return

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gerd Eichmann, CC BY-SA 4.0. Margaret Thatcher came for the rescheduled service two weeks later. Five thousand people stood on Belmore Street in the cold. In 1990 and 1991 the memorial was renovated, and a new section was added to carry the names of those killed in the bombing alongside the 612 from the Grea...

Image: Gerd Eichmann | CC BY-SA 4.0

County Fermanagh War Memorial: Reading the Stone

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dean Molyneaux, CC BY-SA 2.0. If you stand on Belmore Street today and read the cenotaph carefully, you can trace three layers of grief on one piece of limestone. The original 1922 inscription names the dead of the trenches. The Second World War additions carry surnames of grandsons who fell in the next war. ...

Image: Dean Molyneaux | CC BY-SA 2.0