Qualla: Pettigo

Pettigo: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 4 June 1922, two companies of British Army troops with six field guns bombarded a small village called Pettigo. The shells flew across what had just become an international border. About a hundred Irish Republican Army members had taken the village from Donegal, hoping to hold both Pettigo and nearby Belleek against the new Northern Ireland state. The British counterattack drove them out. Four men died on the IRA side, one British soldier died, and two civilians were shot dead by the Ulster Special Constabulary in nearby Lettercan. A memorial erected in 1953 commemorates the dead. Today, Pettigo is a quiet place again, the Termon River running through it where the border runs, with Northern Ireland on one bank and the Republic on the other. But its strangest claim to fame is older than any border: it is the traditional gateway to St Patrick's Purgatory, where pilgrims have come for over a thousand years to fast, pray, and walk barefoot on a small island in the middle of Lough Derg.

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Pettigo: A Village in Two Countries

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Pettigo is bisected by the Termon River, which forms part of the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The portion of the village in County Fermanagh is officially called Tullyhommon but locally known as High Street, because it sits on a hill overlooking th...

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Pettigo: The Gateway to Purgatory

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

St Patrick's Purgatory, on Station Island in Lough Derg, has been receiving pilgrims continuously for well over a thousand years. The three-day pilgrimage involves fasting, walking barefoot, praying through the night in the basilica, sleeping in dormitories, and eating one daily ...

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Pettigo: Coffins and Egg Boxes

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Pettigo Mill stands on the Termon River and dates at least to 1767, when it first appears on maps, though it is probably older. The Leslie family of County Monaghan, who controlled the Pettigo estate until the early twentieth century, built it as a cloth mill, producing woollen c...

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Pettigo: The Boundary That Almost Moved

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1925, the Irish Boundary Commission considered redrawing the border between the new Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. Pettigo was a candidate for transfer to Northern Ireland because of its mixed Protestant and Catholic population and its awkward geographic position strad...

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Pettigo: Riverdance and Other Exports

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Moya Doherty, co-founder of Riverdance, is from Pettigo. The show that began as a seven-minute interval act at the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin grew into one of the most successful theatrical phenomena in modern history, touring globally for three decades. The Pettigo H...

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Pettigo: Termon McGrath Castle

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Just outside Pettigo stands Termon McGrath Castle, also called Castle McGrath, a Gaelic towerhouse built around 1611 at the start of the Plantation of Ulster. It was probably commissioned by James McGrath, son of the Most Reverend Miler McGrath, the Church of Ireland Archbishop o...

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