Bill Tennent's photos with the keyword: Armagh

Originally from Drumnahunshin townland, Whitecross, County Armagh. This fine building is now in the Ulster Folk Museum. The Patterson family lived at Drumnahunshin from the 1830s when this house was built, until the 1960s, when the last occupant, Miss Maggie Patterson, died. Miss Maggie's niece, Mrs Gay Patterson Komich of Hillsborough, California, inherited the property and presented it to the Museum. Originally the Pattersons were tenant farmers of the Earls of Gosford. In 1818 the farm comprised 30 acres (12.2 hectares) but with later sub-divisions it was reduced to 10 acres (4 hectares). Ownership passed to the family when the Land Reform Act (Wyndham's Land Act) of 1903 enabled tenants to buy the ownership of their farms. Although the farm was of only 10 acres, it included a flax-scutching mill that provided the family with a considerable income. At different times the dwelling was substantially altered and improved. The original single-storey house was raised to two stories, the kitchen was subdivided to create a separate dining room and the original ground floor bedroom became a parlour. Several features suggest a degree of affluence, the cast iron stove in the kitchen which replaced the original open hearth, the mock panelling in the parlour, the decorative fire surrounds and some fine furniture and china. if you are interested in Irish town lands or the Irish Land Act. Just ask!

The origins of the cathedral are related to the construction in 445 of stone church on the Druim Saileach (Willow Ridge) hill by St. Patrick, around which a monastic community developed. The church was and is the centre of the Church of Ireland. Following the Henrician Reformation in Ireland the cathedral became increasingly associated with the then Established Church and has been definitively in Anglican hands since the reign of Elizabeth I. A Roman Catholic cathedral was built on a neighbouring hill in the nineteenth century. Cordial relations exist between both cathedrals. The church itself has been destroyed and rebuilt 17 times. It was substantially restored between 1834 and 1840 by Archbishop Lord John George Beresford and the architect Lewis Nockalls Cottingham. The fabric remains that of the mediaeval (and earlier – in particular the crypt ) buildings but much restored. While Cottingham was heavy-handed in his restoration the researches of T. G. F. Patterson and Janet Myles in the late twentieth century have shown the restoration to have been notably antiquarian for its time. The tracery of the nave windows in particular are careful restorations as is the copy of the font. The capital decoration of the two western most pillars of the nave (either side of the West Door internal porch) are mediaeval as are the bulk of the external gargoyle carvings (some resited) of the parapet of the Eastern Arm. Cottingham's intention of retaining the richly cusped West Door with flanking canopied niches was over-ruled. Subsequent restorations have more radically altered the internal proportions of the mediaeval building, proportions which Cottingham had retained.