Ballydonnelly: the townland that lost its name

Somewhere in the middle of County Tyrone there is a village of a few hundred people. Today it is called Castlecaulfield. For centuries before that it was called Baile Uí Dhonnghaile — Ballydonnelly. Donnelly's town.

The name changing is the story.

Marshals to the O'Neill

Ballydonnelly was the stronghold of the O'Donnellys, a sept of the Cenél nEógain — the kindred of the O'Neills of Tyrone, the dominant power in Ulster.

The family's position was specific and hereditary. They were marshals to the O'Neills: the military office of the ruling house, held by one family and passed down through it. They also fostered the children of The O'Neill, which in Gaelic Ireland created a bond frequently held to be stronger than blood.

They appear by name in the Annals of the Four Masters — the great chronicle of medieval Ireland — under the year 1531. A defended residence stood at Ballydonnelly, and the family held the ground around it.

1611: the ground changes hands

Then came the Plantation of Ulster, the confiscation and resettlement of the north after the collapse of Gaelic power. Between 1611 and 1619, Sir Toby Caulfeild — an English soldier, later 1st Lord Caulfeild — built a large mansion in Ballydonnelly.

He built it on the site of the O'Donnelly residence.

Caulfeild then settled fifteen English families beside it, and the settlement grew into a village. It took his name. Ballydonnelly became Castlecaulfield, and the older name slid out of daily use.

It is difficult to think of a cleaner illustration of what the Plantation actually did. Not only the land, but the name on the map.

1641: a Donnelly comes back

Thirty years later, in the rebellion of 1641, the castle burned.

The man who burned it was named Patrick Donnelly.

The house that had been raised on his family's seat, by the man who had taken it, carrying that man's name — a Donnelly put it to the torch. It was repaired afterwards and the Caulfeilds lived there into the 1660s, but the gesture stands on its own.

What's there now

The mansion is a ruin, and a striking one: three storeys with attics, tall chimney stacks and big mullioned windows, originally U-shaped though one wing is now gone, which leaves it standing in an L. It is open to visitors.

You can walk around a burnt seventeenth-century English mansion, built on a Gaelic Irish stronghold, in a village that carries the planter's name instead of the family's.

The Donnellys lost the townland and lost the name on the signpost. What they did not lose was the surname itself, which outlasted the castle, the plantation, and the Caulfeilds — and travelled a great deal further than the townland ever did.