Ellen’s Memories: The Horgans of Belturbet
In April 2024, you may remember I recalled a selection of letters from the Great War penned at the front by Belturbet man, John Horgan. He served in the Royal Irish Fusiliers, 4th Division, and to recap, two of his brothers fought in the same war. Their father Jerimiah (Jerry) was an ex-colour Sergeant who lived at Ivy Cottage, Kilconny, Belturbet. Tragically, Sergeant Jerry and Mrs Horgan’s third son, Daniel, was killed in the Great War on April 14, 1915, at Shabri, Persian Gulf, while serving in the 2nd Norfolk Regiment. An excellent letter writer, John Horgan wrote home from the Front and many of his accounts were published in this newspaper during the war.
Shortly after the column’s publication, Regina Fattorini who lives in England contacted me to say that John Horgan was in fact her grandfather and she told me that her mother Ellen ‘Nell’ Igoe née Horgan (John’s daughter) had written down memories about her family and their time in Belturbet. I would like to say a special thank you to Regina who kindly allowed me to share her mother’s recollections with the wider public.
When Regina contacted me first, she said that she had been sorting through her parents’ archive items at home in Liverpool. She enthused, ‘I found a few articles, which my mother wrote’ and told me how she felt they could be of potential interest because they gave an excellent ‘snapshot of an older era’.
Records in her family’s archive included postcards from the Great War (some of them written by the Horgans), then later, Second World War documents of identity, and her mother’s notebook in which ‘her friends wrote little anecdotes, and rhymes’. It has been a privilege to read Ellen’s memories and an honour to share them. For further reading you may be interested to know that around 1991 Ellen authored an article for the Drumlin Magazine about life in Belturbet before the 1940s.
Egg Business
The story begins with Jerimiah ‘Jerry’ Horgan, Ellen’s grandfather, the son of a small farmer from Co Cork whose last posting as a Colour Sergeant was to Cavan Military Barracks. Jerry’s wife was Mary Horgan née McNamara from Borrisleigh, Templemore, Co Tipperary and their family consisted of four boys and two girls, the youngest of whom was born at Cavan Barracks in 1900, as was Ellen’s sister, Maude Hamilton. Later, Maude became Mrs Gerry McGovern.
While stationed in Cavan, Jerry Horgan visited Belturbet one day and liked it. On retiring from the army, Jerry came to live at Ivy Cottage, Staghall Road, Kilconny, Belturbet. He rented the house and an adjoining field from Mr O’Reilly (known as Tallboy), a publican in Castle Hill.
Ellen wrote that, ‘when Jerry left the army he was lucky enough to get our house, Ivy Cottage, Kilconny, to rent.’ Before moving to Belturbet, she said, ‘my father, John, recalled that he attended school in Cavan until he was eight and that the family took possession of Ivy Cottage in 1901.’ By then retired, Jerry formed a prosperous egg merchant enterprise and the income from this, along with his quarterly paid army pension, enabled his family to live in comfort. Ellen remembers seeing her grandfather’s old records (which sadly do not survive) showing that Jerry ‘exported most of the eggs to Britain’.
Jerry had a reasonable pension from the British Army ‘paid quarterly’ and with the money he was able to buy a donkey and cart. He then built a shed near the entrance to his field. When the Horgans got into the egg business 1902, Belturbet was a thriving market town, remembered Ellen. The new shed itself was a small, galvanized affair where the ‘wives could be relieved of eggs carried in wicker baskets with lids’ whilst ‘making their way to town to buy groceries’.
She also said her grandfather travelled with his donkey and cart around the local farmhouses and that ‘country folk came from miles around’, even from Fermanagh, to sell him their produce. Jerry built up his trade, which soon extended to Dublin city.
Butter making was another fond memory Ellen had from her childhood days. She spoke of the ‘milk churned by housewives into butter’ that was ‘placed into wooden tubs called firkins’ to be ‘sold in the butter market in Upper Bridge Street’. The buyers, she said, assessed its quality by ‘putting a long stick called a ferrule through the butter in the firkin, then tasting what was stuck to it’. She reminds us that this was long before the creameries were formed.
Jerry’s hard work paid off, as Ellen recalled: ‘My Grandfather had a thriving business dealing chiefly in eggs’ and during the ‘pre-treaty days’ people from the Derrylin part of Fermanagh ‘could freely bring their eggs, chicken and butter to Belturbet to sell on market day’.
Jerry Horgan was an expert beekeeper too whose advice was revered by other beekeepers. According to Ellen, her grandad was a dab hand at horticulture as well, and ‘transformed the neglected garden’ at Ivy Cottage, ‘planting fruit bushes and built up a stock of bees’ and ‘at every five or so beehives he planted a rose bush’.
But there were clouds on the horizon. Partition caused a huge loss of business for the Horgans especially from the Fermanagh people. They lamented the effects of De Valera’s Economic War, and the Big Depression in the 1930s. It practically wiped out Jerry’s business, said Ellen, because he mainly exported to Britain. Sadly, old company records were later destroyed around the 1970s or 1980s. Repressive trade wars are rarely a joyful experience for the ordinary person in the street and make life more expensive. Attempting to manipulate an economic advantage over another country can be a costly exercise.
In 1927, John Horgan went into partnership with his father, and they erected a ‘little shed to the left of the red gate in the field’ at Ivy Cottage, so that people going into Belturbet could stop by and ‘sell their eggs first’. It must have been good for Jerry to collaborate with his son after the trauma of seeing his boys go to war and having lost Daniel in 1915. The joint-enterprise was short-lived however because Jerry died on Sunday, October 14, 1928, following a brief illness. His funeral to Drumlane was said to have been well-attended. Both Jerry and his wife Mary are buried at Drumlane Abbey cemetery, Milltown.
Next week, we continue with more of Ellen’s memories of Belturbet, in times long past.
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