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In the Shadow of the Hills - The Magees of Hannahstown
58 Plays13 days ago
Episode twenty-eight of Pieces of History takes us into the Belfast Hills, where the story of the Magee family offers a rare window into life in Hannahstown in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Through the research of Phil Donnelly, we uncover how ordinary families lived under extraordinary pressure - from the legacy of the Penal Laws to the quiet resilience of faith at hidden Mass Rocks. At the centre is Edward Magee of Carnaghliss, whose farm records and surviving fragments reveal rural life on the eve of famine.
We explore kinship ties with the neighbouring Dean family and follow the poignant story of young Edward, “the boy who was left behind,” reflecting the wider experience of famine, loss, and emigration.
Blending family history with landscape and memory, this episode shows how one local story can illuminate much larger themes in Irish history.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Pieces of History' Podcast
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Pieces of History. I'm Colin McGrath and in each episode explore both the well-known and overlooked stories that have shaped our world.
A Journey to Belfast Hills and Irish Rural History
00:00:23
Speaker
Today we're travelling into the Belfast Hills, where the story of one family opens a remarkable window into Ireland's rural past.
00:00:31
Speaker
Through the research of Phil Donnelly, we uncover the world of the Magee's of Hannistown, a family whose story spans faith, hardship and endurance across the late 18th and 19th centuries.
00:00:43
Speaker
Together we'll trace us how people like Edward McGee of Cornwallis navigated life under the shadow of the penal laws, how kinship and community shape survival, and how memory endures in places like the hidden mass rocks in the hills.
Phil Donnelly's Background and Genealogy Quest
00:00:57
Speaker
Along the way, Phil reflects on the journey of tracing his own family history, what these discoveries reveal about Irish resilience, and how one small story connects to a much larger national past.
00:01:09
Speaker
Phil, thanks very much for joining me. um I really appreciate it. Before we get into the family history in Hannah's Town, do you want to give us a bit of your personal journey, um some of a bit of your background, your interest in history, and what inspired you eventually to research your own family history?
00:01:27
Speaker
Yeah, certainly. I was the eldest of six, born and raised on the Falls Road area of Belfast. My family lived above my father's grocery shop on the Springfield Road near the junction of the Falls.
00:01:38
Speaker
I went to St Paul's primary school just a few minutes walk away, next door to the church, St Paul's church, where one by one we all got baptized and we were all confirmed. My great uncle Charlie Donnelly was parish priest there for a time and also up at Hannah's Town.
00:01:53
Speaker
Nine, I moved away to Ballyhackamore, and that's where my accent went off the rails. I moved away to Ballyhackamore, the county downside of the Bilt River, and really left behind that that that cultural background atland that I'd been born into, only physically, you know.
00:02:09
Speaker
ah My father kept the shop going but right up to the early 70s, and today there's still a Donnelly shop there. A fellow called Paul Donnelly has it, but he's no relation.
00:02:20
Speaker
I spent teenage years at Dundalk in the Republic of Ireland. In 1982, a wife and two small children, we emigrated to Australia. Lived there for 31 years before returning to Europe with my second wife to settle in Poland, where we still live today.
00:02:35
Speaker
Family history, St Mary's in Dundalk, among other things, I learned about the history of Ireland from a Republican perspective, which you don't get in a secondary school in Belfast.
00:02:46
Speaker
And I became aware of the injustices that had befallen the people of or for our island at the hands of the English Crown at the end with the invaders. When we were young, my parents would spend many an evening recounting stories of our forebears.
00:03:01
Speaker
It was only after they were gone that I wished that I'd listened more closely and kept some notes. Around 2016, my youngest sister created a CD compilation of many of our old family photographs. Some of these even dated back as far as the late lady ten hundred In one particular photograph, my grandfathers and his siblings, this was what initially sparked my interest. My sister and labelled the boy at the back as my great-grandfather, John Donnelly. And I thought, I could see the face was far too young to be the father of the children.
00:03:35
Speaker
So when I investigated with a bit of help from other relatives, I determined that the boy at the back was really Sam Donnelly, John's oldest son, simply perched on a chair or an old orange box or something like that, which made him look poorer than the rest.
00:03:50
Speaker
Also, at that time, he had just begun work as a 16-year-old apprentice at Harlan Wolfe and was wearing a suit while all the others were dressed neatly pressed school uniforms, which added to the confusion.
Life in 18th-19th Century Rural Ireland
00:04:03
Speaker
It struck me that we had come very close to losing this family history our parents had tried to instil in us and I thought it was important to preserve and respect their memories. That was the beginning of my explanation of family history.
00:04:16
Speaker
Let's get into the actual family history itself. So for some listeners who may be unfamiliar with Belfast and Northern Ireland itself, could you set the scene of where Canastown actually is and whereabouts your story begins late 18th, early 19th century?
00:04:32
Speaker
Well, Hansdown is an area on the west ah to the west of Belfast. It's really, I guess it's part of Belfast these days, but back in the time my ancestors of the late seventeen hundred s early 1800s, it was really out in the country, separate. But having said that, three or four miles, five miles, I guess, from the city centre.
00:04:53
Speaker
The area was a Catholic parish and and also was was made up of an extended community of many small farms, Most of the land was rented to tenants by landlords who owned large amounts of land, but often they didn't live on their property.
00:05:09
Speaker
The poorest people who had land themselves often made their living by doing some work as labourers on farms. It was very common for these farms have small dwellings for the workers to live in. You see on land records such things as herdsmen's cottages would be mentioned. They didn't own any land, they just were given place to live while they worked on the farm.
00:05:30
Speaker
Another particular example in Ballydown Fine, approximately the Anderson town area we know it as today, there was a dairy farm with a fine house called Rose Lodge which appeared on early maps along the collection of workers' cottages associated with it.
Cultural Identity and Oppression in Belfast Hills
00:05:48
Speaker
Collectively it was known as Coatstown. The story of Hannistown, I've learned a lot from some of the other historians, you know, that are much more expert than myself, but What I've got from Amin Phoenix was that the people who lived in the Hanistown Hills ah parish clung to their faith, their Gaelic language, their customs, despite oppressci oppression of the invaders.
00:06:12
Speaker
Those who would take from them not just their land, but their entire cultural and and identity. In their cottages and hills overlooking the Protestant town of Belfast, they preserved their Catholic faith and traditional culture against all the odds.
00:06:25
Speaker
The story of the McGeys is a part of that history of Hannah's town. It's a story of courage and resilience in the face of oppression. An Irish parliament had been established in Dublin. It was totally Protestant.
00:06:38
Speaker
Parliament represented with the landed classes. They were the landlords of Ireland. Their aim was to protect their supreme position on the island. Towards the end of the 1600s, the Dublin Parliament passed a series of laws called the penal laws.
00:06:50
Speaker
They were a series of laws directed almost exclusively at the Catholic majority population. They also affected the Presbyterians, who were known one as dissenters, because they dissented from their official religion of the established church, the Protestant Church of Ireland.
00:07:07
Speaker
But the Presbyterians suffered to a lesser extent than the Catholics. Their marriages were not recognised and they could not join the public service. For the Catholics, under the penal laws, they became effectively third-class citizens. They were excluded from political, social and economic power.
00:07:24
Speaker
They couldn't vote, own land, here bear arms or join the military. They couldn't run schools, they couldn't join professions, and indeed churches themselves were outlawed throughout the country.
00:07:35
Speaker
But in the hills and the glens west of Belfast, the old Catholic population clung on through the penal days to their native Gaelic language, their customs, and most importantly, the rock that was their faith.
00:07:48
Speaker
The old families like Hamels, McMullens, McQuillens, Barnes-Jordans, McGee's, and many others kept that faith alive during the long centuries after the plantation. There was oppression in Ireland at that time and then particularly in Hammerstown also.
00:08:03
Speaker
In the anti-Catholic legislation of the Penis Code in the 1700s, it was impossible for a priest to say Mass. People had to smuggle, priest in the secret places in the open-air glens and hills, and there they celebrated Mass at what were known as Mass Rocks.
00:08:21
Speaker
On windy days, rain-swept days, mass would be set in whichever corner was most sheltered from the weather. Many of these mass rocks are still there today in McCancellis Glen, Colm Glen, Rushy Hill and Bowhill Mountain.
00:08:36
Speaker
Local Protestants cooperated with people in this secrecy. family named Steele kept the sacred vestments and vessels for the priest. Mr. Steele had a cow's horn, which sounded the sign of the approaching red coats.
00:08:50
Speaker
L. Steele kept the priest's vestments and sacred vessels in a wooden box by her fireside. She lived in a cottage in Friars Road in Poleglass. Phil, you've just mentioned the mass rocks.
00:09:03
Speaker
The image of people, well for me, of people gathering in secret up the Belfast hills is incredibly powerful. Could you talk a bit more about that world, how faith was practiced under this pressure, how communities protected the priests and any specific clergy who played a role in keeping the tradition alive?
00:09:20
Speaker
During this period, there were several priests who officiated at the secret services. After Father O'Hammel in Belfast came Father McGee, who in turn was succeeded by Father John O'Mullin.
00:09:33
Speaker
The church was kind of centred in Belfast in those earliest days, in the mid 1700s. Then in 1768, the Bishop of Downing Connor appointed a young priest to help the aged Father O'Mullin.
00:09:46
Speaker
This was Father Hugh O'Donnell, and his name will be forever associated with the the history of Catholicism in Belfast. Father O'Donnell was born near Glen Arm on the coast of County Antrim in 1739.
00:09:57
Speaker
In the Penal Des, Catholic seminaries were banned, so any young man who wished to join the priesthood would have to travel overseas to do so. Father Hugh was a very typical Irish priest of the Penal Des.
00:10:10
Speaker
He went to the College of the Noble Irish in Salamanca in In 1758, he was posted to the town of Belfast where there small Catholic community in need of spiritual guidance.
00:10:21
Speaker
The penal laws were still very much enforced. He found himself saying Mass in the old Friars Bush graveyard on the outskirts of the town. And also out on Colham Mountain, he lived in a little college at a place called Springbank behind the church in Hannistown.
00:10:37
Speaker
At that time, the penal laws were gradually being relaxed. The Catholics were then permitted to build their own churches. However, despite the real this relaxation, oppression of the small Catholic population in the hills did continue.
00:10:52
Speaker
The lower part of the parish near Glen Road was occupied by Presbyterians and Yeoman with their families, many of whom came from Scottish or English families that had been given land in Ireland during the plantation.
00:11:06
Speaker
From amongst these came a band of so-called Loyalists, known as the Wreckers. In 1744, the Wreckers bound the church at Derry Agate to the ground. During the year of the field in 1798 rebellion, the church was bound down again, one more time.
00:11:22
Speaker
The same year, they destroyed the Rock Chapel, which had been built by Father Hugh. For many years after that, thatched cottage had to serve as both a school and a church for the community.
00:11:34
Speaker
Father Hugh was responsible for building the building of the first Catholic chapel in Belfast, St Mary's Chapel Lane, in 1784. On the day of its opening, a company of united Irishman under Captain Waddell Cunningham lined the chapel yard as a guard of honour.
00:11:50
Speaker
and presented arms as Father O'Donnell passed into the church. In 1792, Father O'Donnell puttied a plot of ground from a Presbyterian man Hannestown, and there he built a small schoolhouse which doubled as a chapel.
00:12:05
Speaker
A fragment of the gable walls of that building are still to be seen near Hamill's vault at the Hannestown graveyard. It wasn't until 1825 that a proper church St Joseph's was built at Hannestown.
Struggles and Resilience of the Magee Family
00:12:16
Speaker
The church was renovated and extended in 1998, but the original bell tower was retained and still stands. So Phil, if we can just move the story on a bit, what do we know about Edward McGee himself, his life, his farm and his role in the community?
00:12:33
Speaker
My maternal grandmother was Sarah McGee and her great-grandfather was old Edward McGee. We know from early land records that in 1827, Edward was a farmer place called Charnachlis in County Antrim. Just the other side of the Divis Range towards Loch Nha.
00:12:54
Speaker
Like most other Catholics in rural Ireland, Edward was a tenant farmer. His landlady was a woman named Isabella Johnston. Tenant farmers in Ireland rented land from often absent front landlords facing insecure leases from year to year and had no rights. In addition to paying that rents, the Catholic tenant farm in Ireland was obliged to pay tithes.
00:13:17
Speaker
These were agricultural taxes of 10% of the produce paid by the Catholic population to support the Church of Ireland, the established church. This led system led to widespread poverty independence and dependence on small agricultural plots later disastrously exacerbated by the Great Famine.
00:13:35
Speaker
The Great Famine had such a devastating impact across Ireland. For those people who may not necessarily know the details, can you give us some background on that? And how did the Magee's experience those years in Connellis?
00:13:47
Speaker
In the early 18th century, many Irish families depended almost totally on the potato to feed themselves and their families. Potatoes would grow grow even on the poorest of soils and they were very nutritious.
00:13:59
Speaker
But disaster struck when the potato crop failed from 1845 1852.
00:14:06
Speaker
Having no crop and so unable to pay their rents, many Irish were evicted by their absentee landlords during these years and left to wander the roads. Roughly one million people died of staration starvation and disease and more than one million fled the country.
00:14:22
Speaker
nowhere Was life easy for the tenant farming during those years? But the Magee family with a good-sized farm in County Antle were a little bit more fortunate than the countrymen living on the poorer rocky soils in the southern and western parts of the country. We were the worst affected.
00:14:39
Speaker
Edward McGee's 27-acre farm was not entirely dependent on the potato farm harvest. His land was fertile enough to grow oats, root vegetables, and also had some sustenance for themselves and their livestock and their poultry. So the family was able to keep starvation bay and, importantly, to avoid eviction.
00:14:59
Speaker
Nevertheless, they were impacted. In the autumn of 1849,
00:15:04
Speaker
Edward's daughter, Margaret, died of inflammation, a condition associated with the famine diseases of typhus and dysentery. My dad, who never spoke much about his family history, in the last couple of weeks of his life said some something about it. And he said that Edward's eldest son, who was my father's grandfather, was Eva McGee. He fled to America during the famine.
00:15:29
Speaker
with his wife leaving their two small children behind to be raised by their grandparents. No one knows if they ride safely to the other side. They're never heard of again. The 1851 census gives us a great snapshot of old Edward McGee's family near the end of the famine.
00:15:48
Speaker
The southern boundary of their farm property was the main road connecting Belfast and Cromlin, about 13 and a half miles apart. Today it's known as Ballyhill Road. The earliest ordnance survey map dating back to 1832 shows that there was a blacksmith's cottage by the road on the farm property.
00:16:07
Speaker
The journey by horse and cart would have taken four to six hours, depending on the cart and the weather and the horse's condition it was in. In Edwards Day, there would have been a regular flow of horse-drawn traffic along the road Around the midpoint of the journey, the blacksmith's cottage was well placed to take advantage of passing trade, whether it be a horse needing to be reshawed or watered or even sustenance for the passengers.
00:16:31
Speaker
When in season, farm judges would have been on display at the farm gist attempt to travel fresh vegetables, eggs and dairy products. It was an extended family at Old Edward's Farm. One of his sons, also named Edward, had taken over the smithy, lived there with his wife, but a larger homestead had been built, to set back from the road a little, which no longer exists.
00:16:55
Speaker
That ah accommodated the group the growing family, which included Edward's wife, three grown sons, two daughters and and three grandchildren. There was also on the farm another son, the oldest probably, a 35-year-old cartman named John, who had a cottage and a garden in the interior of his property, which he shared with his wife, interior of old Edward's property.
00:17:18
Speaker
He shared that with his wife, four small children, and a peddler named Rosemar Grew. So it was a kind of offer for that acreage. It was really near its limit of what it could sustain.
00:17:32
Speaker
The boy who was left behind, when Eva and his wife fled to America, they left three small children behind to be raised by their grandparents. The eldest of these was yet another Edward McGee, seven-year-old, Edward the grandson.
00:17:46
Speaker
This grandchild, Edward, would marry the girl next door, Sarah Dean, one day, and one of their daughters would be my grandmother, Sarah McGee, Donnelly. So sometime in the early 1800s, the young man made his way down into the bustling port down at Belfast in search of work.
00:18:05
Speaker
Why did he go Because old Edward had died in 1863, basically the the the the the the man who who who got the farm was his son Edward, who was the blacksmith, and he had his own family and he and to think of.
00:18:23
Speaker
so The other members were no longer welcome there, particularly the the fellow with a little cottage, the 35-year-old cartman in the in the centre of the the property.
00:18:34
Speaker
One would imagine that they were all encouraged to go and leave that the properties they did one by one. So young Edward really he lost what were had always been the closest thing to to parents who he had was in his grandparents.
00:18:50
Speaker
and He had no real family. And he went down into Belfast looking for work. He had a contact in the town, Philip Dean, who was the next-door neighbour haven't mentioned, but Philip Dean's daughter, Mary Ann Dean, he was an important neighbour, and her husband, James McQuillan, who a labourer, were living in a boarding house run by Mrs McDermott at 12 Earl Street in the town at the time.
00:19:17
Speaker
Edward took a room in that boarding house and found work as a labourer. You know, they grew up together. Edward married Sarah Dean. They grew up together on adjacent farms. Philip Dean's farm was right next door to Edward McGee's. And um they, yeah she was two or three years older, I believe. And and they, yeah there was a close relationship between Philip and Edward, it seems that showed up, that kind of turned out to be the case showing up later.
00:19:45
Speaker
There was a, um, a close relationship between these children as well. And he ended up, he went back and he went after that lady and he married her. It turned into a romance and they married in 1866 in St. Joseph's Church in Hallestown.
00:20:01
Speaker
Interestingly, when you get married in Ireland in those days, post 1864, you had to indicate who was the name of your father and was he alive or dead. And that that was a minor problem, obviously. So Edward stood on his wedding certificate. His father was named Abraham.
00:20:20
Speaker
Abram McGate. That person doesn't exist. And there's nobody in old Edward's will named Abraham mentioned. And of course, in a will, you have to mention everyone.
00:20:32
Speaker
So my feeling is he he simply didn't know. The name might not be mentioned in the house. He simply didn't know whose father was. This union with he and Sarah would prove prove to be the key to his future prosperity.
00:20:45
Speaker
Many years later, at age 58, after the death of his wife Sarah, Edward remarried one of the Gilmore people, Rachel. On that occasion, he stay stated for the records of that marriage that his father was a farmer named Philip McGee, which I think is telling because there was a real father-son relationship between those two men that developed Because Philip was, old Edward was of the old generation. Philip was in his 40s when Edward was growing up. with caroclist So he was the age to be a father figure to him.
00:21:20
Speaker
The couple had two children while they were living up in the town, Hannah and James. And during all that time Belfast, he was a humble laboring man. However, following the third birth of the third child, John, in 1872, Sarah's parents, Philip and Isabella, reached out to the couple,
00:21:39
Speaker
and asked them to return to the countryside. Why? Well, Philip only had two sons himself. He had five daughters, but only two sons, and they had both emigrated to America.
00:21:49
Speaker
had no natural heir to his property, no natural son to pick up the rents. At that time, he was 64 years old, feeling eyesight, and needed they needed someone to care for them and their properties.
00:22:03
Speaker
At some point in the late 1860s, Edward was somehow able to purchase lease. He joined the family out there and he was able to purchase the lease a on a 30-acre dairy farm on the lower slopes of the Black Mountain at a place called Coatstown between Andersonstown Road and the Glen Road.
00:22:22
Speaker
Undoubtedly, his father-in-law, Philip, helped finance that purchase, she said. they'll finance that purchase she said The property included a large house named Fairview which became the family home of Edward and Sarah, of their children and Sarah's parents, Philip and Isabella. From then on, Edward became a dairyman.
00:22:41
Speaker
Written in documents at the time as a fire and dairy in the Gaelic, well known and respected in the community. Quite a change in fortunes. Coats Island consisted of a small collection of workers' cottages and farm sheds adjacent a large six-bedroom house named Rose Lodge which stood on 28 acres of farmland.
00:23:03
Speaker
And similar to what i was saying before, that people, workers would would be given accommodation there, but would not own any land or own any building. In 1884, Philip Dean died at the age of 77, age-related illnesses.
00:23:19
Speaker
Edward, his de facto son, was by his side at the time of his death at Fairview House. By that time, in the 1880s, times were changing in Belfast.
Impact of Belfast's Growth on Rural Communities
00:23:30
Speaker
The population was skyrocketing due to the many people coming in to take advantage of employment opportunities available in the city. With this growth of population, Belfast came insatiable demand for fresh foods, meats, vegetables, and importantly, for the dairy farmers, men, milk.
00:23:48
Speaker
Men who had been subsistence farmers suddenly began to find insatiable market for their produce, but that came a previously unheard of level of prosperity for the farmers.
00:23:59
Speaker
Like all The fine houses in wopout in West Belfast at that time, it was Trench House, Rose Lodge, Fairview, Model Cottage, it was a fine house.
00:24:10
Speaker
They were all levelled to make way for post-war housing estate homes to be built to meet meet the needs of the ever-growing population. The location where the house once stood is today an open green space on Sleave Galleon Drive in Anderson's Town.
00:24:27
Speaker
Even before Edward's death in 1935, the city council was pressuring farmers to give up their land to the housing developers. And after the war came that sudden explosion in house building which, as one writer described it, large residences were demolished one by one and the green fields disappeared almost overnight.
Legacy of Ordinary Families in History
00:24:49
Speaker
That was Phil Donnelly, whose research into the Magee family has helped bring life to a chapter of Irish history rooted in faith, family and place. Their story, from the fields of Carnal Lys to the emigrant trails beyond, reminds us how history often lives not in grand events, but in the quiet endurance of ordinary people.
00:25:09
Speaker
If you'd like to explore more about Hannahstown, the Belfast Hills and the families who shaped them, you can find the links and sources in the episode notes. Make sure to subscribe and rate Pieces of History on iTunes and Spotify and follow the podcast on Instagram and Facebook at Pieces of he History.
00:25:26
Speaker
Thanks for listening.