OurTown Ourbelonging

OurTown Ourbelonging Town future
Driving footfall. Supporting local. Delivering events that bring our town centre to life.

“That Friday feeling… in Dungannon!”Dungannon’s hotels: how many do you remember?We set up OurTown Ourbelonging to celeb...
25/09/2026

“That Friday feeling… in Dungannon!”

Dungannon’s hotels: how many do you remember?

We set up OurTown Ourbelonging to celebrate the town we love, share the stories passed down through generations and bring people together around its future.

We’ve also called for proper regeneration & development of Dungannon’s vacant spaces. One thing we believe the town is missing today is a hotel. Yet, when we began looking into its past, we found references to around twelve hotels and hotel names dating back to 1820.

They stood in and around Market Square, Georges Street, Scotch Street, Irish Street, Ranfurly Road and Ballygawley Road.
Some names will be familiar; others were new to us.
How many can you name?
Did you go to a wedding, a dance or a meal in one?
Do you remember who ran it, where it stood, or have an old photograph?

Share your memories in the comments and tag someone who might know.
Let’s piece together Dungannon’s hotel story and let’s talk about what our town needs next.
“Time for a new Story”

DUNGANNON: THE OLD CASTLE AND THE NEW TOWN1607–1650When Hugh O’Neill left Ireland in 1607, Dungannon’s future changed. S...
24/09/2026

DUNGANNON: THE OLD CASTLE AND THE NEW TOWN
1607–1650
When Hugh O’Neill left Ireland in 1607, Dungannon’s future changed. Sir Arthur Chichester took possession of the lands and began shaping a plantation town around Castle Hill.
A report in 1611 described the O’Neill castle as demolished. Yet later archaeological work suggests its old tower may have survived and been incorporated into Chichester’s fort. That makes this 1624 drawing remarkable: it may show the old stronghold still standing at the heart of the changing town.
By 1622, Chichester had also built twelve stone houses in Dungannon. (excavations.ie⁠, ancientclans.org⁠, jstor.org⁠)
Then came another upheaval. In 1641, Sir Phelim O’Neill took Dungannon’s seat in the Irish Parliament in Dublin. Months later, he joined an uprising that brought war across Ulster. His kinsman Owen Roe O’Neill returned from Europe to lead the Ulster forces. (dib.ie⁠, dib.ie⁠)
By 1650, Owen Roe was dead and the Ulster army had suffered a devastating defeat. But Dungannon’s story had carried through it all: an O’Neill stronghold, a plantation town and a place still caught between competing visions of its future. (dib.ie⁠, dib.ie⁠)
“Dungannon in 1624, drawn by Nicholas Pynnar, the old stronghold at the heart of a changing town.”

DUNGANNON … “THE END & THE BEGINNING”The O’Neills had gone from their stronghold.Now another name enters our story.Sir A...
23/09/2026

DUNGANNON …
“THE END & THE BEGINNING”

The O’Neills had gone from their stronghold.

Now another name enters our story.
Sir Arthur Chichester.
In 1610 he received the castle and manor of Dungannon.
But his task wasn’t simply to occupy the old O’Neill stronghold.
A new town was to rise beneath it.
Streets. Houses. A marketplace. A church. A school. Traders and craftsmen.
And in 1612, Dungannon received its Royal Charter.
The town we recognise today was beginning to take shape.
But who would actually build it and who were the first people to call this new Dungannon home?

BUILDING A TOWN ON FOOTPRINTS LEFT BEHINDA town isn’t built by bricks and streets alone.Across the generations, remarkab...
23/09/2026

BUILDING A TOWN
ON FOOTPRINTS LEFT BEHIND

A town isn’t built by bricks and streets alone.
Across the generations, remarkable people have called Dungannon home, some famous across Ireland and the world, others whose stories have almost been forgotten.
Soldiers and scholars. Clergy and campaigners. Sportsmen and women. Writers, entrepreneurs and ordinary people who did extraordinary things.
They walked our streets. They shaped our town.
And their footprints were left behind.
As our story of Dungannon continues, we’ll meet some of them along the way.
“Remember, it’s ordinary people who achieve extraordinary things and leave their footprints behind.”

Looking Downtown Dungannon 1908👀
22/09/2026

Looking Downtown Dungannon 1908👀

If we had a magic wand… what would we change first? 🪄Dungannon isn’t a weak town in a weak area. Quite the opposite, we ...
20/09/2026

If we had a magic wand… what would we change first? 🪄
Dungannon isn’t a weak town in a weak area. Quite the opposite, we are surrounded by successful businesses, industry, education and employment.
Yet our town centre has struggled to share in that success.
For many traders, the cost of doing business in the town centre has become a major pressure with rates, energy, insurance and all the other costs that come with simply opening the doors.
When costs keep rising but footfall doesn’t rise with them, businesses become harder to sustain. Empty units then mean less choice, less footfall and less reason to visit and the cycle continues.
So if we really did have that magic wand, perhaps the first question should be:
How do we make Dungannon town centre affordable and attractive to trade in again?

Better support for existing businesses, incentives to fill vacant units, easier access and parking, and more reasons for people to spend time in the town would all form part of that conversation.
We already have the success around us.
The challenge now is bringing more of it back into the heart of Dungannon.

Sir Arthur Chichester.In 1597, his brother Sir John Chichester, governor of Carrickfergus, pursued MacDonnell forces int...
20/09/2026

Sir Arthur Chichester.

In 1597, his brother Sir John Chichester, governor of Carrickfergus, pursued MacDonnell forces into an ambush.
Hundreds of musketeers and bowmen were waiting.
Chichester was killed.
Hugh O’Neill had reinforced the MacDonnell forces during the campaign, and an old account even tells that John Chichester was beheaded and his head taken back to Dungannon, O’Neill’s stronghold.

Two years later, Arthur Chichester came to Ireland.
He would fight against O’Neill, become Lord Deputy of Ireland, and after the Flight of the Earls help shape the Plantation that transformed Ulster.
And then history brought him to the very heart of O’Neill country
Dungannon.
The old Gaelic stronghold was about to begin a very different chapter.
Next…. 1610:
Dungannon begins again.

YOUNG HUGH O’NEILL …THE FINAL GOODBYE & THE BLOODLINE that SURVIVED.Our story began with a young boy growing up on a hil...
19/09/2026

YOUNG HUGH O’NEILL …THE FINAL GOODBYE & THE BLOODLINE that SURVIVED.

Our story began with a young boy growing up on a hilltop in Dungannon.
Young Hugh O’Neill was being prepared for a world that seemed to be waiting for him.
But Kinsale changed everything.
The old Gaelic order began to collapse and young Hugh’s journey would eventually end far from Dungannon.
But there was one final, extraordinary twist.
Young Hugh had a sister, Sarah, or Sorcha, O’Neill.
A daughter of Hugh O’Neill and Siobhán O’Donnell, Sarah carried the blood of two of Gaelic Ulster’s greatest dynasties.
She married Arthur Magennis of Iveagh.
O’Neill. O’Donnell. Magennis.
The castles could fall.
The lands could be taken.
The old order could disappear.
But the bloodline survived.

Sarah’s descendants continued through generation after generation until, centuries later, that line reached the Bowes-Lyon family.
And here comes the remarkable ending….

Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon became Queen alongside King George VI.
Their daughter was Elizabeth Windsor, Queen Elizabeth II.
Historian Jonathan Bardon, in The Plantation of Ulster, highlighted this extraordinary twist of history:
The dynasty that Elizabeth I, fought to destroy had survived and more than three centuries later, the blood of Hugh O’Neill flowed in the ancestry of Queen Elizabeth II.

Young Hugh never returned to fulfil the destiny once imagined for him on that hill in Dungannon.
His world disappeared. His bloodline did not.
From Dungannon, through war, exile and Plantation, the O’Neill story travelled further than anyone could have imagined.
Dungannon has played its role in history, and the story continues.

YOUNG HUGH O’NEILL CHAPTER 5Young Hugh had survived Ostia.Others around him had not.But for the young Baron of Dungannon...
18/09/2026

YOUNG HUGH O’NEILL
CHAPTER 5
Young Hugh had survived Ostia.
Others around him had not.
But for the young Baron of Dungannon, survival did not mean the dream was over.
For a young man who had grown up expecting a very different future in Dungannon, home must never have seemed further away.

Then, in September 1609, that hope ended.
Young Hugh O’Neill died in Rome,
aged only about 24.
He was buried at San Pietro in Montorio, alongside the exiled Gaelic nobility.
A boy born on the Hill of The O’Neill, carrying a title, a name and the expectation of inheritance, would never see Dungannon again.
And then something striking begins to emerge.
His brother Henry died in Spain the following year.
His young brother Brian was found hanged in Brussels in 1617.
And Conn, the little O’Neill left behind in Ireland, was eventually sent to the Tower of London, before disappearing from the surviving historical record.
Within a remarkably short period, so many of the young men who might have carried forward the O’Neill inheritance were dead, scattered or gone.
Disease and the dangers of seventeenth-century Europe may explain much of it.
But some of those deaths have left questions that history has never completely answered.
It looked as though the great O’Neill story was finally running out of heirs.

But we have left one person out of our story.

And through her, something survived that neither exile, confiscation nor the passing of four centuries could completely erase.
Find out next how bloodline runs through centuries.

DUNGANNON THE MORE THINGS CHANGE…Look closely at this old photograph of Dungannon. Horses, carts and a busy market, but ...
18/09/2026

DUNGANNON
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE…
Look closely at this old photograph of Dungannon. Horses, carts and a busy market, but above them, poles and wires signal a town entering the electrical age.
In 1901 Dungannon received its Electric Lighting Order, as electricity began to challenge the old gas-lit world.
Fast-forward 125 years to 2026 and there’s a little irony.
With Evolve now laying gas pipes through the town centre, gas is once again taking centre stage on Dungannon’s streets.

History has a funny way of coming full circle.
“What are your thoughts on Gas to the West timely, or is Dungannon simply reconnecting with an old flame?”

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