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Toponymy[edit]
Dundalk is an anglicisation of Irish: Dún Dealgan [ˌd̪ˠuːnˠ ˈdʲalˠəgənˠ] that was adopted by the first Norman settlers of the area in the 12th century. It means "the fort of Dealgan" (Dún being a type of medieval fort and Delga being the name of a mythical Fir Bolg Chieftain). The site of Dún Dealgan is traditionally associated with the ringfort known to have existed at Castletown Mount before the arrival of the Normans. The first mention of Dundalk in historical sources appears in the Annals of Ulster, which record that Brian Boru met the King of Ulster at "Dún Delgain" in 1002 to demand submission. 12th century versions of the Táin Bó Cúailnge feature "Delga in Muirtheimne". The manor house built by Bertram de Verdon at Castletown Mount on the site of the earlier settlement is referred to as the "Castle of Dundalc" in the 12th century records of the Gormanston Register.
Early history and legend[edit]
Proleek Dolmen, Ballymascanlon
Archaeological studies at Rockmarshall on the Cooley peninsula indicate that the Dundalk district was first inhabited circa 3700 BC during the Neolithic period. Pre-Christian archaeological sites in the Dundalk Municipal District include the Proleek Dolmen (a portal tomb) in Ballymascanlon, which dates to around 3000 BC, the nearby "Giant's Grave" (a wedge-shaped gallery grave), Rockmarshall Court Tomb (a court cairn), and Aghnaskeagh Cairns (a chambered cairn and portal tomb).
The legends of Cú Chulainn, including the Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), an epic of early Irish literature, are set in the first century AD, before the arrival of Christianity to Ireland. Clochafarmore, the menhir that Cú Chulainn reputedly tied himself to before he died, is located to the west of the town, near Knockbridge.
Saint Brigid is reputed to have been born in 451 AD in Faughart. A shrine to her is located at Faughart. St Brigid's Church in Kilcurry holds what worshippers believe is a relic of the saint, a fragment of her skull.
Most of what is recorded about the Dundalk area between the 5th century and the foundation of the town as a Norman stronghold in the 12th century comes from the Annals of the Four Masters and the Annals of Tigernach, which were both written hundreds of years after the events they record. According to the annals, the area that is now Dundalk was known as Magh Muirthemne (the Plain of the Dark Sea). It was bordered to the northeast by Cuailgne (Cooley) and to the south by the Ciannachta. It was ruled by a Cruthin kingdom known as Conaille Muirtheimne (who were aligned to the Ulaid) in the early Christian period.
There are several references in the annals to battles fought in the district such as the 'Battle of Fochart' in 732, which are folklore. Geoffrey Keating's Foras Feasa ar Éirinn recounts the mythical tale of a 10th-century naval battle in Dundalk Bay. Sitric, son of Turgesius and ruler of the Lochlannaigh in Ireland, had offered Cellachán Caisil, the King of Munster, his sister in marriage. But it was a trick to take the king prisoner and he was captured and held hostage in Armagh. An army was raised in Munster and marched on Armagh to free the king, but Sitric retreated to Dundalk and moved his hostages to his ship in Dundalk Bay as the Munster army approached. A fleet from Munster commanded by the King of Desmond, Failbhe Fion, attacked the Danes in the bay from the south. During the sea battle, Failbhe Fion boarded Sitric's ship and freed Cellachán, but was killed by Sitric who put Failbhe Fion's head on a pole. Failbhe Fion's second in command, Fingal, seized Sitric by the neck and jumped into the sea where they both drowned. Two more Irish captains each grabbed one of Sitric's two brothers and did the same, and the Danes were subsequently routed.
There is a high concentration of souterrains in north Louth, particularly along the western periphery of the town including at Castletown Mount, which is evidence of settlements from early Christian Ireland, and suggests that the area was regularly subject to raids. The discovery of a type of pottery known as 'souterrain ware', which has only been found in north Louth, County Down and County Antrim, implies that these areas shared cultural ties separate from the rest of early historic Ireland. The number of souterrains drops significantly on crossing the River Fane to the south, indicating that the district was a border area between separate kingdoms.
Archaeological and historical research points to the district being composed of rural settlements of ringforts located on the higher ground that surrounds what would become the Norman town. There are references in the annals and folklore to a pre-Norman town located in the present-day Seatown area, east of the town centre. This area was alternatively called Traghbaile and later Sraidbhaile in Irish. These names could have derived from the folkloric tale of the death of Bailé Mac Buain—hence Traghbaile, meaning 'Bailé's Strand', or Sraid Baile mac Buain, meaning the street town of Bailé Mac Buain. Dundalk continued to be referred to as 'Sraidbhaile' in Irish into the 20th Century.
Norman arrival[edit]
By the time of the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169, Magh Muirthemne had been absorbed into the kingdom of Airgíalla (Oriel) under the Ó Cearbhaills. In about 1185, Bertram de Verdun, a counsel of Henry II of England, erected a manor house at Castletown Mount on the ancient site of Dún Dealgan. De Verdon founded his settlement seemingly without resistance from Airgíalla (the Ó Cearbhaills are recorded as having submitted to Henry by this time), and in 1187 he founded an Augustinian friary under the patronage of St Leonard. He was awarded the lands around what is now Dundalk by Prince John on the death of Murchadh Ó Cearbhaill in 1189.
On de Verdun's death in Jaffa in 1192 at the end of the Third Crusade, his lands at Dundalk passed to his son Thomas and then to his second son Nicholas after Thomas died. In 1236, Nicholas's daughter Roesia commissioned Castle Roche, 8 km north-west of the present-day town centre, on a large rocky outcrop with a commanding view of the surrounding countryside. It was completed by her son, John, in the 1260s.
Grave of King Edward Bruce
Castle Roche was destroyed in 1315 by the armies of Edward Bruce, brother of the Scottish king Robert the Bruce, as they made their way south through Ulster during the Bruce campaign in Ireland. They then attacked the town and massacred its population. After taking possession of the town, Bruce proclaimed himself King of Ireland. Following three more years of battles across the north-eastern part of the island, Bruce was killed and his army defeated at the Battle of Faughart by a force led by John de Birmingham, who was created the 1st Earl of Louth as a reward.
Later generations of de Verduns continued to own lands at Dundalk into the 14th century. Following the death of Theobald de Verdun, 2nd Baron Verdun in 1316 without a male heir, the family's landholdings were split. One of Theobold de Verdun's daughters, Joan, married the second Baron Furnivall, Thomas de Furnivall, and his family subsequently acquired much of the de Verdun land at Dundalk. The de Furnivall family's coat of arms formed the basis of the seal of the 'New Town of Dundalk'—a 14th-century seal discovered in the early 20th century, which became the town's coat of arms in 1968. The 'new town' that was established in the 13th century is the present-day town centre; the 'old town of the Castle of Dundalk' being the original de Verdun settlement at Castletown Mount 2 km to the west. The de Furnivalls then sold their holdings to the Bellew family, another Norman family long established in County Meath. The town was granted its first formal charter as a 'New Town' in the late 14th century under the reign of Richard II of England.
In effect a frontier town as the northernmost outpost of The Pale, Dundalk continued to grow in the 14th and 15th centuries. The town was regularly attacked and was heavily fortified, with at least 14 separate assaults, sieges or demands for tribute by a resurgent native Irish population recorded between 1300 and 1600 (with more than that number being likely).
English rule[edit]
Map of Dundalk, 1675
In 1540, the Priory of St Leonard founded by Bertram de Verdun was surrendered to the Crown because of Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries. During the subsequent Tudor conquest of Ireland, Dundalk remained the northern outpost of English rule. In 1600, the town was used as a base of operations for the English, led by Charles Blount, 8th Baron Mountjoy, for their push into Ulster through the 'Gap of the North' (the Moyry Pass) during the Nine Years' War.
Following the Flight of the Earls, the subsequent Plantation of Ulster (and the associated suppression of Catholicism) resulted in the Irish Rebellion of 1641. After only token resistance, Dundalk was occupied by an Ulster Irish Catholic army on 31 October. They subsequently tried and failed to take Drogheda and retreated to Dundalk. The Royal Irish Army, who were led by the Duke of Ormond (and known as Ormondists), in turn, laid siege to Dundalk and overran and plundered the town in March 1642, killing many inhabitants.
The Ormondists held the town during the English Civil War until it was occupied by the Northern Parliamentary Army of George Monck. The Parliamentarians held it for two years before surrendering it back to the Ormondists. It was then retaken by the forces of Oliver Cromwell, who had landed in Ireland in August 1649 and sacked Drogheda. After the massacre in Drogheda, Cromwell wrote to the Ormondist commander in Dundalk warning him that his garrison would suffer the same fate if it did not surrender. The Duke of Ormond ordered the commander to have his men burn the town before his retreat, but they did not do so such was their haste to leave. For the remainder of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, the town was again used as a base for operations against the Irish in Ulster.
After the Restoration of the monarchy, the Corporation of Dundalk was granted a new charter by Charles II on 4 March 1673. The forfeiture of property and settlements carried out during the Restoration saw much of the land of Dundalk granted to Marcus Trevor, 1st Viscount Dungannon, who had fought for both sides in the civil war. Even though the Bellews were seen as Papists, Sir John Bellew appears to have held onto much of his family's legacy landholdings. In July 1680, Oliver Plunkett, the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, was put on trial for treason in Dundalk. The trial collapsed when his accusers failed to show up. He was moved to London the following year and tried again, this time being found guilty in what is now accepted to have been a miscarriage of justice, and executed.
When the Williamite War in Ireland began in 1689, the Williamite commander Schomberg landed in Belfast and marched unopposed to Dundalk but, as the bulk of his forces were raw and undisciplined as well as inferior in numbers to the Jacobite Irish Army, he decided against risking a battle. He entrenched himself at Dundalk and declined to be drawn beyond the circle of his defences. With poor logistics and struck by disease, over 5,000 of his troops died.
After the end of the Williamite War, the third Viscount Dungannon, Mark Trevor, sold the Dundalk estate to James Hamilton of Tollymore, County Down. Hamilton's son, also James, was created Viscount Limerick in 1719 and then the first Earl of Clanbrassil in 1756. The modern town of Dundalk owes its form to Hamilton. The military activity of the 17th century had left the town's walls in ruins. With the collapse of the Gaelic aristocracy and the total takeover of the country by the English, Dundalk was no longer a frontier town and no longer had a need for its 15th-century fortifications. Hamilton commissioned the construction of streets leading to the town centre; his ideas stemming from his visits to Continental Europe. In addition to the demolition of the old walls and castles, he had new roads laid out eastwards of the principal streets.
When the first Earl died in 1758, the estates passed to his son, the second Earl of Clanbrassil, who died without an heir in 1798. The Earl of Roden inherited the Dundalk estate because the second Earl's sister, Lady Anne Hamilton, had married Robert Jocelyn, the first Earl of Roden. Portions of the Roden Dundalk estate were sold under the auspices of the various land acts of the 19th and early 20th centuries, culminating in the Irish Free State government lands purchase acts of the 1920s. The remaining freeholds and ground rents were sold in 2006, severing the links between the Earls of Roden and the town of Dundalk.
During the 18th century, Ireland was controlled by the minority Anglican Protestant Ascendancy via the Penal Laws, which discriminated against both the majority Irish Catholic population and Dissenters. Mirroring other boroughs around the country, Dundalk Corporation was a 'closed shop', consisting of an electorate of 'freemen' (mostly absentee landlords of the Ascendancy). The Earl of Clanbrassil controlled the procedures for both the nomination of new freemen and the nomination of parliamentary candidates, therefore disenfranchising the local populace. In the late 18th century, the United Irishmen movement, inspired by the American and French revolutions, led to the Rebellion of 1798. In north Louth, the authorities had successfully suppressed the activities of the United Irishmen prior to the rebellion with the help of informants, and several local leaders had been rounded up and imprisoned in Dundalk Gaol. An attack on the military barracks and gaol to free prisoners was planned for 21 June 1798. The attack failed because of a thunderstorm, which dispersed the gathered United Irish volunteers, and two of the jailed leaders—Anthony Marmion and John Hoey—were subsequently tried for treason and hanged.
After the Acts of Union[edit]
Kelly Monument
Following the Act of Union, which came into force on 1 January 1801, The 19th century saw industrial expansion in the town (see Economy) and the construction of several buildings that are landmarks in the town. The first railway links arrived when the Dundalk and Enniskillen Railway opened a line from Quay Street to Castleblayney in 1849, and by 1860 the company operated a route northwest to Derry. Also in 1849, the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway opened Dundalk railway station. Following a series of mergers, both lines were incorporated into the Great Northern Railway (Ireland) in 1876.
The established and merchant classes prospered alongside a general population that suffered from poverty. A typhus epidemic struck in the 1810s, potato-crop failures in the 1820s caused famine, and a cholera epidemic struck in the 1830s. During the Great Famine of the 1840s, the town did not suffer to the same extent as the west and south of Ireland. Cereal-based agriculture, new industries, construction projects, and the arrival of the railway all contributed to sparing the town of its worst effects. Nevertheless, so many people died in the Dundalk Union Workhouse that the graveyard was quickly filled. A second graveyard was opened on the Ardee Road—the Dundalk Famine Graveyard—which is known to contain approximately 4,000 bodies. It was closed in 1905 and was left derelict until the 21st century when local volunteers worked to restore it.
Market held in front of Dundalk Courthouse with Maid of Erin statue to front and bell tower of St Patrick's Church visible in background, c. 1906
The latter part of the 19th century was dominated by the Irish Home Rule movement and Dundalk became a focal point of the politics of the time. The Irish National Land League held a demonstration in Dundalk on New Year's Day, 1881, stated by the local press to be the largest gathering ever seen in the town.
As the Home Rule movement developed, the sitting Home Rule League MP, Philip Callan, fell out with party leader Charles Stewart Parnell, who travelled to Dundalk to oversee efforts to have Callan unseated. Parnell's candidate, Joseph Nolan, defeated Callan in the election of 1885 after a campaign of voter suppression and intimidation on both sides. Following the split in the Irish Parliamentary Party, the leading anti-Parnellite, Tim Healy, won the North Louth seat in 1892, defeating Nolan (who had stayed loyal to Parnell). The campaign, predicted by Healy to be "the nastiest fight in Ireland", saw running battles and mass brawls in the streets between Parnellites, 'Healyites', and 'Callanites'—supporters of Philip Callan, who was trying to regain his seat.
The local Sinn Féin cumann was founded in 1907 by Patrick Hughes. It struggled to grow beyond a handful of members because of the dominance of the existing political factions. In 1910, on the accession of George V to the English throne, the local High Sheriff, accompanied by police and soldiers, led a proclamation to the new king at the Market Square. The ceremony was interrupted by the local Sinn Féin members, who raised a tricolour beside the Maid of Erin monument and chanted "God Save Ireland" during a rendition of "God Save the King"—giving the party visibility in the town for the first time.
Approximately 2,500 men from Louth volunteered for Allied regiments in World War I and it is estimated that 307 men from the Dundalk district died during the war. In the months before the outbreak of the war, the G.N.R. converted nine of its carriages into a mobile 'ambulance train', which could hold 100 wounded soldiers. Ambulance Train 13 was kept in service for the duration of the war before being decommissioned in 1919. The war came to Dundalk weeks before the Armistice, when the S.S. Dundalk was sunk by a German U-boat on 14 October 1918 on a voyage from Liverpool to Dundalk. 20 crew-members were killed, while 12 were rescued.
Meanwhile, the Easter Rising had changed the political landscape. 80 members of the Irish Volunteers had left Dundalk to take part in the Rising. After the countermanding order of Eoin MacNeill, members of the unit ended up in Castlebellingham, trying to evade the Dundalk RIC. There, they held several RIC men and a British Army officer at gunpoint until one of the Volunteers, believing the army officer was reaching for a hidden weapon, fired at the captives, killing RIC constable Charles McGee. After the Rising ended, the Volunteers went on the run and most were captured. Four were sentenced to death for the murder of Constable McGee but were released in the general amnesty of 1917.
Independence[edit]
In the 1918 general election, Louth elected its first Sinn Féin MP when John J. O'Kelly defeated the sitting MP, Richard Hazleton of the Irish Parliamentary Party, in the closest contest of the election—O'Kelly winning by 255 votes. In the run-up to the election, the local newspapers had supported the Irish Party over Sinn Féin and complained afterwards that the area of Drogheda in County Meath that was included in the Louth constituency had tipped the contest in Sinn Féin's favour. Again, the campaign saw reports of widespread violence and intimidation tactics.
Photographs of the train derailed at Adavoyle, County Armagh, printed in the Daily Mirror, 27 June 1921
There was no strategic military action in north Louth during the Irish War of Independence. Activity consisted of acts of sabotage and attacks on the RIC to seize arms. Arson attacks were a feature of the period in particular. Crown forces committed reprisal attacks in response, hardening support for Sinn Féin. In the aftermath of a shooting of an RIC auxiliary on 17 June 1921, brothers John and Patrick Watters were taken from their home at the Windmill Bar and shot dead. The British authorities subsequently suppressed the Dundalk Examiner newspaper for reporting on the incident, and smashed its printing presses. Volunteers from the area led by Frank Aiken were more active in Ulster, and were responsible for the derailing of a military train at Adavoyle railway station, 13 km north of Dundalk, which killed three soldiers, the train's guard, and dozens of horses.
The Anglo-Irish Treaty turned Dundalk, once again, into a frontier town. In the new Irish Free State, the split over the treaty led to the Irish Civil War. Before the outbreak of hostilities, Éamon de Valera toured Ireland making a series of anti-treaty speeches. He visited Dundalk on 2 April 1922 and before a large crowd in the Market Square, he said that those who had negotiated the treaty "had run across to Lloyd George to be spanked like little boys".
Frank Aiken attempted to keep his division neutral during the split over the treaty but on 16 July 1922, Aiken and all of the anti-treaty elements among his men were arrested and imprisoned at Dundalk military barracks and Dundalk Gaol in a surprise move by the pro-treaty Fifth Northern Division, now part of the National Army. On 27 July, anti-treaty 'Irregulars' blew a hole in the outer wall of the gaol, freeing Aiken and his men. On 14 August, Aiken led an attack on the barracks that resulted in its capture with five National Army and two Irregular soldiers killed. Aiken's men killed another dozen National Army soldiers in guerrilla attacks before the town was retaken without resistance on 26 August. Before withdrawing, Aiken called for a truce at a meeting in the centre of Dundalk.
From that point, north Louth ceased to be an area of strategic importance in the war. Guerrilla attacks continued—mostly acts of sabotage, particularly against the railway. In January 1923, six anti-treaty prisoners were executed by firing squad in Dundalk for bearing arms against the state.
Border town[edit]
The partition of Ireland turned Dundalk into a border town and the Dublin–Belfast main line into an international railway. On 1 April 1923, the Free State government began installing border posts for the purpose of collecting customs duties. Almost immediately, the town started to suffer economic problems. The introduction of the border and tariffs exacerbated the effects of a global post-war slump.
With a population of 14,000 at the time, unemployment was reported to be nearly 2,000 and it was reported that: "Up to a few years ago, Dundalk was one of the most prosperous and go-ahead towns in Ireland... [but] it is a matter of common local knowledge that distress to an acute degree is prevalent". The Anglo-Irish trade war, in the midst of a global depression, made things more difficult still. The industrial situation stabilised, however, as the protectionist policies adopted allowed local industries to increase employment and prosper.
During the Emergency (as World War II was called in Ireland), there were three aeroplane crashes in what is now the municipal district. A British Hudson bomber crashed in 1941, killing three crew, and a P-51 Mustang fighter of the US Army Air Forces crashed in September 1944, killing its pilot. The worst of the wartime air crashes occurred on 16 March 1942. 15 allied airmen died when their Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber crashed into Slieve na Glogh, which rises above the townland of Jenkinstown. On 24 July 1941, the Luftwaffe dropped bombs near the town. There were no casualties and only minor damage was caused.
The town continued to grow in size after the war—in terms of area, population and employment—despite economic shocks such as the dissolution of the G.N.R. in 1958. The accession of Ireland to the European Economic Community in 1973, however, saw factory closures and job losses in businesses that struggled due to competition, collapsing consumer confidence, and unfavourable exchange rates with cross-border competitors. The downturn resulted in an unemployment rate of 26% by 1986.
In addition, the outbreak of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in 1968 and the town's position close to the border saw the town's population swell, as nationalists/Catholics fleeing the violence in Northern Ireland settled in the area. As a result of the ongoing sectarianism in the north, there was sympathy for the cause of the Provisional Irish Republican Army and Sinn Féin, and the town was home to several IRA members. It was in this period that Dundalk earned the nickname 'El Paso', after the town in Texas on the border with Mexico. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher asked Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement what his reaction would be if the British bombed Dundalk to stop the IRA from launching attacks in Northern Ireland.
On 19 December 1975, a car bombing in the centre of the town carried out by the Ulster Volunteer Force killed two people and injured 15. There were several incidents of British military incursions into North Louth. The town was also the scene of several killings connected to the INLA and its internal feuds and criminal activity. On 1 September 1973, the 27 Infantry Battalion of the Irish Army was established with its headquarters in Dundalk barracks, as a result of the ongoing violence in the border region of North Louth / South Armagh. The barracks was renamed Aiken Barracks in 1986 in honour of Frank Aiken.
Dundalk celebrated its 'official' 1200th year in 1989, meaning the Irish government recognised 789 as the year in which the first settlement was founded, with then President of Ireland, Dr. Patrick Hillery, attending a celebration at the Market Square.
After the start of the Northern Ireland peace process, and the subsequent Good Friday Agreement, then U.S. president, Bill Clinton chose Dundalk to make an open-air address in December 2000 in support of the peace process. In his speech in the Market Square, witnessed by an estimated 60,000 people, Clinton spoke of "a new day in Dundalk and a new day in Ireland".
21st century[edit]
U.S. President Bill Clinton in Dundalk, 2000
Parade in Dundalk in 2010 for troops bound for Chad
The town was slow to benefit from a 'peace dividend', and in the first decade of the new millennium the two Diageo-owned breweries and the Carroll's tobacco factory were among several factories to close—finally severing the links to the town's industrial past. By 2012, the town was being painted as "one of Ireland's most deprived areas" after the global downturn following the 2008 financial crisis.
Indigenous industry started to recover, with the Great Northern Brewery being reopened as 'the Great Northern Distillery' in 2015 by John Teeling, who had established and later sold the Cooley Distillery; and locally-driven initiatives led to a flurry of foreign direct investment announcements in the latter half of the 2010s, particularly in the technology and pharmaceutical sectors.
The town's association football club, Dundalk F.C., formed in 1903 by the workers of the Great Northern Railway, received European-wide recognition when it became the first Irish side to win points in the group stage of European competition in the 2016–17 UEFA Europa League.
In April 2023, Joe Biden, who has ancestry in north Louth, became the second sitting US president to visit the town.
