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A unique history of the four churches of Loughgilly parish has been compiled by local Whitecross personality Teresa Walsh. The four churches are St Brigid’s Carrickananney, St Malachy’s Ballymoyer, St Laurence O Toole’s Belleeks and St Teresa’s Tullyherron.
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“Loughgilly: People Places and Churches in our Parish” will launched on Friday evening Oct 3 at 7.00 in Belleek Country House.
The notion behind the work, which took two years to compile, was because no such history had ever been written, and unless someone from the present generation did it, there would be no paper trail left, all would be totally lost. Already the loss of people such as Joe Canning and the Malone brothers had bereft the parish of serious historical minded people.
And because of this absence of verbal or written material for any of the churches or personalities it was a tedious journey as she set out knocking doors, slowly putting together four distinct backgrounds, applying herself relentlessly to the task of putting facts and figures on the blank page of Loughgilly parish.
Anywhere there was a signature, an address, something pointing to any of these churches or any area of local parish life was followed up. She was constantly on the go. The O Fiaich Library in Armagh was a major overall source of information and she constantly returned to there following up on more and more info and evidence as time went on.
Walsh never relented in her heroic application. Two intense years saw her extract all that was possible to extract, and piece by piece had set her findings all together in a complete new work having finally presented all together as one for publication and ready for launch.
This work is supported by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
