2015:410 - 46 Tullyvar Road, Aughnacloy (Derrycrush), Tyrone

The proposed development area was in the vicinity of a mid-19th-century Fever Hospital. Map evidence confirms that this was built between the earlier 1830s and late 1850s. The buildings of this hospital lay beyond the development area, in a field to the immediate south which is now built over. The only part of the complex noted within the proposed area was a double row of trees marking the northern boundary of the hospital complex, which lies along and just north of the southern boundary of the proposed site. The site was in the old Clogher Poor Law Union which was formally declared on 17 April 1841 and covered an area of 158 sq. miles. Its operation was overseen by an elected Board of Guardians, 24 in number, representing its 17 electoral divisions including Aughnacloy which had two guardians. The new Clogher Union workhouse was erected in 1842-3 on a 9.5-acre site to the north of Clogher.

Little information was uncovered about the Fever Hospital which was not close to the workhouse although its records appears to start in 1843. The immediate post-famine epidemics put a huge strain on Irish poor-relief. In March 1846, the government passed an act for the ‘Temporary Provision For The Relief Of The Destitute Poor Afflicted With Fever In Ireland’. This gave the Poor Law Commissioners powers to compel each local Poor Law Union Board of Guardians to set up ‘Fever Hospitals’. However this hospital appears to pre-date this period.

Another act of June 1847 empowered the guardians to acquire land adjacent to the workhouse for use as a burial ground for deceased inmates of the workhouse. This was in response to the epidemics that were overrunning welfare provision in the immediate post-famine years. The burial grounds at this time could even take the form of lime-capped mass grave pits in the workhouse grounds. A typical pattern at workhouses in Ireland was that a small, short-lived, often poorly recorded burial ground within the enclosed workhouse area was subsequently replaced by a larger one outside the walls, often on the same side as the Fever Hospital. It is very common, for at least the long-term cemetery, founded in the 1840s, to be situated just beyond the Fever Hospital. In this particular case the Fever Hospital was not close to the workhouse but the same concerns that a burial ground might be located nearby apply. The 6-inch OS maps provide no indication of such at the Fever Hospital site but it is not uncommon for these to be unmapped.

Trenches along the south-eastern boundary of the devlopment were excavated with the express purpose of trying to establish whether the Fever Hospital, originally present in the now developed area to the south-east, extended into the site. This was extremely pertinent as there was also the possibility of an associated cemetery within the area. The trenching showed that there was no evidence that either the hospital extended into the site or that there was an associated cemetery which extended into the site. The trenching did show that the south-eastern section of the site may have been used to dump builders' waste during the construction of the adjacent housing development.

NAC, Farset Enterprise Park, 638 Springfield Road, Belfast, BT12 7DY