Today our mission was to find Brackagh, where my ancestors, the Glendinnings, lived for several generations and ran a flax mill. Anne, the historian in our family (Anne earned her PhD writing a biography of one of my maternal ancestors) had discovered a map of most of the flax mills in operation in Ireland during the 19th century, found one mill labelled Glendinning, matched its coordinates with Google maps and found a Loyal Orange Lodge on the corner of the unnamed lane off Lough Fea Rd. Brackagh, a single farm of 47 acres with a very old farmhouse (not the original one) and two modern houses, lay at the end of the lane. Starting at Cookstown, it was easier to find than the car rental return at Holyhead.
Before we left Cookstown we found the First Presbyterian Church, Cookstown, where my great great great grandfather William Glendinning was an elder for many years.
At the farm we got out of the car, looked around and a lady approached us from one of the 2 modern houses. Faith Martin. Anne asked if the name of the place was Brackagh. It was. Anne explained who we were. Yes, the farm’s owners, her parents-in-law, were at home. She arranged our meeting, and there they were, seated side by side in their living room in the old house, very elderly and frail, Jimmy and Margaret Martin. After some discussion, we worked out that his great grandfather took over the farm some time in the 1860s upon the death of my great great grandfather Robert Glendinning. Then Robert’s widow Margaret went to Australia with her 6 children to join her brother in Victoria. So, 150 years ago, the farm passed from the Glendinnings to the Martins after more than a century. My great aunt’s old house at 174 Hope St Brunswick, Victoria had the nameplate “Brackagh”. Her father was one of the 6 children born at the farm.
Jimmy explained that in his youth in the 1940s, he saw the mill in operation. It finally stopped in 1952 and had been demolished by 1960. No trace of it remains. A small stream that borders the farm had once been diverted on the hill above into a race that provided water to drive the wheel, 20′ in diameter, 3’1″ wide, built by Kennedy & Sons, in Coleraine. He recalled the process of uprooting the flax, soaking it in the pond for precisely the right length of time, draining the pond, then drying and milling the flax. Raw flax came from a wide area around the mill. The farm also grazed cattle and sheep.
more to come…