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Shoemakers, Blacksmiths, and Hedge Teachers: Hidden Professions of 19th-Century Creggan

In the great sweep of Irish history, the focus often falls on major events — rebellion, famine, emigration, and political upheaval. But in the quieter corners of the past, daily life was sustained by a host of modest professions that rarely make it into textbooks or public commemorations. In the 19th-century townlands of the Creggan Parish and the Barony of the Upper Fews, local economies and communities depended on the skill and resilience of people whose work was both humble and essential.

Shoemakers crafted sturdy boots by lamplight, blacksmiths kept the wheels and tools of rural life turning, and hedge schoolmasters taught generations to read and write under trees or in barns — all often without formal recognition. These were trades rooted in necessity, handed down through families, and closely tied to the rhythms of farming life and parish society. Their legacy, while less visible than stone ruins or parish registers, remains etched in memory, folklore, and sometimes even in the tools left behind in sheds and attics.

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Folklore

The Lost Wells of Creggan: Sacred Springs and Forgotten Cures

Hidden beneath moss, hedgerow, or pasture, the old wells of the Creggan region remain some of the most quietly powerful symbols of the area’s ancient history. These were once places of devotion, healing, and community gathering — springs of both water and meaning. Though many have dried up or been overtaken by brambles, they live on in memory and in the names of the land itself.

For centuries, wells were more than practical sources of water; they were places where the sacred met the everyday. People would travel to them on specific feast days, tie rags or ribbons to nearby trees, recite prayers, or take home small bottles of water believed to cure ailments. Some wells were associated with saints, others with miracles, and many with cures for sore eyes, warts, or livestock troubles. These were spiritual traditions carried quietly through times of hardship and suppression, especially during the Penal era, when Catholic worship was forced into the landscape.

In this post, we explore a few of the wells known to have existed in or around the Creggan area, and reflect on what their survival — or disappearance — tells us about the intersection of land, belief, and memory.

Wells

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Family History

Letters Home: Emigrant Voices from the Creggan Diaspora

Across the 19th and early 20th centuries, countless men and women left the Creggan region in search of opportunity, escape, or survival. Some travelled alone; others in groups of siblings or neighbours. They boarded ships for Liverpool, Glasgow, Boston, New York, Quebec, or Melbourne — often with little certainty about what awaited them on the other side. For those left behind, the greatest link to these absent sons and daughters was the letter: carefully written, posted across oceans, and often read aloud around kitchen tables or firesides.

These letters were more than personal messages. They were records of struggle and adaptation, of longing and hope, of small family updates that carried enormous emotional weight. A mention of improved health, a promise to send money, news of a wedding or job — all were savoured. Even the arrival of the letter itself, with its foreign stamp and unfamiliar paper, was an event. These documents were rarely discarded. Many were kept in family Bibles or boxes, folded and re-folded over decades. In this post, we reflect on what these letters reveal about the emigrant experience, and the continuing emotional ties between the diaspora and the Creggan homeland.

A Paper Bridge Across the

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