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Dungannon is a town in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It is the second-largest town in the county (after Omagh) and had a population of 14,340 at the 2011 Census. The Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council had its headquarters in the town, though since 2015 it has been covered by Mid-Ulster District Council. For centuries, it was the 'capital' of the O'Neill dynasty of Tír Eoghain, who dominated most of Ulster and built a castle on the hill. After the O'Neills' defeat in the Nine Years' War, the English founded a plantation town on the site, which grew into what is now Dungannon. Dungannon has won Ulster in Bloom's Best Kept Town Award five times. It currently has the highest percentage of immigrants of any town in Northern Ireland. [edit] History
For centuries, Dungannon's fortunes were closely tied to that of the O'Neill dynasty which ruled a large part of Ulster until the 17th century. Dungannon was the clan's main stronghold. The traditional site of inauguration for 'The O'Neill' was Tullyhogue Fort, an Iron Age mound some four miles northeast of Dungannon. The clan O'Hagan were the stewards of this site for the O'Neills. In the 14th century the O'Neills built a castle on what is today known as Castle Hill; the location was ideal for a fort, for it was one of the highest points in the area and dominated the surrounding countryside, giving (depending on the weather) the ability to see seven counties.
This castle was burned in 1602 by Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone, as Crown forces under Lord Mountjoy closed in on the Gaelic lords towards the end of the Nine Years' War. In 1607, ninety-nine Irish chieftains and their followers, including Hugh O'Neill, set sail from Rathmullan, bound for the continent, in an event known as the Flight of the Earls. In what became known as the Plantation of Ulster, their lands were confiscated and awarded to Protestant English and Scots settlers; Dungannon and its castle were granted to Sir Arthur Chichester, the Lord Deputy of Ireland. Sir Phelim O'Neill seized the town in the opening stages of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, and issued the Proclamation of Dungannon, in which the rebels set out their aims and proclaimed their loyalty to Charles I. O'Neill claimed they had been ordered to rise by the King, and later produced a forged commission in support of this. During the course of the Irish Confederate Wars, Dungannon changed hands several times; Scots Covenanter forces under Alexander Leslie captured it in September 1642, before O'Neill took it back in spring 1643. The castle was partially excavated in October 2007 by the Channel 4 archaeological show Time Team, uncovering part of the moat and walls of the castle. In 1973, the town became the seat of the new district of the Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council. In 1782, the town was the location where the independence of the Irish Parliament was declared by members of the Protestant Ascendancy who controlled the parliament at the time. [edit] The TroublesIn the late 1960s Northern Ireland was plunged into an ethnopolitical conflict known as the Troubles. On 24 August 1968, the Campaign for Social Justice (CSJ), the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), and other groups, held Northern Ireland's first civil rights march from Coalisland to Dungannon. The rally was officially banned, but took place and passed off without incident. The publicity surrounding the march encouraged other groups to form branches of NICRA. During the conflict Dungannon suffered numerous bombings, and almost 50 people were killed in and around the town. The deadliest attack was on 17 March 1976, when a loyalist car bomb killed four Catholic civilians. [edit] Research Tips
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