AOH Hall, 18 Annaghmore Road, Portadown, Co Armagh, BT62 1NA

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Small gable-ended single-storey Ancient Order of Hibernians hall of 1907 built in light-coloured brick.

Setting – Rural, but not isolated. Set on the west side of Annaghmore Road approx. 5km northwest of Portadown town centre. Large orchards to the north and south, with a small patch of open ground to the immediate rear (north), cleared recently

Form and materials – The hall is basically a gabled block of rectangular plan with a lower gabled porch projection to the south end. The walls are constructed in an unusual yellowish-brown brick (similar to a London stock brick) and the overhanging double-pitch roof has a relatively steep pitch and is covered in natural Welsh slate with serrated terracotta ridge tiles and plain barge boards. To each end is a brick chimneystack each with twin octagonal clay pots. The porch has a small finial. Window cills appear to be stone. All windows are boarded, but the original timber sliding sash frames are believed to remain in place. Plain timber sheeted entrance door.

East elevation – Door (on porch) and windows symmetrically arranged. Between the windows is a stone panel which reads ‘Annaghmore [letters now indistinct] Hall Built 1907’, with shamrock motifs to each corner.

South elevation – Window on porch

North elevation – Blank gable end

West elevation – Window with small corrugated-iron lean-to to left side.

Roof - natural slate
Walls - yellowish-brown brick
RWGs - Cast iron
Windows - (not visible)

Historical information

This hall was built in 1907 for the Annaghmore Division of the Ancient Order of Hibernians.

The first decade of the 20th century witnessed an increase in activity and the large growth in membership of the Ancient Order of Hibernians* throughout Ireland, but particularly in Ulster, and evidence suggests that a branch of the Order had been established in the Annaghmore district at some point before January 1906.[refs 1, 8-9] In May of that year, in a newspaper report of an affray in the area between local Nationalists and Orangemen on Easter Monday, ‘the hall of the Ancient Order of Hibernians’ is mentioned, and in late November ‘Divison 264, Annaghmore’ are noted as meeting in the ‘Hibernian Rooms’; however, the location of this building(s) is not known.[2, 3]

The members were still meeting in the ‘Hibernian rooms’ in late March 1907, but by that point plans to construct the present hall were in hand, a vote of thanks passed ‘to Brother James McNiece, America, for his very handsome cheque towards the building…[and to] Brother James Magowan, Coatbridge [Scotland], for his very substantial financial support…’.[4, 5] Construction work was completed before the end of February the following year, when a ‘vote of thanks was passed to Brother John Fay for the excellent manner in which he finished the contract.’[6] The identity of the architect is not known. The hall was officially opened on St. Patrick’s Day 1908 by County Councillor Andrew Donnelly, who stated that ‘the new hall would serve as a centre which could be utilised for educational purposes by the Nationalists and Catholics of the district.’[7]

The hall remained in use for AOH meetings up until the late 1940s / early 1950s. After this it was taken over by Annaghmore GAA Club. [10]

The small corrugated-iron lean-to to the west side (a toilet) appears to have been added c.1960s.

[*Extract from ‘The Oxford Companion to Irish History’, ed. S.J. Connolly, (OUP, 1998): “Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), the largest Irish-American benevolent society, established in New York in 1836. Much of its inspiration, though few of its activities, probably came from the Irish secret society tradition. By 1900 it had 100,000 members. In Ireland and Great Britain it was small until after 1900, when the power and influence of a reunited American order stimulated the appearance of rival constitutional and revolutionary strands. Catholic and broadly nationalist, it shared with the Christian Brothers the slogan ‘Faith and Fatherland’. The Belfast Nationalist leader Joseph Devlin, national president of the order (1905-34), turned its mainstream, known as the ‘Board of Erin’, into a political machine for the Nationalist Party, and during the years 1903-6 and 1910-14 the American parent body followed this lead. Under Devlin the AOH in Ireland and Britain supported the United Irish League and in some areas virtually supplanted it: membership grew from 10,000 in 1905 to 60,000 in 1909, preponderantly in Ulster and neighbouring counties, and in Dublin. It was attractive to businessmen for its freemason-style activities, to workers for its benevolent activities, and to young Ulster Catholics as a rival to the Orange Order. It benefited greatly from its role as an ‘approved society’ under the National Insurance Act of 1911. Known disparagingly by independent nationalist, Labour, and Sinn Féin opponents as ‘the Molly Maguires’ (after the secret society which operated covertly within the AOH in the Pennsylvania coalfield in the 1870s), it was regarded as synonymous with jobbery, machine politics, and sectarianism. In lreland it acquired a ‘green Tory’ image after 1921, whereas its divisions in British cities delivered the former ‘Irish vote’ to the Labour Party. In Northern Ireland it was closely associated with the old Nationalist Party, but since the early 1970s it has contracted drastically.

For Devlin the AOH had three attractions: it provided a direct link to Irish-American influence and money; it harnessed the Catholic content of Irish nationalism to lay leadership; and it provided new dynamism to replace the fading issue of land tenure. For a while this worked, but the AOH ethos was really one of simple emigrant nostalgia, little suited to the nationalist heartlands of Ireland. There it was soon supplanted by a Gaelic movement which, though scarcely less Catholic in membership, offered a more dynamic sense of Irish identity.”]

References – Primary sources
1 ‘Fermanagh Herald’, 27 January 1906, p.7
2 ‘Belfast News-Letter’, 8 May 1906, p.9
3 ‘Irish News and Belfast Morning News’, 22 November 1906
4 ‘Irish News and Belfast Morning News’, 25 March 1907
5 ‘Irish News and Belfast Morning News’, 28 March 1907
6 ‘Irish News and Belfast Morning News’, 29 February 1908
7 ‘Irish News and Belfast Morning News’, 18 March 1908

Secondary sources
8 ‘The Oxford Companion to Irish History’, ed. S.J. Connolly, (OUP, 1998)
9 “‘Make way for the Molly Maguires!’ The Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Irish Parliamentary Party, 1902-14” in ‘History Ireland’, Vol 20 Issue 1, Jan-Feb 2012 - online at https://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/make-way-for-the-molly-maguires-the-ancient-order-of-hibernians-and-the-irish-parliamentary-party-1902-14/
10 Information supplied by owners, (Oct. 2020)

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
H-. Alterations detracting from building
J. Setting

Criteria for listing: historic interest

R. Age
S. Authenticity
Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance
Z. Rarity
X. Local Interest

Evaluation

A small rurally-located Ancient Order of Hibernians hall built in 1907. This building is a relatively early example of its kind and one of the few remaining AOH halls to have survived without significant alteration. It is distinguished from most of its counterparts by its diminutive scale, well-executed picturesque design and unusual ‘stock brick’ construction. Abandonment during recent decades has resulted in some deterioration of the fabric, but enough has survived to ensure that the building remains an important local landmark and an interesting remnant of political / cultural life of early 20th century rural Ulster.