Caledon, County Tyrone

Caledon (IPA: ['kalɪdɪn]) (formerly known as Kinnaird) is a small village in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland in the Clogher Valley on the banks of the River Blackwater, some 7 miles from Armagh. It is situated in the south east of Tyrone and on the border of both County Armagh and County Monaghan. In the 2001 Census it had a population of 387 people. It is a designated conservation area. It lies within the Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council area.

1 History
2 People
3 Education
4 References
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] History

Thursday 20 June 1968 - The Caledon Protest:

Austin Currie, then Nationalist Member of Parliament (MP) at Stormont, and a number of other people, began a protest about discrimination in the allocation of housing by 'squatting' (illegally occupying) in a house in Caledon. The house had been allocated by Dungannon Rural District Council to a 19 year-old unmarried Protestant woman, Emily Beattie, who was the secretary of a local Unionist politician. Emily Beattie was given the house ahead of older married Catholic families with children. The protesters were evicted by officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). [One of the officers was Emily Beattie's brother.] The next day the annual conference of the Nationalist Party unanimously approved of the protest action by Austin Currie in Caledon. This was one of the catalysts of the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. Caledon is most famous in recent times for the brutal 2004 murder of Killylea man Noel Williamson and for the spate of attempted murders in February 2007 in which 5 men were almost fatally stabbed.

[edit] People

The village is home to the Earl of Caledon and the Alexander family as well as previously being home to Sir Pheilim (Feilim) O'Neill, the leader of the Irish Rebellion of 1641.
John Foster McCreight (1827-1913) was a jurist and the first Premier of the Canadian province of British Columbia. He was born in Caledon to a well-established and well-connected family.