Kinawley, 6th century
Saint Naile and the thrown staff
Natalis of Ulster - known as St Naile or Naal, died 564 - was a 6th-century Irish monk, a spiritual student of Columba, and one of the founders of monastic Ulster. He came to the area that is now south Fermanagh and encountered St Ternoc, who was already established at Hawkswood. According to the Life of Naile, compiled around 1520 from earlier sources, Naile asked Ternoc for a drink of water while waiting for another saint, Mogue of Ferns, to arrive. Ternoc refused. Naile, in anger, hurled his staff across the land - three ploughlands, six townlands - and where it landed a spring gushed from the ground. He founded his church on that spot, and where now stands St Naile's Church, Kinawley, you can still find Naile's Holy Well. The current church building dates from 1867-1876, but the site has been in continuous use since the 6th century. His feast day is 27 January.
Built c. 1611, three competing owners
The Corratrasna Castle question
On the southern slope of Knockninny Hill, about a mile north of Derrylin, stand the ruins of Corratrasna Castle - a small fortified house from around 1611, at the start of the Plantation of Ulster. The disputed question is who built it. The architectural historians point to a branch of the Balfour family, Scottish planters who built Castle Balfour in nearby Lisnaskea and had interests across south Fermanagh. Local tradition says it was built for Brian Maguire of the Clan Mac Uidhir, the Gaelic lords of Fermanagh. A third tradition, recorded by the Ordnance Survey in the 1830s, names Dr William Bedell - Church of Ireland Bishop of Kilmore from 1629 - as the builder. The ruins sit in a small field behind a modern farmhouse, which is a very Fermanagh outcome for a 400-year-old argument.
Doire Loinn - the oakgrove
The name
Derrylin comes from the Irish Doire Loinn, meaning the oak grove of Lonn or Floinn - possibly a personal name, possibly a reference to blackbirds (lon in Irish). The doire root - an oak grove - is one of the most common place-name elements in Ulster, and the Derrylin O'Connells GAA Club has leaned into it: their crest shows a blackbird perched on an oak leaf, holding both readings of the name in one image. The hill to the northeast, Knockninny, comes from Cnoc Ninnidh - the hill of St Ninnidh - another 6th-century saint who fasted here during a Lent around 530 AD.
The glass factory on the edge of the village
Every Baileys bottle
Derrylin has an unusual industrial distinction: every glass bottle that has ever held Baileys Irish Cream was made here. The Encirc glass plant on the edge of the village - originally part of the Quinn Group before it was acquired and rebranded - supplies glass containers to the drinks industry across the UK and Ireland. The Mannok cement plant next door manufactures cement, rooftiles, concrete units and insulation products exported worldwide. Together the two facilities employ around two thousand people in a village of six hundred. On any given weekday, more people work in Derrylin than live in it.