Built 1934, immortalised by William Trevor
The Rainbow Ballroom of Romance
John McGivern, a returned emigrant, built a galvanised-iron dance hall in Glenfarne in 1934. Locals called it the Nissen Hut for its corrugated army-surplus look. In 1952 he renamed it the Rainbow Ballroom of Romance, and through the showband era it drew crowds from Leitrim, Cavan and Fermanagh to dance to Big Tom and the Mainliners, Philomena Begley, Brian Coll and the touring acts of the day. McGivern's signature was the romantic interlude - he would dim the lights mid-evening and introduce people who had never met. The English writer William Trevor, then living in Devon, was driving through in the early 1970s when he saw the sign over the door. The short story he wrote, 'The Ballroom of Romance', became one of his best known. Pat O'Connor's 1982 television film of it, with Brenda Fricker and Cyril Cusack, won a BAFTA for Best Single Drama. The ballroom still stands, refurbished, hosting tea dances and concerts and home to a small showband memorabilia exhibition.
An estate house, a Belfast magnate, a ruin in the trees
Glenfarne Hall and the shipbuilder
Glenfarne Forest grew up around the demesne of Glenfarne Hall, an estate house that passed through the Tottenham family and was later owned by Sir Edward Harland - co-founder of the Belfast shipyard Harland and Wolff, the yard that would build the Titanic. Harland died at Glenfarne in 1895. The Hall is a ruin now, standing among the conifers of the forest park, its grounds long since absorbed into the Coillte plantation that runs down to Lough MacNean. The woods also hold the Myles Big Stone, thought to mark an ancient site, and the Fort of Sile O'Reilly, a reputed old burial ground.
Sligo, Leitrim and Northern Counties Railway, 1880-1957
The railway that the border kept alive
Glenfarne stood on the Sligo, Leitrim and Northern Counties Railway, which ran from Enniskillen in Fermanagh through Belcoo, Glenfarne, Manorhamilton and Dromahair to Sligo. The line reached Glenfarne on 1 January 1880. It has a curious distinction: it was the last independent railway company in Ireland, never absorbed into the Great Northern Railway, precisely because it crossed the frontier between the two jurisdictions and neither state wanted to take it on. It closed on 1 October 1957 when the Enniskillen end was shut on the orders of the Northern Ireland government. Glenfarne keeps all its original 1880 station buildings, which makes it one of the more complete survivals on the route; the station has been opened to the public during the summer months.