Battle of Carricknagat, 1798
Teeling's charge
General Humbert had landed at Killala in late August 1798 and beaten a much larger British force at Castlebar — the so-called Races of Castlebar. Marching north-east through Sligo on the way to Ulster, he met the Sligo garrison at Collooney on the 5th of September. The British had a cannon set on a rocky outcrop above the road — Union Rock. Bartholomew Teeling, a young United Irishman officer attached to Humbert as aide-de-camp, broke from the French line, galloped uphill alone with a pistol, shot the gunner, and took the position. The Franco-Irish force then routed the British and continued north. Teeling was 24. He was captured after the rising collapsed at Ballinamuck and hanged at Arbour Hill on the 24th of September.
Same family, same demesne, since 1663
The Coopers of Markree
Cornet Edward Cooper of Cromwell's army was allotted Markree under the Restoration Act of Settlement in 1663 and his descendants have been there ever since. The castle in its present form is largely the work of Francis Johnston in the 1800s, with later additions. Joshua Edward Cooper sat in parliament from 1801 and made himself unpopular by replacing Catholic tenants with Protestant ones — and the house was sacked during the 1798 rebellion as part of the consequence. The current building is a hotel, run by the family for some of its modern history and operated commercially since.
Found at Markree, 25 April 1848
Asteroid 9 Metis
Edward Joshua Cooper, the colonel of Markree, was a serious amateur astronomer and member of parliament. In 1831 he commissioned a 13.3-inch lens from the Paris optician Cauchoix — the largest object-glass in existence at the time. He housed it in a domed observatory in the estate grounds. By 1851 Markree was described as the most richly furnished private observatory in the world. His assistant Andrew Graham used a smaller comet-seeker telescope on the grounds and on the night of the 25th of April 1848 spotted what turned out to be asteroid 9 Metis. The catalogue of 60,000 stars compiled at Markree through the 1850s was used by working astronomers for decades after. The dome is gone now. The field is still there.
St Patrick, and a folly
The Pinnacle Well
There is a holy well associated with St Patrick on the edge of the village. The estate-era folly above it — the Pinnacle, a small stepped pyramid — was built by the Coopers in the 19th century and is visible from the N4. It is one of the smallest land-marks in Sligo and one of the easiest to spot.