Where the name came from
Six miles from the cross
The village sits at a road junction in the civil parish of Termonmaguirk, and its English name records a measurement: six Irish miles from a Celtic stone cross that stood in a field in the townland of Aughnaglea, on the road toward Omagh. An Irish mile is longer than a statute mile - roughly 2,048 metres - so the distance was meaningful, not decorative. The cross itself is long gone. The parish church was established here in 1634, giving the settlement its formal beginning, though the crossroads and the marshy ground along the Glusha river were there long before any church. The original Irish name, Na Corracha Móra, describes that ground.
The hill at the centre of Ulster
Tulach Uí Néill
The hill immediately above the Presbyterian church is called Tullyneil - from the Irish Tulach Uí Néill, meaning O'Neill's Hill. The great O'Neill lords of Tyrone had a presence here before the Plantation reshaped the landscape, and the name survives in everyday use. Tullyneil is said to mark the geographical centre of Ulster - an old and inexact claim, but one the hill wears with no particular fuss. It is a quiet hill above a quiet village, which is about right.
A printer's family in St Michael's Church of Ireland
The Dunlap window
St Michael's Church of Ireland in Sixmilecross contains a stained glass window commemorating the Dunlap family, one of whom was John Dunlap (1747-1812) - the Tyrone-born printer who set and printed the first broadside copies of the United States Declaration of Independence on the night of 4-5 July 1776. Dunlap was born in Strabane, thirty miles to the north-west, not in Sixmilecross itself; but the family had roots in the Termonmaguirk area, and the window in the Church of Ireland places that connection in glass. The declaration he printed that night - the Dunlap Broadside - survives in 26 known copies. The church is a quiet building; the window earns a look.