Brendan McAnallen: Keen historian and businessman

A LIFELONG interest in promoting the past, present and future of his local area were among the attributes of the late Brendan McAnallen whose death last week has caused widespread sadness.

Aged 77, Mr McAnallen was best known in recent years for his work with the Cormac Trust and Campa Chormaic, both organisations set up after the sudden death of his son, Cormac, in March 2004.

Cormac was a member of the first Tyrone team to win the Sam Maguire Cup. His death at the age of just 24 led to his parents, Brendan and Bridget, setting up both organisations.

Over the intervening 18 years, their work benefited many people around Ulster, Ireland and indeed further afield as well.

The Cormac Trust has saved lives through raising awareness of sudden cardiac death, the provision of defibrillators and increasing provision of cardiac screening.

Mr McAnallen and his wife strove valiantly to turn the despair of their son’s death to some good.

Meanwhile, Campa Chormac has now spread to four counties, helping thousands of children to come to a deeper appreciation of local heritage and native culture.

Born in March 1945, Mr McAnallen left primary school early due to a family illness. He worked as a sawyer/salesman at Shields’ Timber merchants in Dungannon before branching out on his own as a joiner-cabinet maker.

He also developed a love of Irish culture, first as a player and secretary of Benburb Eoghan Rua GAA and then as captain of the fledgling Aghaloo GAA team in 1970.

He married Bridget O’Neill of Moy in September 1977. The couple had three boys – Donal, Cormac and Fergus. That year, too, Brendan set up Ardmac, a general construction company, with his brothers Kevin and Sean.

During the early eighties, Brendan and Bridget became driving forces behind the formation of the Brantry Area Rural Development association (BARD).

Among the events organised by him over subsequent years were Irish language courses, historical seminars on the Battle of the Yellow Ford and the 1798 Rebellion, a re-enactment of the Battle of Benburb and events promoting traditional arts and crafts.

Mr McAnallen also became fascinated with local Christian and parochial heritage in general.

Over the coming decades and right up to his death, Mr McAnallen became a renowned amateur historian.

For 37 years he was a key member of the O’Neill Country Historical Society and a regular contributor to its journal Diche Neill.

One of his greatest achievements was The Book of Eglish: where the Oona Flows, published in 2011. This 500-page volume represented the culmination of work by a new Eglish Historical Society that Brendan had assembled in 2005.

He was chairman or vice-chairman of the society for more years than not, delivered countless lectures under its auspices, and contributed multiple articles to the annual journal.

He undertook to organise the first McAnallen family gathering and published two editions of a family history, as well as designing a family coat of arms.

In 1999, Brendan’s pursuit of local heritage projects took him in a very different direction.

When he saw that the Spar shop in Benburb, housed in the 1840s building of the Powerscourt Arms Hotel, was for sale, he bought it primarily out of architectural interest, having never worked in grocery retail before. He had no idea where this would lead him.

The newly named Benburb Village Stores became the fulcrum of his daily business for the next two decades.

He also opened a furniture shop and café in the old Priory House West buildings across the street, and in 2007 Brendan purchased Skelton’s pub around the corner from the shop – again, mainly as a historical concern – and renamed it The Bottle of Benburb, as his son Cormac had mooted some years before.

His improvement and expansion of these enterprises culminated in the construction of a new purpose-built supermarket, McAnallen’s of Benburb, opened in 2019.

His considerable investment has thus created much employment, and helped to stimulate further regeneration of the village.

For much of this time, his interest in gaelic games continued and he took great and obvious pride in the successes of his sons on and off the field.

Even in spite of his illness, Brendan remained alert of mind to the very end, discussing shop business, heritage plans for Benburb and the Ulster Canal; and how his draft articles on the crosses of Glenarb, the Brantry’s Franciscan friary, and the Great Famine period around Benburb and Eglish.

His funeral took place in St Patrick’s Church, Eglish, on Sunday and following Requiem Mass he was interred in the adjoining cemetery.