Omagh solitary house marks Ireland’s smallest street

Some unfinished business led to the shortest street on the island of Ireland being created in Omagh.

Located off the Brookmount Road, Michael Street, or in Gaelic, Sráid Naoim Micil, is the length of one solitary house.

It was created by Michael McGlinchey (hence the name) who owned a spirit store which situated where Signal Signs is today.

Mr McGlinchey started the construction of the street in the early 1900s, with the grand idea of building ten houses on a street named after himself.

However, the construction would only see one house built before his untimely death eight years later.

This house still stands today, and its wall bears the name of its creator. Though he was a prominent shop owner in Omagh, this did not grant Michael McGlinchey saint status as the Gaelic sign may suggest.

Vincent Brogan, a local historian, believes that the ‘saint’ in the Gaelic sign was added as a mistake when the sign designer was tasked with creating street signs for St Patrick’s Street, St Patrick’s Terrace and St Brigid’s Terrace in Gallow’s Hill.

As a child growing up on the Brookmount Road, Vincent remembers the man who inhabited the lonely house.

PIGS

“He was called Mr Friel and he was blind,” said Vincent.

“Yet he kept pigs in a shed around the back of the house.

“However, when it came to the slaughter, it was quite a mystery how he was able to do it

“There was lots of squealing and running around involved for quite a while before he got a hold of them!”

In later years, Laurence Rush lived in this house.

Mr Rush, whose wife Elizabeth died in the Omagh bomb, inhabited the solitary house for over 30 years before his death in 2012.

He used to speak about the multiple addresses that would appear in his post, including 10 Brook Street, 10 Convent view, 10 Michael Street, and the Irish counterpart – 10 Sráid Naoim Micil.

Interestingly, all of these addresses are technically correct, with Brook Street, which ran along the bottom of the garden, also being known as Covent Street.

Posting below a short online article about Michael Street, a writer going by the name ‘Pete’ recalled how the ‘complex’ house at Michael Street had a ‘life of its own’.

He said, “A small house from the outside, complicated inside with an intriguing cellar, for hidden treasures. My first memory as a six-year-old entering the house was that a life-sized Jimi Hendrix poster was there, wild, crazy and absurd to a child, in this weird house with a cellar!

“What was down there?

“It has a life of its own, he concluded.

Another writer by the name of ‘Mal’ said, “(It was) the grand street of the Rush household, many memories found and lost over the expanse of many years.

“Even though the street itself is small, the smallest in Ireland many have claimed, the course of its personal history is as large and colourful as its owner.”

Michael McGlinchey may not have fulfilled his dream of a row of houses bearing his name.

Still, 100 years on his solitary creation still stands alone on the shortest street in Ireland, earning itself a small but significant footnote in the history of Omagh.