Episode 5 - Panel 1b - From Kilderry to Ballynagard: Colonel John George Vaughan Hart and the Unionist experience of the Irish Revolution in East Donegal, 1919- c. 1944 - Katherine Magee

Southern Irish Loyalism in Context

In 1928, a wealthy Protestant landowner moved his family from their ancestral home in Kilderry, County Donegal, where the family had long been associated with the area, to Ballynagard, County Londonderry. Although Ballynagard was just a few miles along the road from Kilderry crucially they crossed the border. The differences between the two homes were extensive; Ballynagard was not the luxury the family had experienced. Hart, writing in 1924 stated ‘there is no comparison between this place [Kilderry] and Ballynagard […] the latter is on a steep slope, which, […] it is safe to say that the condition of the land has been put back 100 years, & is now in much the same state in which my grandfather found it on his return from India!’ Despite this Colonel John George Vaughan Hart felt the move was necessary because he felt at home in Northern Ireland. Hart’s move holds its roots in his religion. Hart was a Southern Ulster Unionist who felt alienated by the separation of Donegal from Northern Ireland. The main primary source and focus of this paper is found in The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, and is Colonel J.G.V Hart’s carbon out letters, of which there are letter books. This paper is concerned particularly with what Hart’s letters can tell us about ordinary life as a Protestant landowner, trying to raise a family against the backdrop that is the Irish Revolutionary period. The letters are varied in nature including correspondence to family members, doctors, and fellow Unionists. Hart mentions his fear of the possibility of a divided country, his involvement with the Boundary Commission, his help in establishing a Unionist organisation as well as his anger towards the result and ultimately his decision to leave. In 1925 Hart gave evidence before the Boundary Commission, outlining the problems Unionists were facing, which Leary explains as ‘Unionist leaders in the Southern border counties had […] seen their old ties of identity, power and patronage severed in dramatic fashion. Many moved north. Leaving behind homes, farms and livelihoods.’ The Hart papers take us on a journey of how he himself decided this fate for his family, and they even have the benefit of giving us some hindsight after the move, as the letters continue until 1944. Katherine Magee is from Derry, Northern Ireland, currently completing a one year Masters in Irish History at NUI Maynooth. I studied History at Ulster University, Coleraine for my undergraduate degree and found myself becoming particularly interested in Border Protestants, especially East Donegal Unionists. I therefore wrote my dissertation entitled ‘A Feeling of Abandonment: East Donegal Unionists during the Boundary Commission.’ I decided to pursue my interest in this topic, moving to Maynooth to complete my Masters and write my thesis on the Hart family of Donegal, on which this paper is based.