Omagh

Related Topics:
Omagh_Town :: Omagh :: Omagh_College

This article is about the town of Omagh. For the film of same name see: Omagh (movie).

Omagh (Irish: An Ómaigh) is the county town (and largest town) of County Tyrone in Northern Ireland, situated where the rivers Drumragh and Camowen meet to form the Strule. The town has a population of 21,380 and a further 28,000 live in the Omagh District Council area (2006 estimate). Omagh also contains the headquarters of Omagh District Council. It is the county town of Tyrone, having taken the title from Dungannon around 1768. The town is said to owe its origins to an abbey founded in 792 AD.

The town is almost at the centre of Ulster.

Omagh is also very close to the Northern Ireland - Republic of Ireland border, being around a 30 minute drive from the County Donegal border (Strabane/Lifford) and 45 minutes from the County Monaghan border (Aughnacloy). The town is twinned with L'Haÿ-les-Roses, France.

Omagh is served by the postcodes BT78 and BT79.

History

Omagh was founded as a town in 1610, nearly 150 years after the foundation of the Franciscan Friary in the town. It served as a refuge for fugitives from the east of Tyrone during the 1641 Rebellion. In 1689, the same year as the Battle of the Boyne, James II arrived at Omagh, en route to Derry. Supporters of William III, Prince of Orange, burnt the town.

In 1768, Omagh replaced Dungannon as the county town of Tyrone. Omagh acquired railway links to Derry in 1852, Enniskillen in 1853 and Belfast in 1861. The Military Barracks was built in 1881. In 1899 Tyrone County Hospital was opened. Today the hospital is the subject of a massive campaign to save its services. The Ulster Transport Authority closed the Omagh-Enniskillen railway line in 1957 and the Portadown-Derry/Londonderry main line in 1965, leaving the town with no rail service. It has been announced (in 2005 and again in 2006) that the military barracks in the town are to be closed by 1 August 2007.

Famous visitors to Omagh have included U.S. President Bill Clinton, Irish President Mary McAleese and the British Queen Elizabeth II.

Omagh bombing

Omagh came into the international focus of the media on 15 August 1998, when the Real IRA exploded a car bomb in the town centre. 31 people were killed in the blast - 14 women, 9 children, 6 men and unborn twins. Hundreds more were injured as a result of the blast.

Floods

Omagh has a history of flooding and suffered major floods in 1909, 1929, 1954, 1969, 1987 and 1999. As a result of this, floodwalls were built to keep the water in the channel (River Strule) and to prevent it from overflowing into the floodplain. Large areas of land are also unsuitable for development, usually around the meanders, and were developed into large, green open areas, walking routes and parks.

Historical Populations

1981 - 14,627 (Official census)
1991 - 17,280 (Official census)
2000 - 18,031 (Official estimate)
2001 - 19,910 (Official census)
2006 - 21,380 (Calculation) ^*

2001 Census Demographics

Statistical Classification - Large Town

Demography -

Population - 19,910
Population under 16 years - 24.8%
Population over 60 years - 14.9%
Average age - 34.0 years (N.I. average - 35.8 years)
Male population - 48.9%
Female population - 51.1%
People from a Catholic community background - 68.2%
People from a Protestant or other Christian community background - 29.5%
People born outside Northern Ireland - 13.8%
People from a non-white ethnic group - 1.2%

Climate

In general summers are temperate to warm and winters are cool to mild. Rainfall is pretty much constant throughout the year. Omagh, as an inland area, has a more extreme climate than Irish coastal areas. In the Summer daytime temperatures usually range from 15°C to 25°C (59°F to 77°F) with warm days often extending to 27°C (81°F) or higher. Temperatures surpassing 30°C (86°F) might only happen once or twice a year, though sometimes it won't at all and other times (heat waves during 1995 and 2003) it can surpass 30°C most days for a few weeks. Night time temperatures are usually between 8°C and 14°C (46.4°F and 57.2°F) though rather uncomfortable temperatures of 20°C (68°F) or even higher have occoured. In recent years, the summer temperatures have been reaching higher than average figures (e.g. 29°C/82°F in May 2006), and less rainfall has also occurred during these months. Thunderstorms are also rare, though some will happen, usually between June and August.

During the winter the days are usually either cloudy and mild (and often wet) or sunny and cool. Snow is fairly common (especially on the hills/mountains) and tends to fall during the months of December, January and February though it has been known for it to fall as early as November and as late as May. On milder days temperatures can range between 9°C and 12°C (48.2°F and 53.6°F) with it only being marginally less at night. On cooler days the temperature can often struggle to rise above 2°C or 3°C (35.6°F or 37.4°F) or even above freezing (0°C or 32°F) during the day, and fall below freezing at night. On very cold nights the temperature can fall as low as -7°C (19.4°F) while in late December 1995 a temperature of -17.6°C (0.32°F) was recorded. An air temperature of -19.4°C (-3°F) was recorded once, and it remains the coldest air temperature ever recorded in Ireland ^*.

**Climate Table**
	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Year
Average daily maximum temperature (°C)	9	10	12	14	17	20	23	22	18	16	11	10	15.2
Average daily minimum temperature (°C)	-3	-2	-1	1	4	6	9	8	6	3	0	-1	2.5
Mean total rainfall (mm)	90	70	80	60	70	70	60	90	80	100	90	90	950
Source: Yahoo! Weather

A weather forecast over the next five days for Omagh can be found here, while a twenty-four hour forecast can be found here.

Places of Interest/Tourism

The Ulster American Folk Park in Omagh includes the cottage where Thomas Mellon was born in 1813, before emigrating to Pennsylvania, in the United States when he was five. His son Andrew W. Mellon became secretary to the US Treasury. The park is an open-air museum that explores the journey made by the Irish to America during the 1800s. The park is famous for its large events during Easter, Christmas, Fourth of July and Halloween. It also hosts a major Bluegrass festival every year. Over 127,000 people visited the park in 2003. ^*

Parks

Omagh boasts over 20 playgrounds for children, and a large amount of green open area for all the public. The largest (and most well known) of these is the Grange Park, located near the town centre. Many areas around the meanders of the River Strule have also been developed into open areas. Omagh Leisure Complex is a large public amenity, near the Grange Park and is set in 11 hectares (26 acres) of landscaped grounds and features a leisure centre, boating pond, astroturf pitch and cycle paths.

Public Transport

Many bus services link Omagh with the rest of Tyrone and indeed, the rest of Ireland (Both North and South). Mainly, two bus companies serve Omagh - Bus Éireann and Ulsterbus. There are bus services to nearly all major towns and cities from Omagh including Belfast and Dublin.

Neither the town nor the district of Omagh has any rail service. The Portadown - Derry/Londonderry main line through Omagh was closed in 1965 and now the town's throughpass is being built on its trackbed. The throughpass is being built in three stages. As of May 2006 - the first two phases are open to traffic and the third phase will be completed sometime in the Summer of 2006.

There is some hope that Omagh will become a transport hub again by 2050. There is a proposal to reopen the rail line to Belfast via Portadown, and also the rail link between Derry/Londonderry and Limerick via Omagh is also planned. However, this is only a proposal in the planning stage, and no plan has been finalised as yet. If this were to happen, Omagh would have rail links for the first time since 1965 to most of the other major towns and cities in Ireland.

There is a town bus service that runs daily, and a night bus service at weekends. Both services serve the town's suburbs.

Road connections

Omagh is connected to the rest of Ireland through a system of motorways, A roads and B roads.

The main roads to/from Omagh are as follows -

A32 (Omagh - Enniskillen - Ballinamore) (Becomes N87 at border)
A5 (Northbound) (Omagh - Strabane - Derry/Londonderry)
A5 (Southbound) (Omagh - Monaghan - Ashbourne - Dublin) (Becomes N2 at border)
A505 (Omagh - Cookstown)
B4 (Omagh - Carrickmore)
B48 (Omagh - Gortin)

There are no motorways or dual carriageways in Omagh. There have been calls be both the Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland governments to upgrade the whole of the N2/A5 (Dublin - Derry/Londonderry road) to either motorway or high quality dual carriageway.

Local Media

Local Newspapers -

Local Radio -

Q101.2 FM West

In addition to this, BBC Radio Ulster also has a studio in the town.

Education

Omagh has a large variety of educational institutions at all levels. Omagh is also the headquarters of the Western Education and Library Board (WELB), which is located in Campsie House on the Hospital Road.

Primary Schools (Elementary Schools)