Next Tuesday, October 25, marks the centenary of the unveiling of the County Fermanagh War Memorial in Enniskillen, with a short commemoration of the anniversary set to take place at the memorial at 12.40pm.

The commemoration will include members of the Lisbellaw and South Fermanagh World Wars Society, and Nigel Henderson, a researcher with History Hub Ulster, who will acknowledge the hundreds of brave men – and a lone civilian woman – that the memorial pays tribute to.

Looking ahead to Tuesday’s event, Nigel said: “1922 saw the unveiling of 13 civic war memorials in Northern Ireland and I decided to do short Facebook Live tributes at the memorials to provide a bit of history about them, and to highlight one or two of the people commemorated on the memorials.”

In December, 1920, the Fermanagh War Memorial Committee examined several designs, with a meeting of the subscribers later in the month selecting a design that had been submitted by Messrs. Gafflin, of the Carrara Marble Works in London.

The selected design featured a white Portland stone pedestal, reached by three steps, and surmounted by a life-size bronze statue of a sentinel soldier in full Great War uniform, in a reverent posture with reversed arms.

The whole monument was to cost £1,600 – just over £70,000 in current terms.

October, 1921 saw the committee report that 574 names of fatalities had been gathered and that it expected that the list would exceed 600 names.

Members invited the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the highest state official and The King’s personal representative on the island of Ireland, to unveil the war memorial during a Vice-Regal Visit to Northern Ireland.

On October 25, 1922, Edmund Bernard FitzAlan-Howard, First Viscount FitzAlan of Derwent, travelled from Belfast to Enniskillen, accompanied also by Sir James Craig, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.

During the unveiling ceremony, William Arthur Gibbon Ritchie, Town Clerk, read the council’s address to the Lord Lieutenant, including: “As in that war [the Second Boer War], so in the Great War, the unflinching courage and unconquerable spirit of the Fermanagh men, not alone in the Inniskilling Regiments, but also in the many other branches of His Majesty’s forces in which they served, earned for them undying glory; and the names of the men emblazoned on the memorial which your Excellency will today unveil will live forever in our hearts and memories.”

The memorial pays solemn tribute to hundreds of men across many ranks, several of whom were highly awarded – for example, three were recipients of the Victoria Cross.

Nigel said: “I am not aware of any other civic memorial commemorating three recipients of the Victoria Cross, let alone the number and range of other gallantry awards [that the County Fermanagh War Memorial acknowledges].”

While the memorial includes several sets of two or even three brothers, one of its most striking inclusions is that of a lone civilian woman: Marion Georgina Graham (1880-1917), from Lisnaskea.

Marion’s life was lost aboard the SS Abosso when it was torpedoed and sunk 180 miles from Fastnet by German submarine U-43 on April 24, 1917.

As Nigel said: “Whilst it is unusual to see a female commemorated on civic war memorials [of that time], the inclusion of a civilian woman is even rarer.”