Rathlee Tower was a seat of the O Dowd's chieftains of Tiereragh for most of the time up to the rebellion in 1641 or possibly until the Battle of Aughrim.

The English used it as a look out for enemy raiders who would have found Killala a safe landing area.

The Irish Army/government used the hut at the site of Rathlee towerduring World War II as a look out for German craft; there was even a telephone connected. It is said that Killala Bay was used as a mooring for a famous German submarine and its crew to hide out during the day and attack English ships at night.
The tower is now in ruins but still stands as a familiar landmark on this part of the coast.

The coast guard station at Pullaheeney can still be seen in runied state close to the sea and the harbour at Pullaheeney. It was built by the British Government about 150 years ago in a townland called Caltraghkeel.

This was used for accommodating 4-5 families in a flat-type setting. There was a common washroom for washing clothes etc.
The purpose of the station was to protect the coast from invasion and smugglers who might dock at Pullaheeney Harbour. It burnt down in the early part of the last century and was never rebuilt.
Today the Harbour is still used by local fishing boats.

Cooga Lodge was built by Col. Thomas Howley in 1838. The Howley's were Catholic land agents born in Bonniconlon and are famous for building Beleek Castle in Ballina. Thomas Howley was educated in England and joied the British Army where it is said he bought his title of colonel. However he was a very talented man with thesword and the gun and was a champion marksman. According to folklore, while in India he was asked by another colonel to exchange his regiment for an estate in Sligo and Howley accepted the offer. Within a month he had recruited and trained another regiment who fought and won an important victory in battle. Shortly afterwards Howley returned to his newly won estate in Cooga, Co. Sligo.

It was the Howley's who sponsored the grandfather of Patrick Kavanagh, the famous Monoghan poet, to become teacher. They also built Clooneenmore School in 1839 after the government passed an act compelling landlords to provide an education for ther tenant's children.

In 1911 Cooga Lodge was a priest's residence.

An Bóithrín Glas.

The green country lane.

The estate of , landlords ,Jones/ Fitzgerald’s, Christies.

In the “Title Applotment book” lists Rathlee, as being owned by, Miss Caroline Brereton, and held by lease by, Mr Thomas Jones Esq. (as noted by a government survey, conducted about 1833.

The Bóithrín Glass is a small country lane linking Rathlee with the main Easky /Enniscrone road, between Gibson’s Crossroads, and Rathlee School.

This beautiful quiet uninhabited lane is full of flora and fauna, most notably the abundance of crab-apple trees that adorn it.

It would have been used by the residents of Rathlee House (Jones/ Fitzgerald’s) as an avenue into their estate. (The high walled remains of the orchards still remain) Hence the crab apple trees i.e. seeds carried by birds raiding the orchard.

Myself and Paul Burns, (Tallahassee, Florida), visited John Devaney in Leanadoon, in October 2004, John told us that the last landlords in Rathlee were by the name of, Fitzgerald, and that they were “nice people, and it was the Fitzgerald’s ( Mostly women, married Atkinson- Hewitt- Christie- (doctors) .?) Who built the stiles, still visible today, at the big ditch, and the entrance to, Frank Melvin’s field in Cabra (Cabragh). They were built to accommodate the ladies who were struggling to cross ditches with buckets of milk, water and eggs.

At the lower end of this lane, on a laneway to the left is” the big house well” which as its name suggests was the water supply for Rathlee house and the surrounding area, no matter how much water was taken from the well even in dry spells it never ran dry. I remember, as a child, the ass carts and Ferguson 20 tractors drawing all summer, as myself and my sister herded our cows for, hours grazing the” long acre.” We would spend hours picking blackberries and crab apples, and making hideouts and play houses. (Those were the days my friend).

The well was in use up to the time the mains water supply was brought to the area by the hard work of, and the lobbying of politicians, by Mr Tony Jones.

In times gone by the tinkers, used the” Bóithrín Glass”, in what would now be called a “halting site”

The tinkers that came here, periodically, and were mainly, tinsmiths and migrant farm hands, some of the names were Maughan, Collins, Biddy Skiff and many more.

The people of Cabra used to cross the fields to school through the booreen Glas, and of course those who wanted to Mitch could spend the day with the tinkers.

My father who would have gone to school in the 1920s often said he went to school with the Tinkers, as so often happens we did not think to ask him what he meant by that, was it that the tinker children attended school with him or did he mean he got an education as such while mitching off school in the tinkers camp?

I myself went to Rathlee School in the late 60s early seventies and I recall them being there with the horse drawn canvass caravans, and the canvass tents. Turf fires set on the ground and a cast iron kettle hanging on crooks. The children sometimes came to school; of course no one wanted to sit beside them because of their distinctive smell.

The boys would go from house to house selling tin cans, mugs etc, while the women in their colourful shawls done the same thing begging for flour or a “ grain of sugar or tae”, Sometimes the men would work for the local farmers, picking potatoes etc.

Sometimes they would ask for turf and some times a householder would miss some turf gone just as the tinkers had left the area. In the same way pits of potatoes were raided.

The “big Ditch” which runs from Cabra to the Boithrin Glass was supposedly used for burials during the famine, and as a cut through to Rathlee Post Office, which at that time was situated on Kyle’s hill, its remains are still there to be seen, in Michael Finnertys field.

There was a man by the name of James Madden murdered in the big house, and two young men by the name of McDonnell, were tried and deported to Botany Bay, but they were innocent.

Their mother went to see the priest and he told her that he knew well they were not guilty, but he said it would be clear within the year who was the culprit. The culprit was involved in an accident on the shore when his horse cart overturned and broke his arm; he died within the year of an awful death from gangrene of the injured arm.