Caledon, Mid Ulster, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

🇮🇪 Caledon is a small village and townland (of 232 acres) in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It is in the Clogher Valley on the banks of the River Blackwater, 10km from Armagh. It lies in the south-east of Tyrone and near the borders of County Armagh and County Monaghan. It is situated in the historic barony of Dungannon Lower and the civil parish of Aghaloo. It is a designated conservation area. It was historically known as Kinnaird (Cionn Aird, meaning "head/top of the height or hill".

History The old settlement of Kinard was burned in 1608 by the forces of Sir Cahir O'Doherty during O'Doherty's Rebellion. Sir Henry Óg O'Neill, the main local landowner, was killed by the rebels.

In 1967 the Gildernew family, began a protest about discrimination in housing allocation by 'squatting' (illegally occupying) in a house in Caledon. The house had been allocated by Dungannon Rural District Council to a 19-year-old unmarried Ulster Protestant woman, Emily Beattie, who was the secretary of a local Ulster Unionist Party politician. Beattie was given the house ahead of older married Catholic families with children. The protesters were evicted by officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, one of whom was Beattie's brother. The next day, the annual conference of the Nationalist Party unanimously approved of the protest action by Currie.

Caledon House Caledon House was built in 1779 by James Alexander, a member of the Irish House of Commons for Londonderry, who had previously in 1778 bought the Caledon Estate. James Alexander was made Baron Caledon in 1790 and later Viscount Caledon in 1797. The House was begun in 1779 to designs by Thomas Cooley, but altered by John Nash in 1808–10.

Transport Caledon railway station (on the narrow gauge Clogher Valley Railway) opened on 2 May 1887, but finally closed on 1 January 1942. Tynan and Caledon railway station on the mainline opened by the Ulster Railway on 25 May 1858. In 1876 the Ulster Railway merged with other railways companies to become the Great Northern Railway (Ireland). The station was finally closed on 1 October 1957.