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Wednesday 12pm - 5pm Thursday 12pm - 5pm Friday 12pm - 5pm Saturday 12pm - 5pm Sunday 12pm - 5pm

Sion Stables, 120A Melmount Road, Strabane (2026)

Sion Stables is a sensitively restored 19th-century stable block, sensitively converted into a museum with an education suite and home to the Hidden Pearl Restaurant and Guides Choice Angling Shop.

13/10/2026

Join us for the first talk in our new series of Celebrating our Heritage talks this week: Thursday 15th October at 7.30pm in The Stables, Sion Mills.

Deirdre Harte, Programme Manager at Derry City & Strabane District Council, will give an illustrated talk on Saint Colmcille: legacy and local context.

Around the North West, the name Colmcille turns up on churches and schools in just about every parish, and his story has been told here for close to fifteen centuries. Yet many of us know surprisingly little about the man himself.

He was one of our own. Born around 521 AD near Gartan in Donegal, he was of royal lineage, the son of Phelim MacFergus, a chieftain of the Cinel Conall. That tribe traced its descent from Niall of the Nine Hostages, the famous king who reigned around the time of St Patrick.

As a young missionary he founded monasteries in Derry and Durrow. Then, after the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne, he left these shores in 563 AD and settled on the island of Iona. The monastery he established there became famous for its scholarship and the fervour of its missionary work. Colmcille was a gifted scholar himself and is believed to have transcribed over 300 books. Some of the earliest non-Latin poetry in Europe is attributed to him, along with The Cathach, the most ancient of our Irish manuscripts.

Exile did not keep him away for good. In 574 AD he came home to attend the Synod of Drumceatt near Limavady, a significant national assembly where he played a key role as a statesman as well as a churchman. Above all, he is remembered as one of Ireland’s patron saints, alongside Patrick and Brigid.

Everyone is welcome! Free to attend and refreshments will be provided - spread the word.

Thanks to Woven Housing Association for kindly supporting this event.

18/05/2026

Don't miss our talk this Thursday (21st May) at 7.30pm, led by Ms. Caroline Carr, Assistant Curator of Donegal County Museum.

Join us for a fascinating exploration of weather, not just as daily small talk, but as a powerful force that has shaped our environment, our history, our buildings, and our lives.

Living on a wind-swept island in the North Atlantic, we experience not so much a climate as a rapidly changing succession of weather. It dictates when we work, when we rest, and how we build. It has brought disaster - from the catastrophic "Big Wind" of 1839 to the brutal winter of 1947, when a country already exhausted by war was brought to a standstill by prolonged frost and snow. It has shaped our architecture, driven crop failures, and today sits at the heart of one of the most urgent conversations of our time: climate change.

Caroline will draw on her expertise as a museum curator to trace weather's profound impact across the centuries, on the landscape, on communities, on the buildings we seek to preserve, and on the wider world, from sub-Saharan harvests to the storms increasingly battering these islands.

Admission is free and refreshments will be provided. Everyone is welcome, spread the word!

📍 The Stables, Sion Mills | 🗓️ Thursday 21st May | ⏰ 7.30pm

08/05/2026

☔️☀️❄️🌧️

We talk about it every day, we make comments about it when we meet each other in the street, we watch and listen attentively to daily scientific assessments of it in broadcast on television and radio and other media – weather!

Why are we so obsessed with the subject of the weather? Perhaps because, living on a wind-swept island in the North Atlantic, we don’t so much have a climate as a rapidly changing and varied succession of weather. Accordingly, there are many tasks which are executed promptly or deferred depending on the state of the weather and/or the prospects described by forecasters from the Met. Office. Dark, dreary winters bring on seasonal affective disorder. Wet Summers prompt many families to chill out on sun-kissed islands in the Mediterranean.

On the upside, compared with areas with a less temperate climate, we do not suffer so much because of extreme events such as tornadoes, drought or destructive flooding. However, because of the high level of precipitation, we must design buildings in a certain way in order to prevent destruction caused by an ingress of dampness. And so, houses are predominantly constructed with sloping roofs to drain off excess water and offload heavy snowfalls in Winter.

Join us for the next in our series of heritage talks on Thursday 21st May at 7.30pm where Caroline Carr, Assistant Curator of Donegal County Museum will be our guest speaker discussing weather through the ages.

Admission is free and refreshments will be provided - please spread the word 📣

15/04/2026

Don't forget our talk tomorrow (Thursday 16th April) at 7.30pm will be led by Canon David Crooks.

Join us to hear a fascinating appreciation of Irish Church Architecture.

His book, Living Stones, published in 2001, is a beautifully illustrated and remarkably detailed account of Churches, covering external architecture, internal features — including furnishings, monuments, and stained-glass windows — and drawing on his fluency in the Irish language to explore the meaning of Parish names associated with each building.

Everyone is welcome to attend this free event, starting at 7.30pm at The Stables, Sion Mills.

07/04/2026

Sir Winston Churchill, in one of his incisive observations about the significance of buildings commented, “We shape our buildings and then our buildings shape us.” This comment highlights the huge impact which buildings make and have made down the years on our culture and heritage. This is especially noticeable when it comes to our many Church buildings. These structures are bound up with the sense of identity of the people who frequent them and care about their upkeep and preservation.

Church architecture is, of course, a huge subject both in terms of the sheer variety of architectural styles involved and the various ways in which buildings have been altered and enhanced down through the years – in some cases during more than a millennium.

One man who has a deep understanding and appreciation of this subject is Canon David Crooks who, in addition to meeting the demands placed upon a busy Parish Clergyman succeeded in completing a comprehensive historical survey of more than 120 Church buildings spread over the whole of County Donegal and large parts of Counties Tyrone and Londonderry. His book, “Living Stones” published in 2001 is a remarkably detailed and beautifully illustrated account of all these Churches. He includes a description of the external architecture of each building and the internal features including furnishings, monuments and stained - glass windows etc. and also applies his fluency in the Irish language to explain the meaning of the names of the Parishes associated with the Churches.

David will be giving a presentation based on his research at the next monthly meeting of the Sion Mills Buildings Preservation Trust on Thursday, 16th April at 7.30 p.m. at The Stables, Sion Mills.

Address

120A Melmount Road
Strabane
BT829ET

Opening Hours

Wednesday	12pm - 5pm
Thursday	12pm - 5pm
Friday	12pm - 5pm
Saturday	12pm - 5pm
Sunday	12pm - 5pm

Website

http://sionstables.com/

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