caledon mansion

The tidy village of Caledon takes its name from the Earls of Caledon. Their mansion designed by Thomas Cooley (1779) and enlarged by John Nash (1810), is the fourth great house to be built here. It has a beautiful Regency drawing room and library and the fourth earl kept black bears in the park. His thrid son, born in 1891, was Field Marshal Earl Alexander of Tunis. On the estate is the ruin of a strange folly made out of the knuckle bones of cattle. It was built in the eighteenth century by Lord Orrery who hoped, he said to 'strike the Caledonians with wonder and amazement'. The butchers and tanners of Tyrone supplied the bones, though their opinions of the 'bone house' do not appear to have been recorded.