As you journey on the road to Carlow and beyond you
pass about four miles out from Athy the towering gaunt castellated remains of
Levitstown Mill. Idle and vacant for
almost 70 years the sturdy walls of the once busy mill bear testimony to the skills of the masons who built them
nearly 200 years ago. Levitstown Mill
for generations has been a landmark for those journeying on the Athy/Carlow
Road, as well as boatmen passing by on the Barrow Line.
Imagine my surprise to find myself talking to the
man, now long retired, who in the afternoon of Saturday, 14th March
1942 turned the key in the door of Levitstown Mill for the last time. He was the last person to do so as within
hours the mill was ablaze. “Tunny”
Fingleton was a young teenager at the time, having started work in the mill
when he was 13 years old. I met “Tunny”
just before the Christmas break and spent an enjoyable few hours in his
company, as he re-lived a working life
spent in or around the Levitstown area where he was born 80 years ago.
How, I wondered, did Christopher Fingleton get the
name “Tunny”, the name by which
he has been known throughout his life.
He was so named after the legendary Irish American boxer Gene Tunny who
was in the news around the time of Chris's birth. The Fingletons came to the Levitstown area in
the first year of the Great War when Jim Fingleton, Tunny's grandfather,
arrived to take up work as a ploughman
with local farmers by the name of Loudain.
The Fingletons were originally from the Luggacurran area but were
evicted in the late 1880's during the unsuccessful Plan of Campaign waged by
the local tenants against Lord Landsdowne.
Tunny's father Jack who was born in Ballylinan to where the Fingleton's
moved after the Luggacurran evictions, worked with the Sisters of Mercy in Athy
for a while but left them to become, like his father, a ploughman in Levitstown
where his brother Mick was also already working. “Tunny” would become
the third generation of the Fingletons to work on the land but not before he
had spent the first three years of his long working life in the Mill at
Levitstown.
Levitstown Mill is believed to have been built
sometime in the early 19th century and was owned at different times
by the Haughton family and the Hannon family who were millers with mills in
Athy and Prumplestown, Castledermot.
Colonel Magan was Mill manager up to the time it closed in the late
1920's or early 1930's and the mill lay vacant and unused for five or six years
until it was taken over by Sidney Minch.
It was in the Mill that the young Christopher Fingleton got work just as
the clouds of the Second World War were sweeping over Europe. Three years later, despite the efforts of
fire brigades from Athy, Carlow and The Curragh, the Mill was destroyed by
fire. Listening to “Tunny” as he
recalled the events of 14th March 1942 when Levitstown Mill came to
the end of its working life was to feel a real sense of history. He remembered many of the men who worked
there, men such as the Whelan brothers, Tommy, Stephen, Dan and John, Packie
Deering, Mick Wynne, Jack Davis of Plewman's Terrace and Mick Hanley.
Four months later “Tunny” started to work for
Johnny Greene where he would remain working on the Levitstown Farm for the next
50 years as tractor driver and in later years as a driver of a combine
harvester. The lockout of 1947 comes
alive as “Tunny”, possibly one of the last, if not the last, survivor of
that historic labour conflict recalls the men who took part in what was at
times a bitter labour dispute.
Remarkably when it ended after a few months the men went back to work,
with apparently no recriminations on either side and never again would farm
labourers and their employers in this area come into conflict. One unfortunate man lost his job as a result
of the Kilkea strike. Paddy Lambe who
was a shop steward for the striking farm workers was not taken back to work
when the strike was called off. He later
got farm work with Fallons of Maganey.
What happened to Paddy Lambe was and remains the unacceptable outcome of
the 1947 labour dispute which has become known as the “Kilkea Lockout”.
I was interested to hear “Tunny” say that the
Kilkea Lockout ballad was composed by Willie Reilly, the man, who having
organised the workers on the bogs, later turned his attention to the
unionisation of farm workers. Kevin
Fingleton, “Tunny's” brother, is generally credited with having composed
the ballad, but the honour says “Tunny” must go to Willie Reilly. Kevin sang the ballad at a strikers meeting
in Emily Square in Athy and he became thereafter associated with the ballad
which began :-
“Twas
the year forty seven, I remember it well
The
year of the Lockout, the story I'll tell
Of
how the men from Castledermot, Levitstown and Kilkea
They
stood out so bravely to win the half day.”
Whenever you talk of Levitstown invariably the
conversation turns to two important elements of the townlands heritage. The “Park Wall” and Molly Cully's
ceili band. The “Park Wall” was
the local meeting place where on Sundays the pitch and toss school was located,
where long ago handball was played and in the fine weather cards was the game
of choice. Why the “Park Wall” I
don't know, referring as it does to the row of houses on the main road at
Levitstown. Molly Cully lived in the
house nearest to Athy and according to “Tunny” was a virtuoso player on
the violin and the button accordion. She
was the acknowledged leader of the ceili band which at various times was known
as “Cully's Ceili Band”, otherwise known as the “Levitstown Ceili
Band”. “Tunny” recalled for
me some of the musicians who over the years played with Molly Cully. His older brother Jim was one of the original
members of the group before he emigrated in 1936 to England where he became a policeman. Another brother, Tom, was the drummer, while
Johnny McEvoy of Woodstock Street played the violin with John Hickey of
Kilberry on accordion and Maggie Whelan on piano. Many other musicians were linked at various
times with the ceili band which started in or around 1933 and continued until
1948 or so. Levitstown School and
Killeshin provided dance venues for the musicians and Tommy Stynes of Leinster
Street brought the players in his hackney car to the sessions in Killeshin.
Reference to the “Barrack Field” brought the
explanation that it is so called as it was the location of Grangemellon R.I.C.
Barracks, no trace of which is to be found today. Mick Conneran who lived in the Lock House was
an ex R.I.C. man and may well have been one of the group of policemen who was
stationed in Grangemellon Barracks before it was burned down by the I.R.A.
during the War of Independence.
Referring back to “Tunny's” long working life
with the Greenes, the importance to the local economy of a vibrant farming
community in the 1940's and later, is borne out by the number of men working
fulltime on farms in those days. Within
the Fingleton family three of their men folk worked for Dr. Juan Greene who
took over from his father Johnny Greene after the 1947 Lockout. Jim Fingleton and his two sons, Kevin and “Tunny”,
worked side by side for many years. “Tunny”
continued working on the Levitstown farm until he retired after 50 years of
service.
“Tunny” is extremely proud of Levitstown and
its people and particularly so of the part he played in encouraging local lad
Mick Carolan to become an exceptionally gifted footballer. Carolan's mother was Ann Fingleton, daughter
of Mick Fingleton, the brother of “Tunny's” father and Mick Carolan in
an interview in 1962 referred to his near neighbour and distant relation
Christopher Fingleton as his guide and mentor who urged him and “who kept
continually harping at me to keep going and persuaded me that I was a good
footballer.” “Tunny's” one regret is
that as the 7th son of his father Jack who had a cure for shingles,
he did not get to receive from his father before he died the now long lost
cure. Sadly Jack Fingleton who was well
known for his successful treatment of the ailment was killed while walking on
the roadway between Maganey and Levitstown in 1953.
Christy, otherwise “Tunny”, now in his 81st
year has wonderful memories and I am delighted to be able to share some of them
with the readers of the Eye on the Past this week.
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