Ribbon man activity in and around Athy

Two hundred years ago Athy, like many other parts of Ireland, was the scene of ribbon men type activity. The so called Ribbon Society was an agrarian secret society formed in opposition to the Irish landlords system. Their members got the name ribbon men from the green ribbon worn about the neck as they went about their nocturnal activities. It is uncertain whether ribbonism was organised in the South Kildare area or whether the various ribbon like actions were uncoordinated activities of unrelated local groups. Following the suppression of the 1798 Revolutionaries and the Emmett insurrectionist five years later the Irish countryside remained relatively peaceful for a decade or two. Overseas visitors felt sufficiently encouraged to visit Ireland and one such visitor was Rev. James Hall, a Church of England Minister who arrived in Ireland in 1813. He visited Athy having travelled from Dublin by the canal boat which berthed overnight at Cloneybeg. Travelling into Athy he first visited the Catholic chapel of St. Michael’s on the Monasterevin Road the building of which had started some years previously. In those days the Church of England adherents worshipped in churches while dissenters and the unreformed Catholic Church were designated as worshipping in chapels. Rev. Hall describes the Catholic Chapel as quite new but not yet finished. It had no seats or pews which he claimed was a common feature in Irish Roman Catholic chapels of the time. When he visited the Church of England church at the rear of the Town Hall he described it as “small and very ill attended”. He wrote “indeed as I afterwards found the Established clergy in this as well as many other parts of the country get their money for doing little better than nothing”. Athy was a poor town having suffered the loss of tanyards and the winding down of the local distilleries and breweries. Unemployment and wretched living conditions nourished the seeds of social discontent and criminality in the area. Thomas Rawson, captain of the Athy local yeomanry constantly reminded the officials in Dublin Castle of the need for vigilance for it was claimed by another local “the system of swearing in the lower classes is going forward”. Following the arrest of a number of men in Kildare the ever vigilant Thomas Rawson wrote to Dublin Castle in January 1814 requesting additional troops for Athy “as the Protestant minds of Athy are in great alarm”. The Dublin Castle authorities sent a company of infantry to join the 6th Dragoons and the members of the Clare militia who were already stationed in the town. Shortly afterwards Thomas Fitzgerald of Geraldine House forwarded a number of resolutions to Dublin Castle which had been passed at meetings of the local people of Athy in July 1814. The resolutions noted that “the towns people were annoyed at the idle, wicked and ill founded reports which were allowed to be circulated day after day following the Kildare’s men arrest”. In addition to the usual garrison Fitzgerald claimed a field officer party of the 6th Dragoons marched in while all night guards and sentries were posted at all the entrances to the town of Athy. This Fitzgerald said was unnecessary and only served to keep Athy in a state of alarm for upwards of ten days. The extra troops were removed from the town and around the same time the Peace Preservation Force (forerunners of today’s An Garda Siochana) was established. Its members took the place of the local yeomanry which was abolished. Within a year a number of incidents in or around Athy were the first indication of the resurgence of ribbon men activity in South Kildare. Attacks on the homes and buildings of local farmers were noted with concern and Thomas Rawson was again to the forefront in informing the Dublin Castle authorities of ribbon men activity in and around Athy. He informed the authorities in December 1822 of a meeting “in Murphy’s public house in Athy on Saturday, 21st of December at which there were 12 men who agreed to take up arms”. Rawson’s information was apparently correct for in a short time thereafter the farmhouse of a mill owner located within two miles of Athy was attacked by 15 men. The farmers servant was viciously assaulted and the dwellinghouse extensively damaged. Further reports noted the houghing of cattle belonging to the Duke of Leinster’s agent and that of Reverend Charles Bristow, the local Church of England curate. A local man Patrick Brady who was transported to Australia for stealing pigs in early 1825 wrote an account of the ribbon men activity in South Kildare. He claimed that William Murphy publican swore in men to take the life of Captain Lefroy. He named them as James Hutchinson, Thomas Ging, Michael Ryder, James Anderson, Daniel Bryan and Terry Neil. He further claimed that a committee calling themselves the Knights of St. Patrick’s met quarterly at Murphy’s public house and that their object was an uprising all over Ireland in 1825. What action the authorities took on foot of this letter is unclear but the successful prosecution of several local men for cattle houghing apparently had a salutary effect on the local ribbon men. The following years gave rise to only sporadic outbursts of ribbon men type activity such as the burning of the Athy residence of the Chief Constable Dolman in 1825 for which two local men, King and Hutchinson were arrested.

World War I refugees in Monaghan

Recent large-scale objections in Dublin to the State’s continuing efforts to accommodate Ukrainian refugees reminded me of similar opposition mounted by many persons in Oughterard a few years ago. That west of Ireland community successfully stopped plans to use a nearby hotel as a refugee centre, even though the hotel had been vacant for several years. I was surprised by their action and by that of the Dubliners, remembering how many communities throughout Ireland acted speedily and with commendable charity to help families who fled their homeland at the start of World War I. I first became aware of the help given to Belgian refugees in 1914 when I lived in Monaghan town in the late 1960s during my time there as town clerk. One of the many roles performed by a town clerk is to manage council housing estates of which there were many in Monaghan at that time, with names honouring noteworthy persons of the past. One housing scheme stood out, simply because its name clearly had no connection with either Irish personages of past importance or the commonly known Monaghan place names. I knew the estate as Belgium Square, but in fact its correct name was Belgian Square. Intrigued as how the name arose I approached Paddy Turley, the long serving editor of the local newspaper ‘The Monaghan Standard’ to be told the full story behind the naming of Belgian Square. A call went out at the start of World War I for Irish local authorities to accommodate Belgian refugees fleeing from German troops advancing into Belgium. One of the many Councils who responded to the call was Monaghan Urban District Council. The Council members hosted a meeting in the local courthouse, following which a Belgium refugee committee was formed. This followed a decision of the Urban Council two years previously to convert the then vacant Monaghan Military Barracks, the former home of the Monaghan Militia, into Council houses or as they were known in those days ‘artisan houses’. In addition to the Barracks conversion the Council also agreed to build 16 three-bedroom cottages on what had been the military barracks parade ground. The cottages were nearing completion in October 1914 when the Belgium refugee crisis arose. In what might be seen as an extraordinary generous act, Monaghan Urban District Council decided to make a number of the newly built cottages available to accommodate refugees. The ‘Northern Standard’ reported as follows:- ‘The party of Belgian refugees allocated to Monaghan arrived here on Friday morning by the 9.50 train from Belfast. News of their coming had got through the town and there was quite a large crowd present at the station, and prominently displayed in the button hole or on the breasts of practically every person were the Belgian colours.’ The local refugee committee provided the families with furniture and food and a collection was later taken up at all churches in Monaghan parish on behalf of the refugees. The Belgian refugees had a very good relationship with the local people in Monaghan, so much so that at an Urban District Council meeting in 1915 the Council members agreed to call the newly called housing scheme ‘Belgium Square’. This is a name I remember, although a wall plaque at the entrance to the square, has the name Belgian Square. Monaghan Urban District Council’s response to the refugee crisis of 1914 was replicated in other parts of Ireland at a time when many young Irish men had enlisted to fight in the war. About 3,000 Belgian refugees came to Ireland in the last months of 1914 where they were accommodated in Workhouses in Ardee, Dunshaughlin, Balrothery and I believe several families found shelter in Naas and Celbridge. The Celbridge Workhouse accommodated 36 Belgian refugees from October 1914 until the spring of the following year when they were transferred to the Workhouse in Dunshaughlin. The refugees accommodated in Monaghan, with one or two exceptions, returned to their homeland at the end of World War I. However, Belgian Square Monaghan was to house up to 20 Catholic families who fled from Belfast during the anti-Catholic riots of the early 1920s. Kildare County Council officials have been engaged in finding accommodation for refugees for the past year and Athy today hosts several individual refugee families. The difficulties faced by these families, uprooted from their homes and separated from their own communities, is difficult to imagine. They can only look to us for help and unlike those communities who had turned their backs on refugees, the people of Athy, will I am sure, welcome the displaced families from Ukraine and other war torn countries into our community. 2022 will shortly pass, leaving behind memories of happy days, but also less happy memories which are an inevitable part of our daily lives. Lets look forward to a new year with a promise of happiness and good health for all. Happy Christmas to all readers of Eye on the Past.

St. Vincent de Paul Society Athy

The local conference of the St. Vincent de Paul Society is the oldest voluntary organisation in Athy. While I don’t have a record of when the Athy conference was founded, I have come across references to it in local newspapers as long ago as 110 years ago. At the start of the last century adults of working age in Athy had limited opportunities for full time or even part time employment. The brickyards, of which there were many in this area, provided mostly summertime work for both men and women. The farmers in this area also provided seasonal employment for agricultural labourers, but there were no jobs available for the majority of the adult males of the town. Families living in the privately rented houses which lined the alleyways of Athy were extremely poor. The houses they occupied were generally two roomed cottages which the Urban District Council of a generation later would demolish under the Slum Clearance Programmes of the 1930s. The then St. Vincent de Paul Society members in Athy provided comfort and financial assistance for the many needy families in the town as the charitable organisation continues to do so to this day. An entry in the minute book of the local Urban District Council for 21st February 1933 can give us some understanding and appreciation of the difficulties facing many Athy families at that time. The minute book reads: ‘A special meeting of Athy Urban District Council was held to meet a deputation from the local St. Vincent de Paul Society to discuss the stress prevailing among the poor of Athy caused by the bad weather. The Vincent de Paul Society was represented by T.J. Brennan, Dan Carbery and Fintan Brennan. It was agreed to set up a Distress Committee consisting of the members of the Urban District Council and representatives of the St. Vincent de Paul Society. The town clerk and Fintan Brennan were appointed secretaries of the committee.’ Last week the local Lions Club held its annual food appeal to help the St. Vincent de Paul Society here in Athy and the generous response of so many was acknowledged by the Lions Club President Brian Dooley. The family needs which the St. Vincent de Paul Society seek to meet can at times seem overwhelming, but the continuous generosity of the local people is of great help to the society. Many thought that the harsh times of the past had gone, but the Ukrainian war and the difficulties created by inflation have created enormous problems for many families within our own community. Families, many of whom never expected to have to call on St. Vincent de Paul Society for help, are now experiencing great financial difficulties. For more than 177 years local conferences of the St. Vincent de Paul Society throughout Ireland have been helping the less fortunate in Irish society. Sad to say their services are needed even more today than ever before. Last year St. Vincent de Paul Societies throughout Ireland gave assistance amounting to almost one hundred million euro to families in need. The escalating cost of rent, food, electricity, and fuel is affecting us all but having a devasting effect on families surviving on inadequate pensions or income. The Mission Statement of the Society of the St. Vincent de Paul shows that it is a Christian voluntary organisation, working with people experiencing poverty and disadvantage. Inspired by their principal founder Frederic Ozanam and their patron St. Vincent de Paul, the Society members seek to respond to calls for help in a non-judgemental and dignified manner. No work of charity is alien to the Society members, but they cannot continue their good work without the contribution of those within our community who are in the position to do so. The Society members are always open to applications from persons in need and they are committed to respecting the dignity of those they assist and fostering self-respect. The Society is also committed to identifying the root causes of poverty and social exclusion and in solidarity with people experiencing poverty and disadvantage, to advocate and work for the changes required to create a more just and caring society. The Lions Club Food Appeal in aid of St. Vincent de Paul has already passed and the collection at church services on Sunday will have taken place before this article appears. However, there is still an opportunity for anybody who was not in a position to contribute to the Lions Club collection or to the church collections to make donations at the St. Vincent de Paul shop in William Street, Athy or to send donations directly to the St. Vincent de Paul headquarters in Dublin, which contributions I understand will be redirected to the local conference here in Athy. Christmas is a terrible time to be poor. With your help the Athy conference of St. Vincent de Paul Society can reach out to the local parents and children in need and help them share in the enjoyment of the Christmas season.

Clonmullin Soccer Club

The local newspapers headlined Clonmullin’s AFC latest victory as ‘Clonmullin’s Magical Treble’, while another newspaper more sedately described the winning of the Senior Division Cup Final as ‘Record for Clonmullin’. The soccer match played in Clane saw the Athy team defeat the Coill Dubh AFC team on the score line of 3 goals to nil. It marked the end of an extraordinary season which saw Clonmullin AFC become the first team in the Kildare Division Football League since the League’s foundation in 1994 to complete the treble of Senior Division League Champions, Lumsden League Cup Champions and by virtue of the win in Clane, Senior Division Cup winners. The Clonmullin Soccer Club, founded in 1995, known locally as ‘The Mull’, has succeeded remarkably well, particularly so in recent years and this year’s treble success marks a new high for the club which had to wait until 10 years ago to have a clubhouse built next to their Clonmullin pitch. The club chairman is Joe Robinson and club secretary/treasurer is Eddie Hennessy, both of whom, with an energetic club committee have overseen the great strides made by Clonmullin AFC in recent years. The current senior team is captained by Michael Lawless who received the Karina Donnelly Cup on behalf of his teammates as winners of the Senior Division Cup Final. His teammates are Keane Cully, Jonathan Fennell, Timmy Doyle, Mark Hughes, Gary Comerford, Lee Doyle, Nathan Robinson, Cody Mulhall, Jodie Dillon and Danny Thompson. Substitutes on the final match day included Nathan Germaine, Lee Day, Evan Phillips, Lee Foley, Corey Moore and Richie Moriarty. The victory was secured by goals scored by Cody Mulhall, Jodie Dillon and Lee Foley who scored the last goal within a minute of his introduction during the closing stages of the match. All of the team members are talented players, but I might be excused if I mention one player who has been the subject of a previous Eye on the Past. Cody Mulhall, grandson of my friend Ber Foley and son of Ber’s daughter Caroline, from an early age displayed a wonderful footballing talent. It’s a talent which he now displays in the Clonmullin team shirt as the team vice-captain and true to form it was Cody’s goal in the 19th minute of the game in Clane which set the Clonmullin team on the way to a historic win. Cody won international caps at U-16, U-16 and U-17 and previously played for Hibernian in the Scottish League, Shamrock Rovers and Longford Town in the Irish Premier League. He has formed a prolific partnership on the Clonmullin team with Jodie Dillon. The longest serving player on the team is Ross Cardiff who has played for Clonmullin for 15 years, while the most decorated player in the history of the Kildare League and Clonmullin’s oldest player is the inspirational Timmy Doyle. Two other players with League of Ireland experience are Mark Hughes and Gary Comerford, both of whom joined the Clonmullin club last year. The management team for the club’s most successful season ever were Brian Kenny, Barry Hughes, Martin Redmond and Derek Brophy. Congratulations to the players, mentors and members of Clonmullin AFC on a wonderful season which has brought them a remarkable and history making success. Congratulations also to the Castlemitchell girls’ minor team which on the same day as the Clonmullin AFC win were victors in their final. The girls team was captained by Erin Brereton Foley, who played for the Kildare County Minor team which won this year’s Leinster championship. Also on the Castlemitchell team was Amy Larn who captained the Kildare County minor team and has been selected for the Ireland’s women 7’s rugby squad. Some weeks ago when writing Eye No. 1557 I drew attention to Dara English, captain of Athy’s U-16 championship winning team and his great grandfather Tommy Buggy who was a member of the Athy Senior Football Championship team of 1937. I did not realise when writing the article that the goalkeeper for the Under 16 team was Rory Chanders whose great great grandfather was the legendary Patrick ‘Cuddy’ Chanders who played in goal for the Athy championship winning teams of 1933 and 1934. Cuddy was also the goalkeeper on the Kildare Senior County team between October 1934 and August 1935. However, he was sensationally dropped for the 1935 All Ireland Final which Kildare lost to Cavan. Cuddy was a substitute on the Kildare team for that All Ireland Final, as was his Athy teammates Jim Fox and Barney Dunne. Athy footballers who played in that final were Tommy Mulhall and Paul Matthews, with Paddy Martin and Patrick Byrne, both from Castledermot. Cuddy was allegedly not selected for the final because it was claimed that the Kildare selectors wanted a collar and tie man for the USA trip which was to follow the expected Kildare victory. Cuddy was restored as the county goalkeeper two months later and featured for the last time in the county colours in 1936. Interestingly it was another Athy man, Johnny McEvoy, who featured as the County Kildare senior goalkeeper between 1937 and 1939. Athy has an enviable history in terms of sporting successes over the years and 2022 has seen Clonmullin AFC, Athy GFC and neighbours Castlemitchell add to that long list of successes.

Joey Carbery and Jeremy Loughman

My reference last week to the absence of community notice boards in Athy prompted a quick response from several readers who like me bemoaned the information vacuum which surrounds many events held in the town. It just wasn’t the need for notice boards which attracted the public’s attention. Many queried why it was so difficult to find out what organisations, clubs, associations and societies existed in the town. It prompted me to think to a time some decades ago when Athy’s Junior Chamber of Commerce published a town directory. Such a publication would today be of immeasurable benefit to the many young families who came to live in Athy in recent years. Unfortunately Athy no longer has a Chamber of Commerce as a result of a regrettable decision some years ago to amalgamate with the County Chamber of Commerce. I wonder if the local Municipal Council would take on the responsibility of employing a person to undertake the task of compiling a much-needed town directory. The past week also saw two former members of Athy’s rugby club win international caps as members of Ireland’s rugby team. This was a unique occurrence and one seldom enjoyed, if ever, by an Irish provincial rugby club. Joey Carbery and Jeremy Loughman are former pupils of Ardscoil na Tríonóide, successors to my old Christian Brothers School of St. John’s Lane. Both attended the Athy’s secondary school at the same time and figured on the same local rugby club team. Their achievements as rugby players give all of us here in Athy further reason to be proud of our town. The Carbery and Loughman family names go back many generations and my older readers particularly will remember Joey’s great grandparents, Joe and Betty Carbery and Jeremy’s grandparents, David and Pauline Loughman. Achievements on the playing field, whether that of Clonmullin AFC or the Athy GFC underage teams, have been noteworthy this year. Great strides have been made over the years by various sporting clubs in Athy to provide facilities for the young people of the town. A few generations ago Athy offered little by way of recreational sporting activities for its young people. These were the same youngsters whom we honoured on Remembrance Sunday as we stood in the shadow of St. Michael’s Medieval Church to honour the memory of the Athy men who died in wars, especially the Great War of 1914-18. When that war ended a substantial part of the town’s younger adult generation had died fighting overseas. 144 men and one woman from Athy have been identified as fatal casualties of the Great War. The ceremony on Remembrance Sunday at which the names of the Athy dead were read aloud brought home to those gathered in St. Michael’s Cemetery the futility of war. It also helped to remind us of the consequential family and wider social problems which inevitably resulted from the loss of fathers, sons, husbands and brothers. How can we imagine did parents, James and Brigid Byrne of 3 Chapel Lane, overcome the loss of three sons in war between April 1915 and March 1916. Their next door neighbours John and Mary Kelly of 4 Chapel Lane also lost three sons in that war between May 1915 and September 1916. They were not the only Athy families to lose three sons in the 1914-18 war, a sad experience suffered by the Curtis family of Quarry Farm and the Doyle/Reilly family of Athy. With a population of less than 4,000 at the start of the war the loss of so many young persons brought hardships which affected some local families for generations thereafter. St. Michael’s Cemetery with its ruined medieval church is perhaps our most honoured and respected reminder of Athy’s past. Woodstock Castle and the White Castle are medieval companions of the cemetery where recent preservation work on the church has been completed. The cemetery holds the remains of seven participants in the Great War and their family members stretching back over several generations. It also holds the remains of various Carbery and Loughman families, including the great grandparents and grandparents I mentioned earlier. The past week has been a time to enjoy and take pride in the achievements of two young men of a generation separated by more than 100 years from an earlier lost generation. Athy is a town where families suffered hardships for many years as a result of deaths on the battlefields of France and Flanders. It is now a town which has recovered and takes pride in the successful sporting careers of Joey Carbery and Jeremy Loughman, while at the same time remembering with pride the young men who did not have the means or the opportunities to enjoy sporting lifes so many years ago.

Athy Tidy Towns Committee

The recently announced Tidy Town competition results for this year show that Athy has made substantial gains in its overall marks and elicited from the adjudicator the welcome comment ‘Athy is blessed with many wonderful amenities’. Our town has been involved in the Tidy Towns competition for the past 24 years and this year’s results, so far as I know, gave us the highest marks achieved to date. It’s a result which reflects the public’s greater awareness of our surroundings and the need to keep our town as litter free as possible. The local Municipal District Council, funded by local businesses and tax payers, has statutory responsibility for street cleaning. Their work in that regard is hugely helped by the activities of the volunteers who make up the local Tidy Towns Committee. That committee, headed up by Ger Kelly, was established the same year Athy first entered the nationwide Tidy Towns competition. The first chairman of the committee was the late Noel Scully and Ger Kelly took over from Noel many years ago. You will have seen the volunteer workers cleaning and tidying different areas of Athy, particularly during the summer months. They usually meet at Emily Square at 6pm on Fridays during the period March to September and sometimes twice a week, before setting off with brushes, shovels and bags to begin their voluntary work on behalf of the local community. The Tidy Towns volunteers are the unsung heroes of our town and are fully deserving of our praise and thanks for the generous and time-consuming role they play in our community. With Ger Kelly are Patricia Berry, Martina Donnelly, Hilary May, Deirdre Germaine, Bill Lawler, Jim Fitzpatrick, Brendan Moloney, Brian Fitzpatrick, Joe Mullaniff and Geraldine Murphy. This year’s Tidy Towns adjudicator was full of praise for Athy’s efforts, but expressed some disappointment at the amount of litter found in the People’s Park. The park, opened sometime in the middle of the 19th century and gifted to the people of Athy by the Duke of Leinster, is endowed with many splendid mature trees. It is a wonderful space on which Kildare County Council, with the assistance of a government grant, recently spent considerable funds to improve footpaths and seating. It is unfortunate that the opportunity was not taken at the same time to supply the children’s playground with suitable fencing so as to deter adults from using the children’s play equipment. I was particularly interested in the adjudicator’s remarks regarding the use of a community notice board in the town. This was a subject I raised in an Eye on the Past earlier this year as I felt there was a pressing need for community notice boards to be provided in the town. There was no immediate response by the Municipal Council to my suggestion, but strangely the one notice board which was located in Emily Square was removed, presumably by the local authority. Since then it has been brought to my attention by several persons that local families are not aware of events in the town and so miss the opportunity of being involved. Maybe the Municipal Councillors, successors to the Urban District Councillors of old, will consider the desirability, indeed the necessity, of providing a community notice board in the centre of the town? Ger Kelly, chairman of the Tidy Towns Committee, tells me that a noticeable worrying trend is the increase in illegal dumping, mainly on the outskirts of the town. In addition, the refuse bins in and around the town are often used by some individuals to dispose of household rubbish. All of this is a direct result of the Council’s decision some years not to provide bin collection services for households as a public utility service. I felt then, and I still do, that Kildare County Council’s decision in that regard was a short sighted one which would lead to the dumping problems we are now experiencing. The adjudicator’s comments in relation to Edmund Rice Square, which I look out on every day, brought home to me that as locals we need to look at our town through visitor’s eyes. The report noted ‘Duke Street car park was disappointing, especially since it is in a gorgeous location, with views of the castle and the river. The planters are too high to be easily watered and managed. They were not being managed and brings a dilapidated look to the area which is a shame.’ Overall the adjudicator’s report was a good report for Athy and ended with the references to the ‘great social capital in Athy’ and the town’s ‘many beautiful aspects such as the river, canal and many heritage buildings.’

World War I and Athy

Next Sunday, November 13th at 3.00pm we will gather in St. Michael’s Cemetery to remember the young men from Athy and district who died in the first World War. It is a commemoration ceremony which was first started over 30 years ago. Those early services were held at a time when public commemoration of our war dead was not a common feature of Irish life. Indeed remembering the Irish men who died fighting in an English uniform on foreign battle fields was not thought appropriate. Clem Roche in his excellent book ‘Athy and District World War I Roll of Honour’ lists 226 men from our town and outlying areas who died in that war. They enlisted for a variety of reasons. Unemployment and poverty provided sufficient reason for many of the young men who enlisted. All of them were encouraged by Athy’s church and civic leaders to enlist and they were treated as heroes as they marched behind the Leinster Street Fife and Drum Band on their way to the local railway station from where many of them travelled to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Barracks in Naas. The soldiers demobbed at the end of the war found that public attitudes had changed dramatically compared to the recruiting days of a few years earlier. The execution of the 1916 Rebellion leaders led that change and it was amplified by the demands for Home Rule and the developing demand for Irish independence. Many decades were to pass before the Irishmen who died in World War I were acknowledged. So many families in south Kildare were affected by the deaths of husbands, fathers, sons and brothers. Indeed the loss of so many young men from a relatively small Irish provincial town created social and family problems which were evident for generations afterwards. The people of Athy have made amends for the decades of silence surrounding the victims of World War I. Clem Roche’s book of Athy war dead was published in 2016 and subsequently a very fine World War I memorial was unveiled in St. Michael’s Cemetery. Further research has revealed the names of Athy men not previously known who died in the 1914-18 war and their names have recently been added to the Athy memorial. The List of Athy’s war World War I dead has now reached 256. Recent generations of Irish people have lived through peaceful times and for many of us it is difficult to appreciate the heartfelt sense of loss endured by wives, parents and children following the death of a loved one. Here in Athy there were accounts of multiple deaths within the same families. Three sons of John and Mary Kelly of 4 Chapel Lane were killed in the war. They were joined in death by the three sons of John and Margaret Curtis of Quarry Farm and the three sons of James and Bridget Byrne of Chapel Lane. How could we measure the sorrow and loss of those families or any of the families who like the Staffords of Butlers Row and the Hannons of Ardreigh House, each of whom suffered the loss of two sons. The deaths of 26-year-old John Coulson Hannon and his 20-year-old brother Norman Leslie were to cause their father John to commit suicide and was largely responsible for the closure of the Hannon Mill shortly thereafter. Yet as I sat in school in the Christian Brothers in St. John’s Lane taking history lessons, I never heard of Athy men’s involvement in the First World War. History lessons in the 1950s ended with the 1916 Rebellion and so an important part of the town’s story was never told. Indeed the families of the dead soldiers felt unable for decades to commemorate their dead or to give public expression to their loss. Thankfully the sacrifices shared by the local families who lost loved ones in war can now be acknowledged. We can take pride in understanding why young men from Athy went to war over 100 years ago. Most of all we can acknowledge the hardships suffered by those men while in the trenches and the hardship and deprivation suffered by the families who lost loved ones in war. The commemoration for Athy men who died in the First World War and in all wars takes place on Sunday next at 3pm in St. Michael’s Cemetery. The next lecture in Athy’s Arts Centre History Series will be given by Kevin Kenny, who will speak of the life and adventures of the Kilkea born polar explorer, Ernest Shackleton. Kevin will give his talk under the title ‘Get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton’. Admission to the lecture, which will take place on Tuesday 15th November at 8pm in the Arts Centre, Woodstock Street is free.

Athy's Under 16 G.A.A. team County Champions 2022

Athy’s young footballers won the under 16 Division A County Championship final last week. The team captain was Dara English, grandson of my much missed friend and former Urban Councillor, Frank English. Dara unlike his grandfather who never featured on a Gaelic football team was good enough to play on the minor winning team which defeated Clane in the Minor A Championship Final the previous week. He played corner back on the minor team and filled the full back position for the Under 16 final. There is footballing blood in the English family veins, for Athy’s 1937 County Championship senior winning team featured Dara’s great grandfather, Tommy in the left corner back position. Tommy Buggy he was called, reared as he was by a family of the same name but in fact he was Tommy English and is shown in the photograph lying in front on the right hand side. I am told that the last time Athy’s under 16’s won the County Championship was 48 years ago. This year has been a very successful footballing year for the underage footballers from Athy Gaelic football club. The mentors for the under 16’s team are Barry Dunne, Colm Byrne and James Eaton who can rejoice in a club success with links stretching back over 85 years ago to what were the glory days of Athy Gaelic Football and a time which saw Athy senior teams win four County Championship finals between 1933 and 1942. Dara English visited his grandfather’s grave following the County final and in the second photograph is shown with the champions cup at Frank’s last resting place. The two photographs showing footballers three generations apart signal the importance of Gaelic games in our family lives and of our shared memories of the past.

Shackleton Autumn School 2022

The October Bank Holiday weekend sees the return to Athy of the SHACKLETON AUTUMN SCHOOL. The Autumn School, now in its 22nd year, returns to an in-person format, after being online for the last two years. There is a growing sense of anticipation that this might be one of the best Autumn Schools ever as there is an appetite for such gatherings post Covid. The programme curated by the Shackleton Autumn School Committee is one of the finest I have seen in many years. It combines lectures, exhibitions, book launches and a documentary showing. Given the rich and diverse programme offered by the Shackleton Autumn School it is difficult to pick out the highlights. There are a few lectures that stand out. Last November I wrote about the visit of Mensun Bound, the Falkland Island born marine archaeologist to Athy to visit the museum. At that time Mensun was preparing to depart for the Antarctic and as head of exploration on a daring mission to locate the wreck of Shackleton’s expedition ship ‘Endurance’. This was Mensun’s second attempt to find the ship after a previous expedition was unsuccessful back in 2019. When the news came through of the discovery of the wreck there was huge excitement worldwide. Few can forget the first images released in the media showing the stern of the ship with the lettering ‘Endurance’. As you can imagine Mensun has become a media star since then and this Thursday sees the launch of his book – ‘The Ship beneath the Ice’ about the discovery of the ship. Athy will be hosting one of his first public lectures since the discovery of the ship and as I understand it tickets are selling out extremely fast. Other lectures which caught my attention include Doug Allan’s on Sunday morning. The Scottish-born Doug Allan has been one of the principal cinematographers on David Attenborough’s wildlife documentaries in the frozen parts of our planet over the last 30 years and has a wealth of experience behind him. His ‘A Life on Thin Ice’ talk will reflect on his adventures in both the Arctic and the Antarctic and it is sure to draw a big crowd for what is going to be a visually spectacular presentation. Other speakers will include Astrid Furholt, the Norwegian woman who was the first woman to follow in the footsteps of Roald Amundsen to the South Pole on foot and Katherine MacInnes who will talk about the lives of the wives of the men lost on Captain Scott’s expedition to the South Pole in 1912. On Friday morning Leaving Certificate art students from the town and Carlow will be able to participate in a masterclass with sculptor Mark Richards who created that hugely evocative statue of Shackleton which has graced the Back Square since 2016. A regular feature of the Autumn School has been the launch of books on Polar topics. The Autumn School is spoiled with two book launches this year. The first is Fergus O’Gorman’s ‘Antarctic Affair’, an account of his time spent in the Antarctic in the late fifties. His book is being published by locally based Harvest Press. That book launch will occur in the Museum that Friday evening and that will be followed by another book launch in O’Brien’s pub where Russell Potter and his fellow authors will launch ‘May we be spared to meet on Earth: letters from the lost Franklin Expedition’. This book focuses on the expedition which disappeared in the Arctic. The participation of Norway in Polar affairs will also be reflected on by Geir Klover, the Director of the Fram Museum from Oslo, perhaps the greatest polar museum in the world, when he takes a look back on the reputation of Norway’s greatest polar explorer, Roald Amundsen 150 years after his birth. Other lectures include Naas man Kevin Kenny’s introduction to Ernest Shackleton and environmentalist Sadbh O’Neill’s reflection on what Ernest Shackleton can teach us about resilience and leadership in the age of climate crisis. Other events will include an Autumn School dinner in the Green Barn at Burtown, a bus tour of Shackleton country led by local writer John MacKenna and myself and the final event of the weekend will be a showing of the wonderful documentary, ‘Shackleton’s Cabin’ which aired on RTE back in May and that will be shown in the Athy Arts Centre on Sunday night at 8pm. The showing will then be followed by a question-and-answer session with Sven Habermann, the conservator who restored Shackleton’s cabin, and also with Shane Brennan, the producer and director of the documentary. There is a little something for everybody in the weekend and I would encourage people in the town to have a look at the brochure which is available on the museum website, www.shackletonmuseum.com as there is bound to be something of interest to every age and background.

Athy's sporting success in 2022

Grandfatherly duties brought me recently to the new pitches recently acquired and developed by Athy Gaelic Football Club. My granddaughter Eva had to be collected following a training session and I was left marvelling at the recent growth of female involvement in Gaelic football. Little did the Athy men of the 1937 championship winning team, whose photograph I am now looking at, imagine that the game nurtured by Michael Cusack and his colleagues would cater for sports loving young females a few generations later. Reportage of sporting activities fill a not inconsiderable number of pages in our daily and weekly newspapers as they bring us news of success and defeats in almost equal measure. For Gaelic football followers with allegiance to Athy Gaelic Football Club, the defeat of the club’s senior players in the County Championship Senior Semi-Final this year was a huge disappointment. Short of its key player, midfielder Kevin Feeley who was side-lined due to injury, the Athy team nevertheless were masters in an error strewn first half which saw them waste a series of good chances playing against their opponents Clane. The team eventually lost the opportunity to face Naas in the County Final to the disappointment of their faithful followers. It was a huge loss for the club members and the team, but football matches in the weeks following brought welcome success for the South Kildare club. There was a double measure of success on the same day in Newbridge when Athy’s minor team won the Minor B final playing St. Conleth’s Park. The early start time of 1.30pm saw the Cathal Kennedy led team defeat their Clane opponents on a score of 2-11 to 1-13. A few hours later, this time in the Hawkfield pitch in Newbridge, the Reserve A Football Final featured Athy and Naas. Playing was Athy’s second senior team and the young Cathal Kennedy, who had earlier won the man of the match award in the minor final, again featured prominently as Athy defeated Naas on penalties after extra time. Athy Gaelic Football Club, after the disappointment of the senior championship defeat, was now county champions at minor and Reserve A level. The club has also reached this year’s Under 14 years final and the Under 16 years final, both of which will be played sometime soon. The club’s successes is an excellent indication of the enthusiasm which marks the club’s football activities. I understand there are no less than three senior teams in the club, with an Under 20 years team, a minor team and various underage teams ranging from Under 16 years down as far as Under 7 years. The club officials include Henry Howard as President, Marty McEvoy as Chairman, James Robinson and Laura Kinahan Joint Secretaries and Tony Foley, Club Treasurer. The club founded, it is believed in 1887, has a proud history which sadly remains unwritten. The development it embarked upon five years ago to add two fully floodlit pitches to its existing Geraldine Park pitch, is now coming to a successful conclusion and promises to afford every possible opportunity to Athy G.F.C. to achieve more success in the future. If Athy Gaelic Football Club was recently achieving much success on the field of play, another local sporting club, Clonmullin Association Football Club, was doing likewise. The soccer club, formed in 1995 by the late Micheal O’Neill, Ger Connell and Micky Roycroft, recently became the KDFL Senior Division champions after defeating Athy AFC on the Clonmullin home pitch. It followed some weeks after the Clonmullin club had lost a three year home winning run when losing in somewhat controversial circumstances to Oliver Bond Celtic. The Clonmullin club’s ground was allocated to the club by Athy Urban District Council and with funding under the Sports Capital Programme a fine clubhouse was built approximately 10 years ago. There are two senior teams in the club, which was presided over for many years by my late Urban Council colleague, Paddy Wright. Indeed, Paddy played an important part in the club’s successful negotiation with the Urban District Council which ultimately resulted in the development of the club’s current soccer pitch in Clonmullin. On December 19, 1922, the largest mass execution during the Civil War took place at the Glass House military prison on the Curragh. Seven members of the Rathbride I.R.A. Column, Patrick Bagnall, Patrick Mangan, Fairgreen Kildare, Joseph Johnston, Station Road, Kildare, Bryan Moore, Patrick Nolan, Rathbride, Stephen White Abbey St, Kildare and James O’Connor, Bansha, Co. Tipperary, who had been captured in a dugout at a farmhouse in Mooresbridge on December 13th were summarily tried and sentenced to death. Their executions, coming only 11 days after the high-profile executions of anti-Treaty leaders Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellows, Richard Barret and Joe McKelvey on December 8th in Mountjoy Prison marked a further escalation in the Free State Government’s execution policy which would ultimately end with 83 official executions by the end of May 1923. This Tuesday, 18th October at 8pm in the Arts Centre on Woodstock Street, Des Dalton will give a talk on the arrest, trial and execution of the Rathbride men during the Civil War. The lecture, which is part of the Autumn/Winter Lecture Series organised by the Arts Centre, is free.

Civil War atrocities in Kerry

I was in Tralee last weekend for the AGM of the Federation of Local History Societies of Ireland. This annual event, held in a different county each year, brings together local history society members from across Ireland, north and south. They are part of the many local history societies whose work is to record local history, thereby helping to make a contribution to our understanding of the past. In this, the centenary of the Civil War, I was interested in visiting again the magnificent monument at Ballyseedy to the anti-Treaty men (IRA) who were killed so savagely on the morning of 7th March 1923 by Free State soldiers. The killings were part of a series which started when anti-Treaty forces laid booby trap bombs in the village of Knocknagoshel which it was later claimed were intended to kill a Free State officer who was allegedly involved in torturing IRA prisoners. The Knocknagoshel bombs resulted in the killing of five Free State soldiers, including the officer who was targeted by the IRA. As Tom Doyle in his book, ‘The Civil War in Kerry’ explained the Knocknagoshel atrocity grew out of a row between neighbours involving a local farmer and some IRA men. It was claimed that the farmer informed on the local IRA, for which he was fined and having refused to pay the fine, the IRA seized some of his cattle. The farmer’s son, soon afterwards, joined the Free State army and it is claimed that in retaliation for what happened to his father he captured a number of local IRA men. The IRA laid mines and had a message sent to the army officer purporting to show where a republican arms dump was located. During a subsequent search the mines exploded, killing the army officer and four other soldiers, while a sixth soldier lost both his legs. The next day, March 7th, Free State soldiers, understood to be members of the Dublin Brigade, seeking revenge for what happened in Knocknagoshel, brought nine prisoners from Tralee to clear a road block at Ballyseedy which the Free Staters had mined. Eight IRA men were blown to pieces, but one man miraculously survived. Later that same day other Dublin Brigade soldiers brought five IRA prisoners to Countess Bridge, an isolated location outside Killarney, to clear another road blockage. This time the prisoners were set to work clearing the road when the Free State soldiers lobbed hand grenades towards them, as well as spraying them with machine gun fire. Four IRA men were killed and as it happened earlier that day in Ballyseedy, one man had a miraculous escape. Five days later Dublin Brigade soldiers collected five IRA prisoners from a workhouse in Caherciveen which was used to house Republican visitors. They were brought a short distance from the workhouse and were all shot in the legs before being placed on a mined barricade which was then exploded. The unfortunate men all died at the scene, the Dublin Brigade soldiers having ensured that unlike Ballyseedy and Countess Bridge there would be no survivors. The atrocities committed during the Civil War came from both sides – the anti-Treaty IRA and the Treaty Free Staters. It was President O’Higgins, who earlier this year called on all of us to remember the sacrifices made by both sides in the conflict with an inclusive commemoration involving an honest recognition of the facts of history. There are some amongst us who will not share an inclusive commemoration as evidenced by the destruction some few years ago of the Knocknagoshel memorial which was attacked and badly damaged. A marble plaque erected at Countess Bridge to the memory of the four IRA men killed in 1923 was torn down a few years after it was erected. The plaque was subsequently replaced, but the deliberate damaging of the memorial was a clear indication that animosities lingered long after the end of the Civil War. There are many monuments throughout the country to participants in the War of Independence and the Civil War. On a previous visit to Banna Strand and the Roger Casement monument located there I took note of a number of memorial crosses on the roadside leading to the strand. Each marked the location where IRA members were killed. Michael Sinnott killed 13th March 1923, James O’Connor killed 13th February 1923, Eugene Fitzgerald killed 16th January 1923, were three such memorials. Local memorials provide a focus for local remembrance and help to keep the story of those commemorated in the public eye. It’s in recording those stories and authenticating the facts surrounding events of the past that local history society members play an important role. On December 19, 1922, the single biggest executions during the Civil War took place at the Glass House military prison on the Curragh. Seven members of the Rathbride Column, Patrick Bagnall, Patrick Mangan, Fairgreen Kildare, Joseph Johnston, Station Road, Kildare, Bryan Moore, Patrick Nolan, Rathbride, Stephen White Abbey St, Kildare and James O’Connor, Bansha, Co. Tipperary, who had been captured in a dugout at a farmhouse in Mooresbridge on December 13th were summarily tried and sentenced to death. Their executions, coming only 11 days after the high-profile executions of anti-Treaty leaders Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellows, Richard Barret and Joe McKelvey on December 8th in Mountjoy Prison marked a further escalation in the Free State Government’s execution policy which would ultimately end with 83 official executions by the end of May 1923. The Rathbride Column was one of a number of Active Service Units (ASUs) set up by the anti-Treaty IRA in Co Kildare. The Column has been active on the northern fringes of the Curragh and had carried out a series of attacks on the rail network. On Tuesday, 18th October at 8pm in the Arts Centre on Woodstock Street, Des Dalton will give a talk on the arrest, trial and execution of the Rathbride men during the Civil War. The lecture, which is part of the Autumn/Winter Lecture Series organised by the Arts Centre, is free.

Culture Night in Athy in 2022

Culture Night has been with us for several years. It is the one night of the Irish year we are encouraged to celebrate the richness and diversity of our shared cultures. Organised on a local basis and coordinated at county level, the different events of culture night provided a unique opportunity to sample and to begin to appreciate the works of talented people amongst us. I was understandably committed to attending the official launch of the Shackleton mural painted on the side wall of Quinn’s office next to the Town Hall. The Norwegian Ambassador to Ireland Skari Nare did the honours on Friday night. The mural painted by the UK artist Eloise Gillow is a magnificent piece of artistic work and brings together the Kilkea-born explorer and the Norwegian Explorer Amundsen whose reference to Shackleton is displayed on the wall next to Shackleton’s portrait. Immediately afterwards, I visited the photographic exhibition housed in the Courthouse arcade. This exhibition was Athy Photographic Club’s contribution to culture night and it attracted an interested and appreciative audience throughout the evening. The work of the photographic club members past and present over the years has captured on film local persons, local events and local scenes which will be treasured as the years go by. They are compiling a social history in visual form and their work will, I hope, be suitably archived so that future generations can understand and appreciate the people and the times which have gone before. Later in the evening I paid a visit to Bradbury’s restaurant where Colm Walsh had arranged a celebration of the life and work of Athy born Chris Neil. An internationally renowned record producer, Chris was born at No. 5 Lower St. Joseph’s Terrace from where his family emigrated to Manchester. The night took the format of a public interview conducted by Chris McKenna and performances of Chris Neil’s more famous works by local artists. Carmel Day was the musical director on the night. Maureen Moran, Steve Nicolls, Levi Maher, Chris Swayne, Justin Kelly, Carmel Day, CarolAnne Haskins, Shane Sullivan and the beautiful Noise Choir all performed. Later that evening a ‘Made of Athy’ plaque was unveiled by Chris outside O’Brien’s pub in Emily Square. The Castlemitchell Community Hall was the venue for the Moneen Players presentation of Dylan Thomas’s radio drama ‘Under Milkwood’. The players are associates of Athy Musical and Dramatic Society and sixteen of them were on stage as they voiced with the help of two narrators the thoughts and dreams of the inhabitants of a small Welsh fishing village. It was a commendable performance by all involved under the direction of David Walsh whose father Tommy, I as a young lad, had the opportunity of watching on stage on several occasions during Social Club Players performances in the Social Club in St. John’s Lane and the Town Hall. One of the most engaging performances was on the Saturday morning after Culture Night when actors from Kill and further afield with the assistance of re-enactors from Monasterevin enacted the trial of the County Kildare patriot John Devoy. Scripted by Brian McCabe, the Fenian Devoy was arrested and brought to the courtroom on the fourth floor of Lawlor’s Hotel in Naas. The trial took place in a courtroom which had been removed from a disused Courthouse in Wales and re-assembled in Naas. The audience sat facing the Judge and enjoyed the performance which allowed us a glimpse of the Devoy family story which started at the Heath just outside Athy before Devoy family members moved to Kill in the early part of the 19th Century. The play and its setting provided an unusual and a most enjoyable morning for audience and performers alike. The next day I attended the unveiling of the ‘Squires’ Gannon statue in Kildare’s Town Square. Kildare won its last All Ireland Championship final in 1928, the first year the Sam Maguire Cup was presented to the winning team captain. Crafted by the master artist, Mark Richards, the statute was commissioned by Kildare County Council. The Council was also responsible for commissioning a few years ago the statue of the Polar explorer, Ernest Shackleton, executed by Mark Richards, which stands in Emily Square. The unveiling ceremony was quite an impressive and enjoyable affair and the booklet handed out to everyone attending was a real bonus. There were no Athy players on the 1928 team but the 1935 Kildare All Ireland final team was captained by Athy player Paul Matthews who lined out with club colleague, Tommy Mulhall and Castledermot players Paddy Martin and Paddy Byrne. They should also have had Patrick (Cuddy) Chanders of Athy playing in goals during that final. Kildare lost that day to Cavan and we still wait for an Athy Club player to win an All-Ireland Senior Championship medal on the field of play. The events of Culture Night and the days immediately afterwards afforded a wonderful opportunity of acknowledging the contribution made by so may to the cultural life of our towns and villages. I wonder if its not now time to extend the single cultural night to become a cultural week allowing events to be spread over seven days. This would have the benefit of allowing greater participation at events which is not possible when so many events are scheduled for one night as in Athy last Friday.

The Conservation of the remains of St. Michael's Medieval Cemetery

It is wonderful to see the long overdue work on the medieval church in St. Michael’s Cemetery which started some weeks ago. Revamp Conservation are the contractors and as historical building specialists they have been engaged by Kildare County Council to preserve this important medieval building. What faces the workmen here in St. Michaels is a 13th century church building which has been in ruins for centuries but which with the White Castle and Woodstock Castle form a trio of priceless medieval buildings. The late John Bradley with Andrew Halpin and Heather King carried out an Urban Archaeological Survey throughout the county of Kildare at the request of the Office of Public Works in the 1980s and writing of St. Michael’s Church noted, ‘The Church of St. Michaels was in existence by 1297, although there was no indication that it had the status of a parish church at that time.’ There are different views expressed by historians as to when and how parishes were established in Ireland. Some claim that they evolved in the second half of the 12th century and throughout much of the 13th century when Dioceses were established following the Synod of Rath Breasail in 1111 and the Synod of Kells 41 years later. Prior to those Synods the Gaelic Church was based on a monastic system of organisation and was in a somewhat distant communion with Rome. We do know that the introduction into Ireland from abroad by the Anglo-Norman settlers of religious orders such as the Crouched Friars and the Dominicans gave the new settlement on the river Barrow ford two monasteries. Located on opposite banks of the river Barrow the Friars served the religious needs of the Catholic French speaking settlers. The Gaelic speaking Irish natives who were part of an Irish church were I surmise not catered for by the local monasteries. There had been no urban settlement and no church in the area prior to the arrival of the Anglo Normans following the issuing of a papal approval to Henry II of England to conquer Ireland. St. Michael’s Church was built outside the newly created village of Athy some distance from the village which was centred around the Anglo-Norman fortification of Woodstock. John Bradley and his colleagues claimed that ‘Athy is unusual as an Anglo-Norman town, having its parish church located outside the wall.’ In referring to St. Michael’s Church as ‘a parish church’ the archaeologists appear to have overlooked their earlier claim that it did not appear to have the status of a parish church. My own belief is that the native Gaelic speaking Catholic Irish who came to serve the Anglo Norman Lord of Woodstock Manor, built or had built for themselves St. Michael’s, while the two monasteries catered exclusively for the Anglo-Norman settlers. Was St. Michaels’ Church ever Athy’s parish church? Further research is required to answer this question but it seems reasonable to assume that it was at some stage. The Crouched Friars abandoned their monastery prior to the Reformation and the Dominicans were expelled from their extensive monastery in 1539. Catholic monasteries were seized and assigned in many cases to private individuals but humble Catholic churches such as St. Michaels would have held no interest for Henry VIII so would have continued to be used as a Catholic church. The church was described as being in good repair in 1615 and 1630 but in 1657 the Kildare inquisition found the church ‘to be out of repair’. Subscriptions for repairing the church were collected in 1677 and it may be assumed that St. Michael’s continued to be used for several years thereafter. Everything changed in the post 1691 years with the enactment of the penal laws. Churches were closed and undoubtedly fell into disuse and St. Michael’s Church was thereafter vacant as the local Anglican community built their own church in the back square in and around 1682. We can safely say that during the early years of the penal laws the small church of St. Michael’s was not in use. As local enforcement of the penal laws relaxed during the latter part of the 18th century a limited and discreet practice of the Catholic religion commenced. In a report of the State of Popery in 1731 it was recorded Athy had one mass house with two priests and no popish school. The mass house, as the Catholic church was called, had been built at some stage during the reign of George I between 1714 and 1729. This I believe was the thatched church located in Chapel Lane in what is now a car park. It was destroyed as a result of an arson attack following the 1798 rebellion for which the Parish Priest, Fr. Maurice Keegan, sought and obtained compensation to help finance the building of a new parish church. That was the parish church local people attended up to 1960. The ruined church of St. Michael’s lies within the graveyard of St. Michaels. It’s a plain rectangular building constructed of uncoursed mixed rubble. Internally there is no evidence of a division between nave and chancel. The building deteriorated over the centuries and regrettably few of its original features have survived. Nevertheless, the building’s history shows it to be an important part of Athy’s story. St. Michael’s is worthy of preservation, as indeed are its medieval contemporaries Woodstock Castle and the White Castle. As I write this I am not aware when the work will be completed but wouldn’t it be wonderful if on completion mass could be celebrated in the medieval church of St. Michael’s for perhaps the first time in almost 300 years.

Crime in Athy

Athy’s transition from village to town status was marked by the construction of the town hall building. Its exact date of construction is not known, but it is believed to have been in the 1720s. Around that same time a cavalry barracks was built on the north west outskirts of the town which allowed the White Castle to be thereafter used as a town jail. This was a time when under the Penal code many offences were punishable by death or transportation. Theft of as little as a loaf of bread resulted on conviction to the imposition of the death penalty. This was a situation which prevailed until Robert Peel introduced a series of reforms between 1823 and 1830 which abolished the death penalty for over 180 crimes. The death penalty was still carried out in Athy for murder and other serious crimes using the gallows sited on the approach road from Dublin in the area now known as Gallowshill. One convict who escaped the gallows was James Carr who at Athy assizes in September 1779 was sentenced to death for ‘carrying away Judith Mitchell against her consent, with an intent that she should marry Thomas Condron and also having assisted the said Thomas Condron in ravishing the said Judith Mitchell.’ A Proclamation issued on 30th September 1779 offered a reward for the apprehension of the rescuers of James Carr who had attacked the sub sheriff and bailiffs and other peace officers as they transported Carr to the place of execution. It recounted how ‘a great number of persons concealed themselves behind the wall that bordered the road leading to the place of execution and from there made a violent assault upon the sheriff and the persons who so accompanied him and forcibly cut the ropes by which the said James Carr was pinioned and let him at liberty.’ Many persons who attended the planned public execution of Carr were struck by stones thrown by Carr’s supporters and the man who was to act as executioner died of injuries he received that day. The White Castle jail was to house many prisoners facing execution or transportation during its times as a prison. Housed in a medieval castle the building was understandably not fit for use as a prison and indeed Athy jail was condemned by prison inspectors on several occasions who in 1824 reported that it was ‘without exception the worst county jail in point of accommodation, having neither yards, pumps, hospital, chapel or proper day rooms.’ Responsibilities for the maintenance of the jail rested with the Grand Jury of the county which was made up of 23 members of the landed gentry, all selected by the High Sheriff of Kildare. The Grand Jury system was inefficient, but it was not until 1877 that the Grand Jury’s functions in relation to jails was taken over by central authorities. In the early decades of the 19th century there was a ground swell of support for penal reform following the Jail Act of 1823 which removed many of the worst abuses in the English prison system. The Duke of Leinster’s interest in penal reform saw him donate a site on the Carlow road in Athy for the building of a new jail. John Hargrove, architect, was engaged by the County Kildare Grand Jury to design the new prison and he prepared plans for a small polygonal building which was constructed of local limestone at a cost of €5,400 between 1826 and 1830. The Duke of Leinster in addition to donating the site also contributed the sum of €1,700 towards the building costs and he laid the first stone of the new jail on 20th June 1826. When opened in 1830 the new prison consisted of 30 cells in a semi-circular form, with five yards and five day rooms and a Governor’s house in the middle. While the prison was built to accommodate 30 prisoners, the average prison numbers in 1852 was 48. Amongst those imprisoned were men and women convicted at Athy Assizes and sentenced to transportation in Van Diemen’s land. At the Quarter Sessions in Athy in June 1850 nine persons were sentenced to 10 years transportation, with three persons sentenced to seven years transportation. Amongst the latter was Margaret Gambion who was convicted of cabbage stealing. The first convict ship to leave Ireland sailed from Cork in April 1791 carrying 175 men and 25 women to New South Wales. Amongst them were several prisoners convicted at assizes in county Kildare. Four years later they were joined in New South Wales by amongst others three men who were convicted at Athy assizes of the murder of John Hill and Michael Hill. James Connors, John Murray and John Meagher were sentenced to transportation for life and spent several months in Athy jail following their convictions in 1794 until joining the convict ship ‘Marquis of Cornwallis’ in Cork on 9th August 1795. The ship was 186 days at sea before arriving at Port Jackson Australia. Athy’s new jail was closed in 1859 and the prisoners transferred to the newly extended jail in Naas. Transportation to Australia which started in 1787 following the cessation of transportation to America, finished with the arrival of the last convict ship, ‘the Hougoumont’, carrying 63 Irish political prisoners including John Boyle O’Reilly in Freemantle on 9th January 1868. We do not know how many men and women sentenced at Athy Courts were transported between 1791 and 1868. The White Castle, the former medieval stronghold, later a prison, and following that a police station, reminds us of a dark and sad history which may never be fully recovered.

Planned Redevelopment of Athy's Shackleton Museum

During the early days of my research into the history of Athy I spent many hours in the main reading room of the National Library in Kildare Street Dublin. This is an impressive horseshoe shaped room with a domed structure almost 50 feet high. During the time I spent there in the 1970s it provided a wonderful setting for my never-ending research into the history of Athy. The National Library is a fantastic resource and its archives provided me with many new insights into the town’s history and shed light on forgotten aspects of its earlier years. I imagine that the numbers of members of the general public who frequent similar research rooms have fallen over the years. In most of our pockets is a smart phone which gives us instant access to data all around the world. Nevertheless the research rooms of national and county libraries still fulfil an important function. They are the access point for knowledge and information which is not necessarily readily available on the internet. Not every document or book is available online and national and local research centres play an important role in preserving our nation’s history. Many years ago on the founding of the Athy Museum Society and with the support of the late Bertie Doyle, Pat Mulhall and many others the Museum Society had planned to establish an Athy town archive which would comprise both the administrative records of Athy Urban District Council, local clubs and the commercial records of local businesses. Unfortunately this proved to be beyond the capabilities of the Museum Society. I was reflecting on this recently when I was depositing with the archive section of the Kildare County Council library some business records and remaining records of Athy’s Workhouse. Although not complete those records constitute an important amount of local historical material that will in time warrant some significant research. Something to consider in tandem with the records of deaths in Athy’s Workhouse recently compiled by Clem Roche and Michael Donovan. The planned redevelopment of the Shackleton Museum in Athy will see the establishment of a research room and reading library. The purpose is to provide an area to facilitate both study and research of all aspects of life and endeavour in the polar regions with particular focus on the Antarctic. Because the Antarctic continent was uninhabited until the establishment of permanent research stations in the early twentieth century, the corpus of Antarctic literature is quite small. That has encouraged the Directors of the Shackleton Museum to proceed with its plan to establish a research library and archive in in the redeveloped museum. These plans have been greatly assisted by the generosity of two Antarctic veterans. Fergus O’Gorman from Dublin who over-wintered in the Antarctica in the late 1950’s with the British Antarctic Survey generously donated hundreds of his polar books to the museum two years ago. Following on from that generous bequest the museum has entered into partnership with the publishers Harvest Press to publish Fergus’s memoirs of his time in the Antarctic and that publication will be launched at the Shackleton Autumn School on the night of October the 28th. Another generous bequest which will add immeasurably to the Museum’s research library and archive came from the U.K based naturalist and writer Robert Burton who sadly passed away at the start of this year. Robert or Bob as we knew him was a regular attendee of the Shackleton Autumn School and was a prolific lecturer to the Autumn School and a contributor of articles to its journal, Nimrod. Bob was an expert on all matters Antarctic and his meticulous research is reflected in the library of books which will find their way to Athy at the end of the Summer. Combined with Fergus O’Gorman’s they will form a body of almost one thousand volumes focused on the Antarctic regions. The museum itself has been assiduous in collecting original archival material that is pertinent to the Antarctic regions and amongst its treasures are diaries belonging to Emily Shackleton, the wife of Ernest Shackleton. The museum remains active in collecting such material and when the archive/library opens for researchers in 2024 there will be a wealth of Antarctic material available, for the first time, to researchers in this country. It is heartening to think that a small town like Athy can become in the near future a destination for researchers and academics from all over the world.

My favourite sports stories

Looking back over the years I find that sport of all kinds has provided me with wonderful memories which I have been able to revisit time after time. With these memories are reminders of the great sportsmen who brought excitement into many lives. My own memories of sporting heroes started with my namesakes Pat and Toss Taaffe, two brothers who graced the horse racing world of the 1950s and later. Pat Taaffe was a champion jockey, whose wins in the big races brought headlines which I was delighted to see whenever I came home from school at lunchtime. The Irish Independent was the family paper then and the name Taaffe was often headlined in the sporting pages with accounts of Pat Taaffe’s successes. Maybe there was an assumed reflected glory in my sharing a surname with the great jockey in much the same way when as a young school lad I was enamoured of Raftery the poet, one of whose poems offered the lines, ‘Saol fada ag Frank Taaffe agus na Loinsigh ann.’ Recently thinking of the great sports stars whom I admired over the years I wondered if in retirement they are conscious of the part their sporting careers played in creating never to be forgotten precious memories for the general public. For my part my first enduring sports star was the great Kerry footballer Mick O’Connell. In a footballing career which spanned the 1950s to the 1970s the Valentia islander won 4 All Ireland football medals and captained Kerry in the 1959 final. He was one of the greatest exponents of Gaelic football as we knew it before it was transformed into the basketballing game of today. Next to Mick O’Connell and of the same vintage was another great sporting hero of mine, hurling legend Eddie Keher. Eddie’s father was a Garda, as was my father, and the fact that I was born in County Kilkenny allowed me to cheer for Eddie and the Kilkenny team on hurling days and for Kildare in that county’s quest for footballing glory. Eddie was one of the most prolific scorers in hurling during the 1960s and late into the 1970s. Kildare’s success on the football field never matched that of Kilkenny’s in the hurling arena so I have collected more great hurling memories than football memories over the years. At the same time I have added to my hurling heroes with D.J. Carey, Tommy Walsh and J.J. Delaney, all of Kilkenny joining Eddie Keher as my hurling legends. While Kildare footballers did not meet with much success over recent decades, nevertheless several Kildare County players were footballing heroes of mine. Pa Connolly, Pat Mangan, Kieran O’Malley and three Athy players, Danny Flood, Brendan Kehoe and Mick Carolan were my youthful footballing heroes. Another favourite Kildare County player was Seamie Harrison of Monasterevin whom I admired for his not to be forgotten display in the 1956 Leinster Final. These players were just a few years older than myself but at a very young age those few years were sufficient to create an almost generational gap. They were excellent footballers whose names evoked wonder and excitement amongst many young followers of Gaelic football in County Kildare including myself in the 1950s and later. Apart from hurling and Gaelic football my other great sporting hero is Ronnie Delaney who won the gold medal in the 1500 metres Olympic final in Melbourne in December 1956. I had watched him training over the sand dunes in Arklow some time earlier when the Taaffe family was on holidays in Ferrybank, Arklow. Ronnie Delaney was Ireland’s first four-minute miler and an Olympian champion at a time when Irish field sports were not as prominent as they are today. As younger generation grows older the sporting heroes of the past slip from memory. I was reminded of this when reading of the athletic successes of Ballyroe native Paddy Moran who died in May 1970 aged 82 years. Paddy was a champion runner who won a large number of races organised by the GAA and other sporting bodies between 1911 and 1920. He was a Leinster champion over two miles, one mile and a half mile for different years during the second decade of the last century. His athletic colleague, a local man Dan Harkins, who for some unexplained reason raced under the name of F. Daniels, was 440 yards champion of Ireland for a number of years. Thanks to Paddy Moran’s daughters, Kathleen and Bridget, I have been able to research some parts of their father’s running career, but more research needs to be done. The sporting world saw both Kathleen and Bridget feature on camogie teams playing for County Kildare and Leinster province as members of St. Anne’s camogie club in Ballyroe long after their father had retired from athletics. I would welcome any information on Paddy Moran, Greg Bradley and Dan Harkins who were well known athletes from South Kildare during the early years of the 1900s.

Fr. Philip Dennehy

Fr. Philip is dead. The news of the passing of the Pastor Emeritus passed quickly through St. Michael’s parish. There was sadness at the passing of a much loved priest who had lived among the parishioners of the south Kildare parish for all but 20 years of his 67 year long priesthood. Fr. Philip was first appointed curate of St. Michael’s in 1955, eight years after his ordination and after having spent some years a chaplain in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Dun Laoghaire and in St. Mary’s Hospital, Phoenix Park, as well as six years as curate in East Wall and later in Valleymount. I first met the then young Fr. Dennehy when following the road accident which resulted in the death of my 21-year-old brother Seamus he called to No. 5 Offaly Street to comfort my parents. Philip Dennehy, born on 27th March 1931 in Middleton, Co. Cork, the son of a Garda, was to live in a number of Irish towns as he grew up, each new address marking another step in his father’s advancement up the ranks of the Garda Siochana. At the age of two he moved to Tramore, later to Limerick City and finally to Roscommon. Philip Dennehy, who had six sisters and one brother, attended the Christian Brothers Schools in Tramore and Limerick, ending his secondary schooling in St. Brendan’s College, Killarney. Both his parents were born in Co. Kerry and as he once told me his County allegiance was somewhat difficult given his almost nomadic early lifestyle. However, he acknowledged a sneaky regard for his County Kerry ancestry, the County where both of his parents were born and where the vast majority of his relations came from. It was as a schoolboy in Roscommon where his father was a Garda Chief Superintendent that his priestly vocation first emerged. After finishing his Leaving Certificate in St. Brendan’s College in 1948 he entered the seminary of Clonliffe College in Dublin. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University College of Dublin before transferring to Maynooth College where he was ordained on 4th June 1955. Fr. Dennehy first arrived in Athy as a young curate in 1963 to join the clergy team lead by Parish Priest Rev. Vincent Steen, which team included Fr. Frank Mitchell C.C. and Fr. Joe Corbett C.C. He participated in the ceremonies on 19th April 1964 when the Archbishop of Dublin John McQuaid blessed and dedicated the new Parish Church to St. Michael. Fr. Dennehy remained as a curate in Athy for ten years before transferring in 1973 to James’s Street, Dublin from where he moved to Corduff five years later. In 1979 he was appointed administrator of Mountview and a year later appointed Parish Priest of the same parish where he remained for five years before coming to Athy as Parish Priest in 1985. Ten years later I wrote of Fr. Dennehy on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of his ordination:- ‘Sunday is the most important day in the weekly calendar for all Christians. For a clergyman it assumes perhaps even greater significance when viewed as an opportunity to address his congregation other than on an individual basis. However, the average sermon or homily can sometimes seem strained and perhaps even less than relevant in the context of the modern world but never when the words are those of the man who is the subject of today’s article. Fr. Philip Dennehy, Parish Priest of Athy, has a most eloquent if sometimes understated way of putting his thoughts before his parishioners. The obvious attention and care which goes into the preparation of his homilies is reflected in the meaningful words designed to help his congregation to come closer to God.’ On Saturday 4th June 2005 the parishioners of St. Michael’s came together to celebrate with Fr. Dennehy the 50th anniversary of his ordination with Mass in the Parish Church, followed by a reception at the G.A.A. centre at Geraldine Park. He retired as Parish Priest in 2006 and was then appointed Pastor Emeritus of St. Michael’s Parish. As a clergy man who took things at face value Fr. Dennehy refused to delve too deeply into people’s motives, always prepared to assume the best of intentions for every act, charitable or otherwise. Conscious of the excessively strong role of the old-style Parish Priest of another era, Fr. Dennehy always adopted an easy-going attitude in his contacts with members of his congregation. Recognising the important role of the laity he sought to motivate people within the Parish to do what they can for themselves. His common sense approach in all things underscored his belief that as a Parish Priest he was not an authority on everything. To him so called experts were suspect, common sense being the most useful tool in dealing with most situations. Fr. Dennehy’s time in Athy was marked with many happy events, many achievements and inevitably some sad occasions. Above all as a Pastor he shared the joys and burdens of his parishioners at all times expressing in action the words of the Gospel he preached every Sunday. Fr. Philip Dennehy, who died on 31st January 2022, was buried in Ballygunner, Co. Waterford with his parents following requiem mass in St. Michael’s Parish Church, Athy at 11am on 3rd February 2022.

Athy miscellaneous notes

Athy’s economic lifeline in the early years of the 19th century were its fairs and markets. The weekly markets were of particular commercial importance at a time when the majority of the townspeople lived in primitive housing conditions, created by private landlords in newly built one and two roomed cottages in lanes and alleyways named after the landlords in question. There was also to be found in Athy and the surrounding districts a class to whom the pangs of hunger were as alien as the Gaelic of the native Irish was to the absentee landlords of the time. Apart from the dispensary system established in Athy in 1818 little appears to have been done by the civil authorities or the local gentry to relieve the stress and poverty amongst the people of Athy. An unidentified correspondent in the Athy Literary Magazine of March 1838 castigated ‘the spiritless and inert beings that form the more elevated circle here in Athy’ whom it was claimed ‘should be active in conceiving measures for ‘….. adopting useful schemes for the improvement and comfort of the distressed and hardworking poor ….. there is not a town in Ireland so completely neglected.’ That same year the British Parliament passed the Irish Poor Relief Act which led to the setting up of Boards of Guardians throughout Ireland and the opening of workhouses. The first stone at Athy’s Workhouse was laid on 5th July 1841. Built and equipped at a cost of £7,000 Athy’s Workhouse, designed by the English architect George Wilkinson, was intended to be of ‘the cheapest description compatible with durability with all mere decoration being studiously excluded.’ It was built to accommodate 360 adults and 240 children, but during the years of the Great Famine the number of inmates in the Workhouse far exceeded those numbers. Throughout its long life the Workhouse building was managed by a variety of bodies, starting with the Board of Guardians in 1844. Later in the early years of the newly established Irish Free State the Workhouse, now called the ‘County Home’, came under the control of Kildare County Council as the authority responsible for the provision of health services in the county of Kildare. Kildare County Council were later replaced by the Eastern Health Board and now the Health Service Executive, is the body responsible for Ireland’s health services, including St. Vincent’s Hospital, which was previously the Workhouse and later the County Home. From the early years of Athy’s Workhouse the cemetery where the Workhouse dead were buried was under the control and management of the Board of Guardians and subsequently that of Kildare County Council. I was therefore surprised to read in last week’s Kildare Nationalist under the headline ‘ownership of Athy’s cemetery still yet to be established’ the following report, ‘Local Councillors have been told its probably safe to assume that no memorial could be installed in St. Mary’s Cemetery Athy until ownership is established.’ What a ridiculous excuse to offer in response to requests made almost two years ago for Kildare County Council to erect a memorial in the old Workhouse cemetery to the dead of the Great Famine and the many unfortunate people who died in the Workhouse and the County Home. The Council has agreed to provide funding for the memorial which I had hoped would have been in place in time for this year’s National Famine Remembrance ceremony held last May. It is clear that ownership of the cemetery passed from the Board of Guardians to Kildare County Council in the early 1920s and while title documents confirming this are apparently not available, the title of the HSE and its predecessors cannot be challenged. I cannot understand why the Council is unable to proceed with the memorial project. After all it is not intended to erect an office block in the cemetery, its merely a memorial to the dead who lie in that same cemetery. The erection of the memorial will never give rise to legal issues in relation to ownership or entitlement. All that is required is for the HSE to confirm to Kildare County Council that it has no objection to the erection of the memorial. In anticipation of the memorial being erected Clem Roche and Michael Donovan have compiled a listing of all those who died in the Workhouse and in the Fever Hospital in the years to 1921. They have identified 3,891 persons by name, address and occupation, as well as the cause of death in each case. Theirs was a mammoth voluntary undertaking which is deserving of recognition, and I hope Kildare County Council will press ahead with the memorial project in time to have it in place for the National Famine Remembrance ceremony in May of next year.

1909 in Athy

The All Ireland hurling final Sunday found me in the unusual setting of a Cork city household as I sat down to watch the 2022 senior hurling final between Kilkenny and Limerick. Both the setting of my viewing (in rebel territory) and the date of the final perhaps made me a little unsettled, but not as unsettled as the result left me after an enthralling final. There has been some debate in the media about the bringing forward of the date of the hurling final in the sense that the summer has been truncated without the usual August visit to Croke Park. However, delving into the history of All Irelands it was not unusual to find the senior hurling final played at unusual times of the year. The agricultural grounds in Geraldine Park Athy hosted on 27th June 1909 a replay of the All Ireland senior hurling final between Dublin and Tipperary. Athy was selected as the location for the replay as one of the few grounds in Leinster that was fenced at the time and it hosted a crowd of almost 7,000 people. Another reason why the venue was chosen was that Dublin had refused to play either in Thurles or Kilkenny city, while Tipperary were amenable to play at either venue and thus Athy was the compromise choice. Tipperary won the game comfortably by 3-15 to 1-5, but although the final was held in 1909, it actually was the 1908 championship. At the previous instalment of the final which had been held in Croke Park on 25th April, the score ended up Tipperary 2-5 and Dublin 1-8. A journalist reporting on the match described Athy as a ‘cosy town’ and that ‘The ground under the Agricultural Society was also in perfect order with the sod as lively as the most fastidious hurler could wish’. It led me on to reflect as to what a visitor to Athy would have found here in 1909 and what some of the personalities from the town were doing at the same time. The Post Office in Duke Street which is such a fundamental part of our streetscape was under construction in 1909. It was not without controversy when it was revealed that the building contractor engaged to build the Post Office was using Tullamore brick in its initial stages rather than the Athy brick, readily available from the brickyards just outside Athy. Following representations from Athy Urban District Council the postal authorities agreed that only Athy brick would be used thereafter in the building. In that same year the Church of Ireland parochial hall on Church Road was also constructed, designed by the architect Speirs & Co. of Glasgow. Athy Ladies Hurling Club was noted as organising a reunion on 20th July, while a Miss Campbell was listed as Club Captain and a Miss Tierney as Secretary. Older readers will remember the Athy Social Club Players who put on many plays in the Town Hall and the Social Club in St. John’s Lane in the 1940s and 1950s. Their 1951 production was Lennox Robinson’s play, ‘The White Headed Boy’. In 1909 Lennox Robinson had staged his first play in the Abbey Theatre in Dublin following on from which the poet W.B. Yeats offered the inexperienced Robinson the post of manager of the theatre. In Dublin, in November the Kilkea born explorer, Ernest Shackleton, could be found giving a lecture at the National University about his recent exploits in the Antarctic and his dash to reach the South Pole. 1909 was also the year that John Vincent Holland, a former pupil of Clongowes Wood College, after studying veterinary medicine for three years, left Athy to try his fortune in South America where at various times he worked as a rancher and on the railways. Of course he later returned to Athy in 1914, joined the British Army and was awarded a Victoria Cross for his exploits in the Somme campaign of 1916. Another Athy man, slightly younger than John Vincent Holland, was Sydney Minch who while John Vincent Holland was heading across the Atlantic, Minch was making the shorter journey to Clongowes Wood College for the first of his three years of study there. Like Holland he would join the British Army in the Great War, serving with the Connaught Rangers and fighting at the 3rd Battle of Ypres. Returning from the war he took an active role in public life, serving as a Cumann na nGael T.D. from 1930 to 1938, as well as being a member of Athy Urban District Council and Chairman of the Athy branch of the British Legion. Although the defeat of Kilkenny in this year’s All Ireland senior hurling final was a huge disappointment to myself and many others, I can comfort myself with the knowledge that in the 1909 All Ireland senior hurling championship final held in Cork Athletic Grounds, Mooncoin, representing Kilkenny, overcame the club side Thurles, representing Tipperary, with the score of 4-6 to 0-12. This was Tipperary’s first defeat in an All Ireland final and Kilkenny’s fourth victory. Thankfully there have been many Kilkenny successes since then and undoubtedly more to come!

Military activity in and around Athy 1642

News of military activity in and around Athy in April 1642 just months after the start of the Rising in Ulster was the subject of a pamphlet published in London later that same year. The pamphlet of 13 pages, printed by G. Miller for W. Bladen, recorded how the English army set out from Dublin on 2nd April comprising 3,000 foot soldiers and 500 cavalry, all under the command of the Lord Lieutenant General, the Earl of Ormond. On the next day the army marched to Naas entering about 3 miles into County Wicklow ‘burning houses and killing such rebels as they found straggling on the way.’ Having been shot at by rebels in the Castle of Tipper, the soldiers blew up the castle, killing 8 rebels. On April 4th, having burned down some houses in Naas, the English army marched to Kilcullen ‘killing and hanging rebels and burning houses on the way.’ The next day the army set out for Athy, camping overnight near Ballyshannon Castle. This was the home of Colonel Fitzgerald, who was regarded as a rebel, and where it was believed a rebel army of 500 men were in occupation. The English troops having no battering rams left the area for Athy without attacking the castle. On the road to Athy the English army continued to burn houses and kill rebels. They found the greater part of Athy ‘all burned by the Protestants the day before to prevent the rebels, who in great multitudes had entered in and were about to fire the castle/church, and other places, wherein the Protestants to the number of 300 besides children were preserved.’ Sir John Bowen of Ballyadams Castle came to Athy to greet the English army but being suspected of disloyalty was imprisoned. That same day the army marched to Ballyadams Castle where it was claimed Bowen’s wife entertained the officers ‘liberally with ale and cakes,’ but despite this the army on returning to Athy seized and brought with them 200 head of cattle and 100 sheep as the people of Athy were ‘in great distress through want of meat and drink.’ On 7th April ‘George Walker, son of English parents, then Sovereign of Athy with many other rebels being hanged,’ the army, leaving Colonel Crafford’s Regiment behind in Athy, marched to Maryborough. The next reference to Athy following the army’s march into Laois occurred on 12th April. We are told that ‘the Protestants had broken down Maganey bridge to prevent the incursion of the rebels’ and that 700 rebels were repairing the bridge intending to march over it and intercept the English army which was returning to Athy from Maryborough. The rebels were attacked by men from Colonel Crafford’s regiment, killing ‘one or two of the rebels’. The Irish rebels were camped near to Captain Erasmus Burrowes’ house in the vicinity of Maganey, but the English army commander decided not to attack and instead returned to his base in Athy. On 15th April a man named Brocke, ‘an English papist’, with a number of other rebels was hanged in Athy. The number of rebels executed in this way while the army was in Athy was believed to be seventy. After seven days waging war in various parts of Laois the English army regrouped in Athy before marching back to Dublin. They brought with them as prisoners Sir John Bowen, Fitzgerald of Timoga, Richard Grace of Maryborough and Captain Crosby. On their way about 2 miles from Athy Irish rebels numbering it is believed 8,000 foot soldiers and three or four troops of horses, were seen marching in the same direction as the English army, but with a bog between them. This prompted a race between the armies, both of which were anxious to reach firm ground, with the Irish rebels winning the race. We are told that at ‘Black-hale Heath on the lands of Kilrush about 5 miles from Athy and a mile from the Castle of Ballyshannon in the possession of the rebel Colonel Fitzgerald ….. the rebels made a stand ….. with the advantage of two great ditches on each wing, so high that we could see no more than the heads of their pikes.’ The rebels comprised men from counties Kilkenny, Laois, Carlow, Wexford, Wicklow and Kildare, as well as some men from Tipperary and Waterford. Despite their numbers the Irish rebels suffered a costly defeat, with 1,500 men or more killed and the loss of 15 regimental colours and much military equipment. An interesting description of some of the rebel colours captured indicated the religious background to the conflict which had started in Ulster the previous October, with banners displaying Jesus Mary and Joseph, with others of Mary Magdalene and St. Patrick. The English army having claimed the victory marching via Old Connell to the Curragh and then to Naas, before reaching Dublin on 17th April. Their commander expressed the view that the Irish rebels having ran into the woods, bogs and castles ‘will prolong the war and bring us all to ruin unless this summer we are furnished out of England with great store of men and money to maintain garrisons in all places.’ The White Castle in Athy would continue to be garrisoned and the town itself would figure prominently in the Confederate Wars fought on Irish soil as part of the English Civil War which would commence on 22nd August 1642.

Medieval Athy

In last week’s Eye on the Past when referring to Woodstock Castle, I mentioned the relocation to the east side of the river Barrow of the Anglo-Norman village of Athy which was first established on the west bank. This followed a prolonged period during which the Irish chiefs, particularly the O’Mores of Laois, attacked the village which had grown up around Woodstock Castle. Sir John Talbot brought the war into the heartlands of the Irish beyond the River Barrow and having defeated them sought to protect the village from further attacks. We are told that Talbot repaired and mended the bridge of Athy and erected a new tower on the bridge to house a garrison. This tower is generally believed to have referred to White’s Castle and its from the date of the castle’s erection that the gradual evacuation of the medieval village on the west bank is believed to have commenced. Woodstock Castle was by then a Fitzgerald holding and with the adjoining prior of the Canon Regulars of the Holy Cross, commonly referred to as St. John’s Monastery, continued to be the nucleus of the medieval settlement which did extend across the river to where the Dominican Friary was located. In 1434 the citizens of Athy were given the right by virtue of a murage grant to levy customs on persons selling goods in the village to finance the construction of defensive walls. This is the first reference found to murage grants for Athy and it might tend to suggest that the settlement had begun to take shape in its new location on the east bank of the river. Henry VIII in 1515 granted a charter ‘for the greater safety and security of the town of Athy’ which the charter described as lying ‘on the frontiers of the March of our Irish enemies.’ It was not only the Irish who continued to cause problems for the settlers in Athy, for the Silken Thomas Rebellion in 1534 saw the Earl of Ossory attacking Athy and Rheban, destroying both. A little more than 60 years later another Anglo Norman, James FitzPiers rebelled, resulting in further plunder and mayhem in south Kildare. The rebel James was the son of Sir Piers FitzJames of Ardreigh Castle which was burned and destroyed by Feach McHugh’s followers in 1593, resulting in the massacre of FitzJames’ family and servants. The Battle of Kinsale in 1601 resulted in the defeat of the Irish and brought a fragile peace to the settlers’ town of Athy. In 1611 James I granted a new charter to Athy, which despite the earlier charters referenced to ‘the town of Athy’ was now called ‘the village of Athy.’ The new charter created the Borough of Athy which extended one half a mile in ‘a direct line from every side of the Castle commonly called the White Castle in the village.’ This would suggest that a settlement was now firmly relocated in the more easily defended east side of the river Barrow. However, the countryside was to witness the outbreak of war in 1641. The Confederate War which ended after eight years, saw considerable action in and around Athy, with the legendary Owen Roe O’Neill at one time in charge of the White and Woodstock castles. Following the Confederate War which saw Woodstock and the White Castle severely damaged, as was the Dominican Friary, Woodstock was left damaged and vacant. It would remain in splendid isolation on the west bank of the river Barrow until the building of Council houses in its vicinity in the 1930s and later. When the Kildare Archaeological Society members visited Athy recently to view Athy’s medieval buildings I mentioned the society’s visit to Woodstock in September 1892when the local curate, Fr. Carroll, spoke of a Woodstock Castle’s ‘outer court having a fine arch gateway to the north’ which he indicated ‘still remains as does part of the outer enclosure walls.’ Sadly neither features were to be seen during this year’s visit by the Kildare Archaeological Society members. Woodstock Castle with St. Michael’s Medieval Church are Athy’s most important medieval structures which deserve to be protected and preserved. Would Kildare County Council on behalf of the people of Athy consider seeking funding to protect and restore both buildings and at the same time taking all appropriate action to save the White’s Castle. Aughaboura bridge, erected during the Great Famine, was removed last week as part of the Outer Relief Road Project. The dressed stones of the bridge were put in place by a skilled stone mason, assisted by local labourers who found work during the construction of the railway line to Carlow which helped to keep their families out of the Workhouse during the Great Famine. It would be a very fitting tribute to the dead of the Great Famine for these dressed stones to be used for constructing a memorial to Athy’s famine dead who now lie in unmarked graves in St. Mary’s cemetery? FRANK TAAFFE