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.