Report of Visit to Wallboard Factory 1951

The following interesting Report of an excursion to the Wallboard Factory in Athy was sent to me by Mick Robinson a schoolmate who is now based in Australia. Mick was unable to tell me where it was first published but I believe it may have appeared in a newsletter or journal of the Society of Irish Foresters which was founded in 1942. “On Saturday the 13th October 1951 occurred one of the most interesting and enjoyable of our short excursions when our Society visited the Wallboard factory in Athy at the invitation of the Irish Wallboard Co. Ltd. Mr. Shackleton accompanied by the senior members of his staff received the Society on the factory grounds. Each member was given a typed hand-out explaining the various processes in the manufacture of wallboard. Then the party was organised into small groups and shown over the factory. It is interesting to know that the wallboard manufacture was started on 15th May 1951 when the Bowater Corporation purchased a controlling interest in the Company which had been successfully manufacturing strawboard since 1949. Inadequate supplies of straw sounded the death knell of that industry. The turnover of Wallboard manufacture was far sighted, enterprising, and courageous and today this factory employing 180 men and with machinery more than £500,00 is producing 150 tons of wallboard per week; the Company hopes to reach the 200 ton mark shortly. With an English export market and an ever increasing demand the company has every reason to be optimistic and proud of its achievements so far. The first casual glance around the factory was one of amazement at the enormous quantity of logs stacked so neatly in the factory yard. Equally surprising was the speed and efficiency with which the logs were converted into chips in the chipper machine and then conveyed by a belt arrangement into the factory proper where the process really commenced. Inside the factory members showed great interest in the very up to date machinery which pulped, churned, rolled and in a relatively short space of time turned out beautifully polished wallboard. The efficiency and meticulousness with which samples were tested in the laboratory was noted with admiration and it was not surprising that wallboard is becoming more popular every day. It was evident to all that a uniformly high quality board must result when such careful checking is carried out. It was interesting to learn that a wide range of species can be used in the process. The following classification indicates the relative importance and suitability of the various species used;- CLASS A – (Can be used 100% for Board manufacture) Sitka and Norway Spruce, Douglas and Silver Fir, Scots, Austrian and Corsican Pine, European and Japanese Larch, Willow, Aspen, Poplar. CLASS B- (Can be used 50% with Class A) Alder. CLASS C & D – (Can be used 25% with Class A) Sycamore, Ash, Beech and Birch. The wood should be fresh, sound, free of all rot and reasonably straight, knots, limbs and irregularities must be trimmed off and the logs cut squarely at the ends. The logs must not be shorter than 3½ feet nor longer than 15 feet while the diameter must not exceed 7 inches nor be less than 2 inches. The Company pays the following prices per ton for material delivered to the mill :- £4 Os. Od. for distance up to 60 miles. £4 5s. Od. for distance up to 60/80 miles. £4 10s. 0d. for distance over 80 miles. The significance of the above details was not lost on the members and the far reaching effects of this bold venture were the subject of lively discussion. Its revolutionary effect on the forest economics was fully appreciated and it was clear to all that because coarse timber and small thinnings were eminently suitable the stock of commercial timber in the country would not be adversely affected, in fact it would be conserved to a certain degree. It was fully realised that a steady market for forest thinnings had at last been established. In addition many labour shortage problems have been solved in remote forests since the Wallboard Company has undertaken the felling and extraction of thinnings. It was particularly gratifying to the foresters, the growers of the raw material, to see that such a beautifully finished product could be produced from the hitherto almost unsaleable small thinnings. They realised that this closer utilisation of timber would have the effect of increasing the value of our young plantations and poor quality old plantations as well as the low quality class sites generally. These and many other aspects were discussed enthusiastically and it was heartening to hear that forest thinnings are ideal for the process. It was satisfactory also to hear that the factory uses 40 tons of turf daily in the huge steam boilers and the employment created indirectly must be considerable on this account. The factory staff entertained the members to tea in Bradbury’s Café in Athy when the tour of the factory had ended. The gay spirit which pervaded the tour generally heightened as the crowd mingling freely, chatted gaily and renewed old friendships at the running buffet. After the pleasant meal Mr. McEvoy thanked the Factory Officials on behalf of the Society for their kindness in providing such an interesting and well organised excursion. Mr. Shackleton replying on behalf of the firm stated that it was a pleasure to meet such an enthusiastic body and to note the interest shown in all that had happened.” Sadly the Wallboard factory is one of the several industrial businesses lost to Athy in recent years.

Lions Club first Book Fair / Remembering Ellen Kearney, Dr. Thomas O'Higgins and his son Kevin

The week past has seen Athy’s first bookfair held in the ARCH on the Kilkenny Road and the last of the Winter series of historical lectures in the local Arts Centre. The bookfair was a great success with bookdealers very pleased and I think surprised at the numbers who came by to view and in many cases to buy books. The local Lions Club which organised the event will consider holding another bookfair in October and hopefully make the Athy fair a biannual event in March and October each year. I was astonished to learn of attendees who travelled from as far away as Galway and Leitrim for the bookfair and all those attending either to buy or sell books expressed themselves well pleased with their Athy experience. A special thanks must go to the management committee of the ARCH for the use of the hall and to the president of Athy Gaelic Football Club, Henry Howard for the arrangements he personally oversaw regarding the loan of tables. Thanks also to Seanie Bolger of Athy AFC who helped the Lions Club at short notice by delivering extra tables to accommodate the bookdealers who had not booked in advance. It was a fine community effort spearheaded by Athy Lions Club. The Winter history lecture series concluded on Wednesday evening with another good attendance to hear Marc Guernan’s talk on “Medieval Athy”. His followed the previous month’s lecture by David Walsh, when a full house listened to his talk on “Athy and World War I in Twenty Objects”. The lecture series has attracted appreciative and increasing large audiences since the first lecture last September and it is planned to open the second year series with a lecture in September. The Arts Centre has been particularly busy in recent months following its re-opening with the ending of covid restrictions. The day following Marc Guernan’s lecture there was a full house for the Gordon Giltrap concert. The legendary artist received a great reception on the night and his performance was later highly praised on social media. The Arts Centre is developing as a cultural mecca for Athy and South Kildare and is fully deserving of the support it is getting from Athy folk. Just a few weeks ago I wrote an Eye on the restored Thomas O’Connell roadside memorial near Maganey. I posed a question as to who was the good, generous woman, “Mrs. Kearney” who had a memorial cross for the late IRA leader, cast in the Duthie Large foundry in Athy for installing at the road side where he lost his life on the 31st of August 1924. Michael Dempsey from Castledermot followed up my question and with the help of Bernie Walsh genealogist from Carlow discovered much background information on Mrs Kearney. She was born Ellen Townsend at Lower Tomard, Carlow in or about 1877 and was working as a nurse in the Carlow asylum when in 1911 she married Thomas Kearney, a keeper in the same institution. It is not known if the couple had any children. Mrs Kearney was living in Brown Street, Carlow when she died aged 83 years in 1959. Her involvement with the IRA and the Cumann na mBan is still unclear but given the donation she made in 1924 we can safely assume that she was a supporter of the Republican Movement, if not an active participant during the revolutionary years. Any more information anyone can give on Mrs Kearney and her Republican Movement involvement would be greatly appreciated. In the meantime thanks to Michael Dempsey and Bernie Walsh for the information obtained to date. Travelling back to Athy following a Court appearance in Portlaoise today I intended to stop at the O’Higgins Memorial in Stradbally but found it was inaccessible while it was being cleaned. Was there I wonder any remembrance ceremony to mark the assassination in his Stradbally home of Dr. Thomas O’Higgins by anti treaty men on the night of the 10th of February 1923. The killing of the doctor whose son, Kevin was Minister for Home Affairs was undoubtedly led by local men. Only one man, Martin Byrne of Fallowbeg in Luggacurran was arrested and despite O’Higgins’s daughter, Patricia have identified him he was freed by a military Court. Just over four years later the doctor’s son, Kevin O’Higgins was assassinated on the 10th of July 1927 by republicans later named as Tim Gaughan, Archie Doyle and Bill Gannon. They were never charged with his assassination as their identity only became known fifty eight years later. As the Decade of Commemoration comes to a close I hope that we will remember all the men and women, Republican and treaty supporters alike who were involved in the tragic happenings during Ireland’s revolutionary years.

Athy Today compared to Athy of Yesteryear

I was asked recently what changes have taken place in Athy over the years. It was a question which made me think because for someone like myself who spends his working days in the town, the changes, imperceptible as they may be, pass for the most part unnoticed. How does Athy of today compare to the town as it was sixty years ago, or in the time when the Great Western and Southern Railway Guide of 1856 noted ‘few towns in Ireland are more auspiciously situated than the town of Athy’. Seven years later Thomas Lacey in his book of travels published under the title ‘Sights and Scenes in our Fatherland’ claimed that Athy was ‘a handsome regular town’. There is no question but Athy is attractively sited on the banks of the river Barrow, a waterway which is complemented by the manmade canal gracing the western side of the historic town. There is no doubt that the town centre plaza, backgrounded by the early 18th century Town Hall, gives Athy a handsome appearance which cannot be matched by any other town in County Kildare. The side streets, spreading out from the town’s main street, which latter street is recognised by archaeologists and historians as a fine example of an Anglo Norman linear type street, helped create the compact urban settlement of earlier years. That compactness was lost with the extension of the town beyond its medieval boundaries and the more recent housing developments on its outskirts. The town’s centre streetscape has not changed to any great degree in the last 100 years. While many building facades have been modified and business names have disappeared, the buildings themselves for the most part still stand, as high or as low as they were a century ago. But it is not only buildings that make a town – the life of a town comes from its people and here in Athy we can proudly claim that ours is a family friendly town. This was the unqualified view of the many persons and families who in recent years came to live in Athy. The town’s population has increased hugely in the last 25 years and the general opinion of the many new members of our community whom I have met expressed themselves as very happy living in Athy. Their only complaint is the inadequacy of the shopping experience in a town which 60 years ago was one of the best shopping towns in Leinster. There are certainly changes which have emerged over the past decade or more and they are confirmed by the number of vacant shops on our main streets. Offaly Street, the street in which I lived as a youngster, was then home to a pub, two sweet shops and a cinema, all of which are now closed up. Athy has changed, even as its streetscape remains largely unchanged. But in many ways it has changed for the better. The 1930s saw the setting up of a Distress Committee headed up by the Town Clerk and the local District Court Clerk to help families affected by flooding on the river Barrow. Flooding was an annual occurrence which particularly caused problems for families in St. Joseph’s Terrace and required the provision of a boating service to allow those families to get to the shops and attend Sunday Mass. Before the opening of the I.V.I. Foundry and the Cement factory in the 1930s emigration from Athy bled the town of many young men and women. The same St. Joseph’s Terrace witnessed an extremely high level of emigration during that decade. Athy had similarly suffered a high loss of men folk to emigration in the mid-1920s, so much so that the local GAA club had difficulty fielding a senior football team. Times have changed. The scars of emigration no longer mark our community’s life. The local men and women no longer take the mail boat. Now we welcome families to Athy, many of whom find it possible to live in the town while working in Dublin and elsewhere. This has helped to create for Athy a sense of a satellite town with all the advantages and disadvantages this brings. A major change which we tend to overlook arose with the departure of the Christian Brothers, the closure of the Mercy Convent and the departure of the Dominicans from the town. The loss of the Dominicans after so many centuries of service stretching back to the early medieval years was an unwelcome change for many locals. The loss of the Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy, both of whom brought education to generations of young Athy folk, was in a way a recognition of the improvements in the Irish education system. Yes, Athy has changed over the years, but remains as a 19th century writer noted ‘a handsome town’.

Book town Hay on Wye and Athy's Lions Club Book Shop

Hay-on-Wye, a Welsh village just a step or two within the Welsh English border, is a book lovers paradise. The late Richard Booth opened his first second hand book shop in the village of Hay in 1962. He went on to open a number of other book shops in Hay and was joined there by other second hand book dealers to create the world’s best known book town. I first visited Hay-on-Wye in the early 1980s when the Welsh town with a population of about 2,000 was home to upwards of 30 second hand book shops. One of those shops was the town’s former cinema which was fitted out by Richard Booth to make what was then one of the world's largest second hand book shops. Today the cinema book shop is still in business, offering a huge variety of books for sale as do the twenty or so other book shops still located around the town of Hay-on-Wye. Amazon and other online book dealers have of course restricted the growth of book towns such as Hay-on-Wye in Wales and Wigtown in Scotland. Nevertheless both continue to thrive and Hay-on-Wye especially so during the annual Hay Festival of Literature which was founded in 1988. I was reminded of the importance of book shops in the development of our personal cultural lives when I read the headlines in the London Times on Monday ‘Return of book shops is a novel idea’. ‘A record 142 book shops opened in France last year, notably in small provincial towns’, reported the Times. Apparently there has been a steady growth in book shop openings over the past decade, a trend which has been attributed to anti-Amazon activism and demographic changes that have led city dwellers to settle in the provinces. Here in Athy we have witnessed an enormous growth in population with the town numbers increasing by over 150% in recent years. The current population of 10,000 or so far exceeds the population figures which were more or less static for more than a century, hovering as it did in or around 4,000. This increase has not brought with it the additional services which one might expect. One such missing service is a book shop and the absence of a cultural mecca for readers prompted the local Lions Club some years ago to open the Lions second hand book shop in Duke Street. It provides a wonderful service for book readers but Athy still needs a dedicated book shop offering for sale the latest publications from Irish and overseas publishers. Athy cannot hope to emulate the success of Hay-on-Wye or even Scotland’s Wigtown, but the town’s reading public presently served by an excellent town library surely deserves the opening of a new book shop. The local Lions Club which with the help of its honorary Lions Club member Alice Rowan, opens the second hand book shop five days a week, has now planned the first National Book Fair for Athy on Saturday 25th March. Opening at 10am in the A.R.C.H. on the Kilkenny Road the fair will bring together a number of book dealers offering an interesting and varying collection of books for sale. There will be one book stall devoted to books published on different aspects of Athy’s history. It offers a unique opportunity for those who came to live in Athy in recent years to learn more about the south Kildare town which they now call home. The Shackleton Museum will also have a stall at the book fair offering for sale a mixture of local and polar exploration titles, including the recently published ‘An Antarctic Affair’ by Fergus O’Gorman. A few days later Marc Guernon will give the next lecture in the Lecture Series organised by Athy’s Historical Society in the Arts Centre in Woodstock Street. Marc, who is an archaeologist and a gifted artist, will describe and illustrate some of the hidden elements of the medieval landscape of Athy which have long remained hidden. It promises to be an interesting overview of the medieval town of Athy, which because of its location played an important part in many aspects of Ireland’s medieval history. Admission is free to the lecture which starts at 8pm on Tuesday 28th March in the Arts Centre. Writing of books I must mention the book launch planned for St. Lawrence’s G.A.A. clubhouse on Saturday, 22nd April at 8pm. The book ‘A Life’s Harvest: Stories from the Home Place Loraine’ written by Tom O’Connell, a native of nearby Loraine Fontstown, is his late father’s stories of life in rural Ireland. More about this book launch nearer the event.