Athy's Building Heritage

Athy is home to many fine buildings, some more important than others because of their history and their links with the town’s story, stretching back in some cases for centuries. Understandably, we can all take pride in the best laid out square or plaza in the County of Kildare with the backdrop of the early 18th century Town Hall. That fine building has survived despite an attempt by some members of the local Urban Council in the 1970s to have it demolished in order to provide additional parking facilities in the town centre. Other buildings which once were important in the context of a developing medieval village are Woodstock Castle and the church built outside the town walls which we now know as the ‘Crickeen’. Both buildings have suffered from the ravages of time, with the castle at Woodstock mercifully fenced off in recent years to protect what remains of an important part of our medieval built heritage. The ‘Crickeen’, through the good offices of Kildare County Council using taxpayers money and business rates, was the subject of recent conservation work which will ensure the preservation of Athy’s first secular church for the immediate future. Woodstock Castle needs similar attention and hopefully the Heritage Office of Kildare Co. Co. in conjunction with the National Monuments Committee of that Council will give the conservation of Woodstock Castle some priority. The Town Hall, Woodstock Castle and the ‘Crickeen’ are important buildings in terms of Athy’s historical past, but none of them can equal the importance of Athy’s most iconic building – Whites Castle or the White Castle, depending on which authority you rely. The town’s trademark is the castle and the bridge, one standing on the east bank of the river Barrow, the other the only access way to the ‘wild Irish’ on the Laois side of the county. The bridge, built in 1796 by the master mason James Delehunt and his team of helpers, figured prominently, as did Whites Castle, during the 1798 rebellion. Seven young men who were jailed in Whites Castle at the start of the rebellion were marched over the newly built bridge and hanged at the basin of the Grand Canal. Two of them were beheaded and their heads put on the top of Whites Castle. The local militia during the summer of ’98 apparently amused themselves by firing at the two heads from the middle of the bridge. As you pass Whites Castle today take a look at the Earl of Kildare’s coat of arms carved on a large stone slab and placed there when the bridge was opened. The militia in 1798 smashed the flagstone bearing the coat of arms and the damage is still visible today. Five years later at the start of the Robert Emmet rebellion, Nicholas Grey, a Wexford man who was then living in nearby Rockfield House, was arrested and lodged in Whites Castle jail. He had been appointed by Robert Emmet to lead the County Kildare men to Dublin, but was arrested before he could do so. Whites Castle has been involved in so many other important events in Irish history. The Confederate War saw the Royalists, the Confederates and the Parliamentarians vying for control of Athy and the castle protecting the bridge over the river Barrow. This meant that Whites Castle and Woodstock Castle were under constant attack. That the castle survived is in itself a miracle, although Woodstock Castle was effectively abandoned following the Confederate War. Whites Castle was repaired after it was badly damaged during the same war and in or about 1800 was extended to provide additional accommodation including prison cells. Our castle on the bridge has stood for over 600 years, but sadly it is today looking neglected. It looks unsafe with early 19th century chimney stacks looking positively unstable. The building remains closed having been purchased in recent years. I was contacted by the purchaser soon after she bought the castle and given her previous involvement in the restoration of another important building in the south of the country, I was hopeful that the same would happen here. I have been disappointed on so many occasions when it comes to Whites Castle. I had hoped that when the castle first came on the market that the then Urban District Council would acquire it. The Council members publicly expressed interest, but regrettably the matter was not pursued. The castle came on the market again a few years later and despite a huge reduction in the asking price the Town Council again failed to act to ensure public ownership of Athy’s most important building. It was resold for the third time in recent years, with again no attempt this time by Kildare County Council to acquire Whites Castle. It is rather shameful that none of the local authorities acted on any of the three occasions to acquire Whites Castle and allow it to be developed as a local museum, cum Fitzgerald Museum. This iconic building must not be allowed to become a ruin. It lies idle while the possible development of the town centre castle as another element of the town’s tourist development remains unfulfilled.

Paddy Doyle

Paddy Doyle was in the audience for the O.N.E. concert in the Arts Centre on Monday night, 17th July. There was a capacity attendance that night to hear local musicians and singers give proof, if such was needed, that the musical tradition in Athy is very strong. By the following morning Paddy had passed away just short of his 90th birthday. It was, in a way, a happy coincidence that Paddy, a talented singer and a long time member of the Parish choir, should enjoy his last evening in his beloved town of Athy in the company of fellow singers. I had known Paddy for many years, initially during his time with Minch Nortons and in more recent years as an experienced and helpful electrician. Paddy was the quintessential Athy man whose love for Athy knew no bounds. His father served in, and survived, the First World War. However, it was not without some consequences for as Paddy told me when I interviewed him several years ago, his father, known to all as “Barracks” Doyle, throughout his post war life suffered from the consequences of seeing the bodies of his fellow soldiers mangled and torn in the French trenches. Paddy was one of the most kind hearted persons one could hope to meet. He was generous with his time, generous with his good humour and generous with his wonderful singing voice which saw him as a member of the Parish choir for many decades. He was a person who epitomised all that was good in the best of us. I never saw Paddy without a smile, a good word or a laugh. He was an ever cheerful person whose very presence was guaranteed to lift the mood of the most dour amongst us. It was therefore pleasing to see that Paddy’s funeral Mass was a celebration of a wonderful life lived simply but with great affection for his neighbours and his wider community. It was a celebration marked by what I feel was the most exquisite singing I had ever heard in St. Michael’s Parish Church. Paddy’s companions in the Parish choir performed wonderfully in bidding their final farewell to a well loved friend, but the singing of Paddy’s son Dermot was absolutely wonderful. I have never been so moved by a singer or a song as I was at Paddy’s funeral Mass as I listened to the wonderful voice of his son Dermot. It was for me so unexpected and a real joy to hear such a masterful performance in the church. Paddy would have been very proud of his son Dermot as he filled the church with a beautiful rendition of ‘The Lark in the Clear Air’, accompanied on the viola by Noelle Robinson. The ceremony ended with Dermot singing ‘Annies Song’, this time accompanied by Justin Kelly on the flute. Dermot’s contribution to the celebration of his father’s life was extraordinarily powerful. Paddy’s second son Ciaran continued the celebration of a well lived life with a charming eulogy which included what would have been his father’s own account of growing up in Athy. Paddy had recounted how it was beside the Moneen River that his father James and his mother Elizabeth made their family home after they married. Paddy was the eldest of five children and the Doyle family lived in a two roomed mudwalled cottage with a thatched roof and clay floors. This was the lot of so many families in Athy and elsewhere in the country in the years before the Slum Clearance Programme initiated by De Valera’s government in the early 1930s. Until he was 13 years of age Paddy assisted his mother by bringing home two buckets of water every day from a well over a mile away from the Doyle cottage. In 1953 the Doyle family moved to a newly built house at Coneyboro. Paddy married Patricia Donegan from Carlow in 1969 and having lived in Avondale Drive for a few years moved to their new home on the Castledermot Road six years later. It was there that Paddy and Patricia reared their three children, Ciaran, Dermot and Kathryn. At the Mass special mention was made of their mother Patricia described with fondness “as a beautiful caring mother of principle and truth”. It was a great privilege to be part of the congregation which gathered in St. Michael’s Church to say goodbye to a good man. That same venue where I saw Paddy on his last night will on Monday, 14th August host a photographic and video exhibition of the canal boatmen and their boats who once plied their trade on the Barrow line and the Grand Canal. Lots of Athy folk will feature. The exhibition will be open until the 25th August from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. each day excluding Sundays.

Athy's Library in the 1950s

When I was a young pupil attending the Christian Brother’s secondary school in St. John’s Lane a welcome evening break in the ever constant routine of studying and working on school homework was a weekly visit to the local library. It was an evening visit as the library in the 1950’s was not opened during the day. The Librarian at that time was the well known and well liked Kevin Meaney who lived in St. Patrick’s Avenue. Kevin’s day job was clerk to the town engineer, Mossie Sullivan but it is as the town librarian that he is best remembered after the passage of so many years. The library was located in the Town Hall in a small room next to the Ballroom and when I measured it last week, I found it to be seventeen feet by twenty feet. It was accessed by a stairs with a doorway onto the street directly opposite Mrs. Gibbon’s house. The fact that library users had to exit from that doorway directly onto the street gives some inkling of the scarcity of vehicular traffic in those days. Kevin Meaney and his brothers Danny and Dermot all of whom lived in St. Patrick’s Avenue had a great affection for Athy. Danny who worked in a local factory was a keen photographer and he amassed during his lifetime an important archive of photographs and videos of Athy town and its people. I can recall attending a showing of videos by Danny in Mulhall’s public house next to White’s Castle a short while after I returned to Athy in 1982. Danny’s photographic record of Athy’s past was and hopefully remains a rich vein of Athy’s cultural history and a wonderful insight into the lives of the local people, many of whom have passed from memory. Danny’s brother Kevin was a local historian in the sense that he knew of the towns past and shared his knowledge with others. Unfortunately, like so many others he did not commit his recollections to paper. My weekly visit to the library was in search of Zane Grey novels but somewhere in between, for whatever reason I cannot now remember, Kevin once spoke to me of Patrick O’Kelly’s book on the 1798 Rebellion. O’Kelly, was a local young man who in the revolutionary years was one of the leaders of the United Irishmen in this area. His accounts of events in Athy and the surrounding area during the 1798 Rebellion and the Emmet Rebellion five years later was first published in 1842. The book was never available in the library but Kevin having alerted me to its very existence prompted a successful search for a copy many years later. I have often wondered was it that contact with Kevin Meaney, the librarian, all those years ago which would later put me on the history trail. The importance of local libraries cannot be over emphasised for it is there that young people start on a life’s journey through the written world. That small library of the 1950’s was a pre-cursor to the magnificent local library which is today housed in the former Dominican Church which was constructed in the early years of the 1960’s. Athy in the past was a town with a literary background which recalls a time when it was home to printing works operated by a John Richardson and later in the 1830’s a printing and publishing concern owned by W.H. Talbot. Successful members of the Talbot family were involved in printing and publishing in Athy over subsequent years. Indeed, Thomas French published the Athy Literary Magazine, a weekly magazine which ended with its 25th edition in February 1838. As the effects of the Great Famine eased in 1849, Athy boasted of two rival local newspapers, The Kildare and the Wicklow Chronicle and the Irish Eastern County Herald. Sadly the press war between the two newspapers only lasted a few weeks as the Kildare and Wicklow Chronicle ceased publication after four or five issues. The first library in Athy opened in the Town Hall in 1927 in the same room where I found it thirty years later. In those days reading material was heavily censored not only by the Ireland’s state censor but also by a library committee comprising the Parish Priest, three Catholic Curates, the Church of Ireland Rector and the Presbyterian Minister as well as five members of the Urban District Council. The first librarian was Mr. B. Bramley of Emily Square who opened the library one evening a week from 7.00pm – 9.00pm but soon thereafter, the opening times were increased to two days a week. I have written in the past of how a library is a cultural investment for the future and how our highly praised local library in providing a variety of community activities, as well as book lending is serving us well.

Kilkea Castle and the Earls of Kildare

Kilkea Castle, much altered over the centuries, is believed to be Ireland’s oldest habitable castle. Built in the latter end of the 12th century by the Anglo Norman Hugh de Lacy in what was later described as the Marches of Kildare, it formed part of the fortresses which provided protection for that part of the countryside centred around Dublin which was controlled by the early Anglo-Norman settlers. The Castle is within 4 miles of the village of Castledermot where the first gathering in Irish history to be called a Parliament was held in 1264. Twenty-six knights came together for that first parliamentary session and ten more Irish parliaments would be held in the rural village of Castledermot between 1269 and 1404. That first Irish parliament was held just 27 years after King Henry III’s Great Council met in the Great Chamber of the medieval palace of Westminster. That is generally accepted as the first gathering in English history to be called a Parliament. The Castle of Kilkea was once one of the homes of the most powerful family in Ireland, the Fitzgeralds, later Earls of Kildare and from the latter part of the 18th Century Dukes of Leinster. Several Earls of Kildare served as Lord Deputy of Ireland, a role which involved placating the rebellious Irish tribes who did not accept the King’s rule in Ireland. Gearoid Mór, the 8th Earl of Kildare and Governor of Ireland for over 30 years was wounded while leading his men against the Irish Tribe of the O’Mores at Leap Castle and he succumbed to his wounds in the town of Athy. His son, Gearoid Óg the 9th Earl of Kildare, succeeded as Lord Deputy, but Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII chief advisor and Chancellor of the Exchequer concerned by the usurpation of Royal power by the Irish Lords had the Earl called to London for alleged treason. He would die in the Tower of London while his son Thomas, known in Irish history as Silken Thomas, rebelled and marched on Dublin. He too ended up in the Tower of London with five of his uncles where they were all beheaded. This so called Kildare Rebellion prompted the Crown to take the governorship of Ireland out of the hands of the Earls of Kildare to be replaced by direct rule by an English governor. The title Earl of Kildare was forfeited and the family’s estates including Kilkea Castle confiscated, but were restored 15 years later when Silken Thomas’s half-brother, also called Thomas, a self-proclaimed loyal subject of the King was recognised as Earl of Kildare. He made his principle residence in Kilkea Castle. However, following the Desmond rebellion of 1569 which involved a related Fitzgerald family in the south of the country, Thomas, the 11th Earl, was arrested and brought to London. This time unlike his predecessors, he was not confined to the Tower of London, but spent long periods in the 1570s and 1580s under house arrest. He died in London in 1585. Subsequent Earls of Kildare continued to live in Kilkea Castle and were resident here during the Civil War which broke out in 1641 between the native Irish and Catholic gentry on the one side and Puritans on the other. Later it became a three sided conflict between the native Irish, the Catholic Royalists and the Puritans. The Catholic Confederate leaders Owen Roe O’Neill and Thomas Preston stayed in Kilkea Castle for a time, as did the Papal Nuncio Scarampo during the Civil War, commonly referred to as the Confederate War. Apart from playing hosts for a short while to some of the Catholic leaders involved in the war, Kilkea Castle did not figure hugely in the terrible events of the Confederate Wars or Cromwell’s reign of terror. If the 16th century Earls of Kildare were regarded as unfaithful to the English Crown, a very real rebel was found in Lord Edward Fitzgerald, one time Member of Parliament for Athy and brother of the first Duke of Leinster. He led the United Irishmen in his native county of Kildare in preparation for the 1798 rebellion. Lord Edward had served in the British forces in America during the American Revolution and was later an admirer of the French Revolution and an associate of Thomas Paine. He joined the United Irishmen on returning from America but was captured before the rebellion started and died as a result of a stab wound inflicted while being arrested. He is still remembered today as one of the most passionate Irish Revolutionaries of the 18th Century. Lord Edward and his wife Pamela had three children and their daughter Pamela married Sir Guy Campbell, a distinguished Scottish soldier who had played an active part in suppressing the Irish rebels during the 1798 Rebellion and who was later Lieutenant Governor of Gibraltar during the critical years of the Peninsular War. Their daughter Madeline married Percy Wyndham, son of the Earl of Egremont and their son, the great grandson of the Irish rebel, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, would become the Secretary of State for Ireland under Arthur Balfour’s premiership. George Wyndham was described as a hardened Tory and an indefatigable defender of the Union. He is remembered for the Wyndham Land Act of 1903 which effectively brought an end to the Irish Land War campaigns of the 1880s while his great grandfather Lord Edward, the most famous son of Kilkea Castle, is remembered as one of the most admired Irish radical revolutionaries of the past.

Memories of attending C.B.S. Athy in the 1950s

My class passed from the 6th class in primary school following our primary certificate examination into the C.B.S. secondary school in 1955. The primary school and the secondary school in St. John’s Lane shared the same yard with the secondary school occupying three classrooms over part of the primary school accessed by an outside iron stairway. The shortage of classroom space may have accounted for several pupils, including myself, skipping first year and beginning our secondary education in the second-year classroom. The entire secondary school teaching staff at that time consisted of two members of the Christian Brothers and two lay teachers. Around the time we started in secondary school, or perhaps just before that, the leaving certificate class consisted of only one student. By the time my class sat the Leaving Certificate examination in 1960 the class of eleven students had become the largest leaving certificate class in the school’s history. The 1950’s was a period when unemployment was rife, wages were low and free secondary education was unknown. The Christian Brothers had arrived in Athy in 1861 and in keeping with their mission opened schools for the young boys of the town. Education, both primary and secondary, was available to all who wanted it, but the Christian Brothers did seek a small payment from parents who could afford to contribute to school expenses. We attended school five and a half days a week, finishing our school week on Saturday midday. Wednesday afternoons were devoted to Gaelic football practice in Geraldine Park. No other sport was played, and the school’s only competitive team was the Gaelic football team which unfortunately had no success whatsoever during the 1950s. Our teachers were Brother J.D. Brett who arrived in 1955, the year I joined the secondary school. With him was Brother Sylvanus Keogh who had arrived in 1952. He was known to his many pupils as ‘Johnny Borris’. How or why no one appears to have known. Liam Ryan and Paddy Riordan were the lay teachers. Liam came to Athy from County Tipperary sometime in the 1930s and was a well-loved teacher who encouraged and inspired his pupils. As the class of 1955 progressed, many of my schoolmates left school. Some left at 14 years of age to take up jobs around Athy. I still remember how I envied a classmate who left school to become a telegram boy attached to Naas Post Office. Our collective ambitions were limited but were occasionally sharply focused when the Christian Brothers recruiting for the Order attended the school once a year. Many of us indicated a willingness to join the Christian Brothers, but either parents or common sense intervened in many cases to save us for the outside world. A yearly written religious examination was another feature of secondary school life in the 1950’s. It was, I believe, organised by the Diocesan authorities, and was regarded by us youngsters as a day off from the rigours of everyday school. We sat the Intermediate Certificate examination in 3rd year and some, like myself, repeated in 4th year. The 1960 Leaving Certificate examination was the first year of the oral Irish examination. Irish was my worst subject and following the inspector’s oral examination of the leaving certificate class students which took place in the nearby Christian Brothers monastery, Brother Keogh announced to us afterwards; ‘All of you but one did well’ – as he looked directly at me with a resigned look. None of us who sat the Leaving Certificate in 1960 had any thought of going to university. It was never mentioned as a possibility, but some of us did subsequently attend university and obtain degrees after attending night classes. My classmates of the 1950’s endured, rather than enjoyed, school. It was not unpleasant, but youthful enjoyment was measured by post school activities. However, sometimes school time and afterschool life combined to leave us with wonderful memories. One such was the intermediate class meeting addressed by fellow pupil Michael O’Neill, a Kerry lad, which lead to the founding of CARA, later renamed Aontas Ogra. This Irish language club brought together local boys and girls in a range of pleasant activities which we remember as part of our enjoyable school years. I and my classmates left school in 1960 to join the working world where so many of those who had started junior school with us approximately 14 years earlier were already committed to a working life. The Christian Brothers secondary school of the 1950’s is a distant early memory likely to be crowded out by the gathered memories of a long life. However, those school memories will always remain part of my treasured past.