Athy Eye On The Past

2011-03-08T14:51:00.001Z

Mary Leadbeater and Ballitore

2010-09-01T14:29:00.001+01:00

The village of Ballytore, immortalised in print by Mary Leadbeater, is about to embark on a FAS Scheme designed to restore the writer’s house in the centre of the village. Lying vacant and derelict for many years the Leadbeater house at the corner of the village square has been perilously close to demolition on several occasions but now it’s future seems assured.

Mary Leadbeater, daughter of Richard and Elizabeth Shackleton, was born in Ballytore in December 1758. Her father was master of the Quakers school which his own father, Abraham Shackleton had founded. Ballytore, which derives it’s name from Baile, meaning town, and Toghter corrupted to Tore, meaning a bog, was first settled towards the end of the 17th Century by two Quakers, Abel Strettle, a Dublin Merchant and John Barcroft of Mountmellick, Co. Laois. In time it was to become an important centre of Quakerism and Quaker meetings are still regularly held in the restored Quaker Meeting House.

In 1726 a young Yorkshire Quaker, Abraham Shackleton, opened a boarding school in the village. Famous former pupils of the Ballytore School included Edmund Burke, Parliamentarian, who joined the school in 1741, Paul Cullen, the first Irish Cardinal, a pupil for 4 years from 1813 and Napper Tandy, the Irish Revolutionary who attended the school in 1749.

Richard Shackleton’s daughter, Mary, married William Leadbeater in June 1791. Her sister Sarah married Thomas Chandlee, a linen draper in business in Athy. Chandlee was largely responsible for the building of the Quaker meeting house in Meeting Lane, Athy in 1780.

Mary Leadbeater published a number of books during her lifetime, the first in 1794 titled “Extracts and Original Anecdotes for the Improvement of Youth”. This has been described as one of the earlier attempts to provide light and instructive literature for young people. In 1808 “Poems by Mary Leadbeater” was published in Dublin and London. She was more successful with her prose writing than with poetry and within 3 years she had published “Cottage Dialogues”. The characters in this little book are two women, Rose and Nancy, who speak in the idiom of the Irish peasant, one the careless idle person, the other an industrious frugal housewife. It proved extremely popular and ran to several editions and three separate series. In 1813 was published “The Landlord’s Friend”, a sequel to “Cottage Dialogues” before Mary Leadbeater and Elizabeth Carleton co-authored “Tales for Cottagers accommodated to the Present Conditions of The Irish Peasantry” which was published in 1814.

Nothing further was published by Mary Leadbeater until 1822 when “Cottage Biography” and “Memoirs and Letters of R. and E. Shackleton” appeared. R. and E. Shackleton were her parents, Richard who died in 1792 and Elizabeth who passed away in 1804. Elizabeth Shackleton was the daughter of Henry and Deborah Fuller of Fuller’s Court, Ballytore, and grand-daughter of John Barcroft, one of the original proprietor’s of the lands at Ballytore. The last book published in Mary Leadbeater’s lifetime was “Biographical Notice of Members of the Society of Friends who were resident in Ireland” which went on sale in 1823. Within 3 years Mary Leadbeater was dead. She was buried in the Quaker graveyard in Ballytore.

During the greater part of her life Mary Leadbeater kept a diary recording the events and people of her native village. This was published in 1862 as the first Volume of “The Leadbeater’s Papers” and it gives us an important and well written account of life in Ballytore between 1766 and 1818. The diary entries concerning the 1798 Rebellion are especially important being an impartial observer’s account of the events of that time. The Second Volume of the same publication consists of some of the extensive correspondence which Mary Leadbeater conducted with a number of important people. Apart from Edmund Burke’s letters it includes her correspondence with the poet George Crabbe and Melessina Trench, mother of Archbishop Richard Trench of Dublin. Archbishop Trench was a cousin of Rev. Frederick Trench, Rector of St. Michael’s, Athy, the last Sovereign of Athy whose untimely death following an accident in 1860 led to the removal of Preston’s Medieval Gate, then located in Offaly Street. George Crabbe was an English poet whose most famous works, “The Village” and “The Parish Register” are important poetic portraits of late 18th century village life.

The works of Mary Leadbeater, popular at the beginning of the last century, are now almost forgotten and except for the reproduction some years ago of an edited version of Volume One of the Leadbeater papers by the Stephen Scroop Press, her works have not been re-published.

Arctic Exhibition for Athy

2010-08-26T16:35:00.000+01:00

Last April the eruptions from the Icelandic 'Eyjafjallajokull' volcano kept European airspaces shut down over a number of weeks affecting travel for millions of people across Europe. It brought a focus on a country which is generally unknown to us. In October the Athy Heritage Centre will host an exhibition of photography by the distinguished Icelandic photographer, Ragnar Axelsson. The exhibition forms part of the events which are being organised for this year’s Ernest Shackleton Autumn School, running from 22nd to 25th October, now in its tenth year. It’s an extraordinary coup for the Shackleton School and the Heritage Centre to host such an exhibition by such a distinguished photographer. Indeed at the same time as the exhibition is being held in Athy a similar exhibition will be held in his home country. It’s a compilation of his work spent over the last 25 years photographing in the Arctic, particularly amongst the hunters of Greenland. For much of the time he has travelled to the small Inuit villages across Greenland’s most remote regions, recording hunting traditions going back many thousands of years. The pictures are draw from his new book 'The Last Days of the Arctic' which deals with the effects of climate change on the Inuit of Greenland and in tandem with his book the BBC are producing a documentary about Axelsson and his work. The book is bound to be very well received as the New York Times described his previous book 'Faces of the North' as 'stunning'. The exhibition it is not to be missed.

The Autumn School events continue to reflect an ever growing international dimension and on the opening night on Friday 22nd October the Shackleton School will host the launch of a book by the American author Chet Ross about the Japanese Antarctic Expedition of 1910 – 1912. This expedition lead by Lieutenant Nobu Shirase is almost unknown on this side of the world, although Shirase is very much a hero in his native Japan. His particular misfortune was to lead his expedition to the Antarctic at the same time that Captain Scott and Roald Amundsen were engaged in their race to the South Pole. Thereafter it was only natural that the press of the day would be consumed with stories of Scott’s heroic death on the march back from the South Pole and Amundsen’s extraordinary achievement in reaching and returning from the South Pole without the loss of any of his men. Chet Ross’s new book deals with the history of the expedition and also some of the publications concerning same. Over the last number of years the Friday night has also hosted the Shackleton memorial lecture which has given an opportunity to hear from someone who has played a prominent role in Irish society.
Over the years we have been treated to lectures from the likes of Senator David Norris, Brian Keenan, Kevin Myers and last year the disability campaigner and young global leader Caroline Casey. This year Fintan O’Toole, the columnist, author and deputy editor of the Irish Times will be delivering the Shackleton memorial lecture and Fintan who is always an engaging and interesting speaker is likely to attract a good crowd.

A feature of previous Shackleton schools has been the diverse nature of the lectures held on the Saturdays and Sundays and both Chet Ross and Ragnar Axelsson will speak about their own work. Further lecturers will include a lecture by Dr. Tim Baughman, the Professor of History at the University of Central Oklahoma who wrote a fine biography of Shackleton. He will speak about Shackleton’s 1914-1916 'Endurance' expedition and his re-telling of Shackleton’s epic quest to save his men after the ship was crushed in the Antarctic ice is bound to go down well. Other lecturers include Meredith Hooper, the award winning Australian author who will speak about lesser known aspect of Scott’s last expedition to the Antarctic in 1910 – 1912 and Mike Tarver from Devon will talk about the polar exploration ships of the heroic age of exploration from 1884 to 1943 focusing on Scott’s iconic ship, the SS Terra Nova. The environmental aspects of the Antarctic will not be neglected and what is bound to be an intriguing talk will be delivered by Professor David Thomas of Bangor University, Wales who is currently working in Helsinki, Finland. He has spent the last 20 years engaged in studies of sea ice and his lecture is titled ‘Life inside drifting Antarctic pack ice'.

As ever the social side of the Shackleton weekend is very important and I know that Athy will give its usual fulsome welcome to those participants and attendees who will be travelling to the event from Iceland, Australia, the United Kingdom, the U.S.A., Finland and from all over Ireland.

Arctic Exhibition for Athy

2010-08-19T16:51:00.000+01:00

Athy men at Trafalgar

2010-08-19T16:20:00.001+01:00

A recent article in the Saturday edition of the Irish Times about Irishmen serving in the British Army sparked a vigorous debate in the following weeks in the letters pages of the paper. The correspondence reflected an ongoing debate in Irish society about our relationship with our nearest neighbour, Britain.

It has led me to consider how emigration to Britain has scattered men from Athy all over the globe and my thoughts were certainly turned in that direction recently when conducting some research in the National Archives in London. I came across references to Athy men who had served in the Royal Navy in the early 1800s. What was of particular interest was that a number of these men had served in Lord Nelson’s fleet which was triumphant at the Battle of Trafalgar against the French in 1805.

In the records I came across the details of two men from Athy who served in Nelson’s Navy at the Battle of Trafalgar, one was William Molloy who at the date of the battle was aged 30 and Barney Dempsey who was aged 18. Both of them were serving together on the ship HMS Spartiate. The ship originally called ‘Sparti’ was one of nine ships captured by the Royal Navy from the French at the Battle of the Nile in 1798. In November 1805 under the command of Francis Laforey it was part of Nelson’s Fleet which was chasing across the Atlantic a French Fleet under Admiral Villeneuve. It became involved in the Battle of Trafalgar on 21st October 1805. The ship itself was at the rear of the Fleet and was not involved in the first few hours of the battle, however it eventually entered the battle in the company of HMS Minotaur where they found themselves up against four French and one Spanish ship. The English ships performed very well and apparently the rate of fire of both Spartiate and Minotaur was so strong that the French ships ultimately fled, leaving the Spanish ship Neptuno alone to fight against the two British ships which was soon captured it.

The casualties of HMS Spartiate were very light with three killed and twenty wounded. The ship returned to England for Nelson’s funeral with Captain Laforey being the flag bearer walking behind Nelson’s coffin. Interestingly the ship's flag was discovered in England last year and sold for a substantial sum of money at auction, being the only surviving Union Jack flag from the Battle of Trafalgar.

Dempsey joined HMS Spartiate on 10th July 1804 as a ships boy. The ships boys were usually between 12 and 18 years of age, often from poor families. Some had been convicted of petty crimes and may have found themselves in service in the Royal Navy at the direction of a Judge, though in Dempsey's case he was a volunteer. They were generally engaged in very menial work on ships such as cleaning, assisting the ship's cook and looking after the live animals which were kept on ships to feed the men. At the time of his service on HMS Spartiate Barney was 18 years of age and presumably he was at the end of his career as a boy and thereafter could have expected a promotion to sailor. He had served a number of ships before joining Spartiate including the Salvador and the Neptune.

While Barney Dempsey had clearly served a number of years in the Navy on a number of ships, William Molloy’s naval experience seems to have been limited at the time of his service at the Battle of Trafalgar. Although 30 years of age he was listed as a 'landsman'. A landsman was a person who had not been to sea before and had no experience of the Royal Navy. He may have been, as many men were at the time, a victim of the press gang. Essentially the press gang were a group of men from a ship who would use force to compel men to serve in the Navy. Life in the Royal navy was harsh and the conditions and pay were far better in merchant ships. Generally the Navy sought to impress men between the ages of 18 and 45 years of age with seagoing experience, but many 'landsmen' were impressed and it is quite possible that Barney Dempsey was an unwitting victim of a press gang at a port somewhere in Britain.

Both men survived the battle but their subsequent fate is unknown to us. At the time of the Battle of Trafalgar approximately twenty per cent of Royal Navy men were Irish and in some way it is not surprising that two young men from landlocked Athy found themselves at the centre of the greatest naval battle in history.

Gems from Census

2010-08-12T11:57:00.001+01:00

The recent availability of the 1911 Census of Ireland on the internet has provided an extraordinary wealth of material for anyone interested in family history or local history. When it comes to computers and the internet I am something of a Luddite, never having quite mastered the technical terms or the computer methods which youngsters learn with such ease at primary school level. Despite these disadvantages I recently ventured onto the internet in search of the 1911 census and found myself immersed in the written material which householders 99 years ago compiled so carefully just three years before the outbreak of World War I.

Like most other people my initial searches were for the families on my fathers and mothers side. Amazingly within minutes I turned up family information and details never before known which clearly signalled the importance of the census returns in genealogical research.

I next turned to those families living in Offaly Street in 1911 to see if any of those named were still represented in the street where I lived from 1945. The census was taken on the night of Sunday 2nd April 1911 when the head of each household was required to make a return of the family, visitors, boarders and servants who slept in the home that night.

Michael Neill, a 67 year old cattle dealer, lived alone in No. 1 Offaly Street. His next door neighbours were the Bradley family. Gregory Bradley, aged 30 years, a baker, was married to Mary Anne. Their three children were May, aged 3 years, Gregory, aged 11 and Kathleen, just 1 month old. No. 3 Offaly Street housed the Dunne family, headed by Peter aged 47 years who was also a baker. His wife Lizzie was 37 years old and they had 6 children, Michael 17 years, James 15 years, Christopher 11 years, Teresa 15 years, Maria 4 years and Thomas Peter, 1 month old. The Dunne family would lose son James five years later. He was killed in action while a member of the 10th Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers fighting in France on 13th November 1916.

In No. 4 Offaly Street lived Annie Prendergast, aged 39 years with her five nephews, James, John, Michael, Thomas and Laurence Connell who ranged in age from 28 down to 12 years. All were unemployed with the exception of school going 12 year old Laurence.

Next door lived William Corcoran, an insurance agent aged, 26 years old with his 27 year old wife Julia and their new born baby Thomas Joseph. I believe Thomas who was born in 1911 was the Thomas Corcoran who later became Town Clerk of Newbridge.

Patrick Dempsey, an O.A.P. of 85 years and a widower, lived alone in No. 6 Offaly Street. Two years earlier the Old Age Pension Act came into force giving five shillings per week pension to persons over 70 years old with incomes less than 31 pounds and ten shillings a year. Dempsey’s next door neighbours were the Hayden family headed by Patrick Hayden, a 50 year old widower who worked as a baker. His sons John and Patrick were just 12 and 11 years and living with them was Patrick’s niece Mary Cobbe, aged 28 years. John Hayden played a very prominent part in the struggle for Irish Independence and served a term of imprisonment in Portlaoise jail before emigrating to America. His younger brother Patrick was also involved in the Republican Movement during the War of Independence and like his father, he too worked as a baker. Paddy, as he was known in later life, lived in St. Patrick’s Avenue after he got married and had a family. Edward Duggan, a boot maker, aged 32 years, lived next door with his wife Lizzie who was 13 years older than her husband. Both were members of the Church of Ireland.

Michael Bradley, the Urban District Council Surveyor, was 50 years of age and lived in No. 9 Offaly Street with his 38 year old wife Margaret. Married for 18 years they had 8 children ranging in age from 16 years down to 1 year. John at 16 years of age was employed as a bookkeeper while Mary Kate, Elizabeth, Julia May, Michael and James were noted as scholars and completing the Bradley family was 1 year old baby Margaret.

Next door was Julia Bradley, aged 80 years and living with her were her daughter Elizabeth, a 46 year old dressmaker and a grandson Thomas Breen, a carpenter of 26 years. Mary Hayden, a 9 year old granddaughter made up the Bradley household. Thomas Breen continued to live in Offaly Street after he married and his daughter Nan and her family are today the only direct family links with those who lived in Offaly Street 99 years ago. No. 11 Offaly Street was home to Honoria Salts, a widow of 58 years and two boarders Margaret Hickey aged 26 years, a nurse and Michael Sweeney, aged 34 years, an upholsterer. Her nephew Joseph Reddy, aged 20 years, a grocers assistant, completed the household.

Joseph and Mary Geoghegan with their two children John, 17 years and Josephine, 15 years, both scholars, lived in Number 12. Joseph Geoghegan was a carpenter.

The house and building returns which accompanied the Census showed that the first three houses in Offaly Street consisted of 2 rooms each, while the following nine houses on the same side of the street all had four rooms. The returns give the Protestant Church as the next building which would indicate that the small house presently at the corner of Janeville and Offaly Street was then part of a dwelling facing onto Janeville.

Important to Support our local talent

2010-08-05T12:44:00.001+01:00

Two CD’s recently released by local singers have caught my attention. The Sullivan Brothers new release is their second CD following their extended coverage on the TV programme ‘You’re a Star.’ Comprising 12 songs all written and sung by the talented sons of Denis and Ann Sullivan of Avondale Drive, the CD is one which deserves to succeed. However, given the experiences of other Irish artists who find themselves deprived of airtime on our national radio, success, if it comes, may have to rely on local rather than national radio. I have been playing the CD ‘Weary’ in my car for the past three weeks and the more I listen to the Sullivan Brothers songs the more I like them. The backing musicians which include the exceptionally talented whistle player Brian Hughes provide excellent accompaniment to the singing of the Sullivan Brothers.

Two songs from their first album are repeated here ‘Keep holding on’, the signature tune of the album of the same name and ‘A little while’ get a second outing. The latest versions of both songs confirm the musical progress made by the singing brothers since their first release. This is a CD which not only the younger folk but others also might enjoy.

Certainly the second CD by local singer Jacinta O’Donnell will appeal to older listeners. It is a CD of favourite hymns in which Jacinta is joined by Geraldine Flanagan on piano. I have enjoyed Jacinta’s singing in St. Michael’s Parish Church for many years. Her beautiful rendition of church hymns has enriched many an occasion in the church from celebratory devotions of one kind or another to sad funeral services. Her distinctive singing voice so evenly pitched with crystal clear diction is always a joy to hear. It was Charles Acton, late music critic of the Irish Times who once wrote ‘music as an art combines the brain, the mind, the emotions, the heart and the revelations of the spirit of God.’ Jacinta O’Donnell consistently meets Acton’s exacting declaration when she sings in our local parish church and long may she do so.

Her CD ‘Hymns to our Lady’, consists of seven hymns, all well known to those of us who were members of church sodalities which were once a large part of our regulated church lives of younger days. Her singing of the traditional Gaelic hymn, ‘A Mhuire Mháthair’ is my favourite from this CD which I see is labelled Volume I and so holds out the prospect of another volume or volumes at some time in the near future.

Local artists, whether singers, writers, painters or participants in any artistic format, should be able to rely on local support and hopefully both the Sullivan Brothers and Jacinta O’Donnell will get that support in their home town.

The Arts Centre in Woodstock Street will, I understand, host a Sullivan Brothers concert some time in the autumn. The Arts Centre has put on a number of excellent concerts over the last three months, not all of which have attracted the audience numbers one might have expected. The Centre is a wonderful addition to the cultural outlets in Athy and is deserving of every local person’s support. If you would like to be kept informed of forthcoming events in the Arts Centre you should contact the Centre on (085) 2447221 or by email at athyarts@gmail.com and you will be given advance notice by email of whatever is planned for the Woodstock Street venue.

John Joyce, whom I never had the pleasure of meeting but with whom I corresponded some time ago, has recently written an account of the varied heritage of Graiguenamanagh. He devoted a chapter in his excellent book to ‘The Barrow Starch Works’ which he had referred to briefly in his previous book ‘Graiguenamanagh - A Town and its People’ published in 1993. The starch works was opened in 1842 by John Kelly and continued by his son William Patrick Kelly who had served as an officer in the Royal Artillery for a number of years. When he retired from the army Kelly returned to Graiguenamanagh to take charge of the Barrow Starch Works and married a Miss Lawlor from Athy in or around 1880. The business failed in 1890 and the Kellys left for England where the former Miss Lawlor died. William Kelly later remarried and while living in England began a writing career which saw the publication of several historical adventure novels which were very popular in their day. I recently acquired ‘The Cuban Treasure Island’ by William Patrick Kelly which was published in 1903 by George Routledge & Company, London. The author presented a copy of this book to his son which he inscribed ‘To Master W.F. Peer Kelly from his affectionate father the author William P. Kelly September 8th 1904’. That copy of Kelly’s book now sits on my shelves. Kelly died in 1916.

I am interested in hearing from anyone who can give me any information on the Miss Lawlor from Athy who married the former English Army Officer, William Patrick Kelly, who in the latter years of his life achieved a measure of fame and popularity as the author of several adventure novels.

Patrick Moran and the Athy Connection

2010-07-29T12:46:00.001+01:00

Seven years ago I wrote an eye on Patrick Moran, the County Roscommon man who worked in Athy some nine or ten years before he was hanged in Mountjoy Jail on 14th March 1921. Just a month before his execution John Moran (no relation) but also connected with Athy through his father William who was a native of the town was shot by the Black and Tans in Drogheda. Both men featured in the Eye on the Past No. 541 which appeared in February 2003.

Last week I attended the launch in Kilmainham Jail of May Moran’s book, ‘Executed for Ireland – the Patrick Moran Story’. Published by Mercier Press and written by Patrick Moran’s niece the book tells the story of the young man who took part in the 1916 Rising after which he was imprisoned in Knutsford and Frongoch. He continued his active involvement in the Volunteers after his release.

Born in Crossna near Boyle in County Roscommon in March 1888 Patrick Moran came to Athy in or about September 1910 after serving his time as a grocer’s assistant in Boyle. When he left Boyle he intended to work in Dublin but a job he sought in Doyle’s pub on the North side of Dublin did not materialise. How or why he turned his sights southwards towards Athy 42 miles from Dublin we do not know. Whatever the reason he took up a position as a grocer’s assistant with Stanislaus George Glynn who in 1911 was 52 years old and married to Mary Miriam Glynn from County Armagh. Glynn carried on business as a grocer, wine and spirit merchant and employed a number of people at his premises at No. 42 Duke Street, Athy. Two grocer’s assistants worked on the premises in addition to a porter/messenger who in 1911 was 19 year old Patrick Byrne. In addition there was a domestic servant employed in the house, a position then held by 20 year old Margaret Wall.

Local newspaper reports indicate that while in Athy Patrick Moran played football for the local Geraldine Football Club and as well was a member of the Catholic Young Men’s Society in Stanhope Street. He was also reported as having played an acting part in local amateur dramatics. His fellow worker in Glynns was Carlow man 28 year old Joseph O’Brien who enlisted at the start of the First World War Patrick Moran left Athy in or about July 1912 after he got a job with Doyles of Phibsboro.

May Moran in her excellent book quotes a letter which Stanislaus Glynn wrote in 1915 to Patrick Moran asking him to consider returning to work for him in Athy. In the letter Glynn wrote:-

‘Our Joe of late has a tendency to be careless about the business and I fear the tendency to get tired of constant work may lead him in a wrong direction. I find it hard to keep him from boozers’ company; he is well inclined but very easily led astray so I have decided to make a change in my assistants. We could find no men since O’Brien left for the army, so I tried girls but they are all an utter failure ..... Would you be willing to come to us, your political and other opinions coincide with our own and they will help keep Joe straight ..... The Gaelic League wants a bit of energetic organisation as it is at sixes and sevens and you are just the man to get them together again ..... If you consider this offer let me know your terms, I may say that at present trade being under the average owing to the war I could not afford to pay a big salary .....’

Patrick Moran did not return to Athy but instead stayed in Dublin where soon after joining the Irish Volunteers he was elected adjutant of D. Company Second Battalion of the Dublin Brigade. D. Company was comprised of men who worked in the bar and grocery trade. He was later a member of the Jacobs factory garrison under the command of Eamon De Valera and following the ceasefire and surrender he was imprisoned, initially in Knutsford and later in Frongoch internment camp in North Wales from where he was released on 27th July 1916. He worked in a number of different bars throughout Dublin before becoming foreman in McGees of Blackrock just a few weeks before his final arrest.

All the time he was actively involved in the Volunteer Movement and took a leading part in the events of Bloody Sunday on 22nd November 1920 when British intelligent officers were executed by raiding parties of the Volunteer Movement. May Moran has done enormous research for her book and has been able to discover Patrick Moran’s leading part in the execution of two British intelligent officers who were living in the Gresham Hotel in Dublin.

The story of Patrick Moran’s arrest and subsequent execution in Mountjoy Jail on 14th March 1921 is well recorded. What perhaps is not so well known is that Patrick Moran was a man who was familiar with this town and its people in the years prior to the First World War and who played an active part in the social life of Athy while he lived here. During his term of imprisonment in Mountjoy Jail while awaiting execution he associated with another man whose family were subsequently to have and still have links with the South Kildare town. Frank Flood, one of a number of Flood brothers who were actively involved in the Republican Movement in Dublin during the War of Independence, was also hanged in Mountjoy Jail and his brother Tom Flood subsequently came to live in Athy where he operated the Railway Hotel in Leinster Street.

This well written book should be of great interest to Athy people.

Illegal goal in 1939 Leinster semi-final

2010-07-22T12:49:00.002+01:00

Last week’s controversial goal in the Leinster final match between Meath and Louth which gave an undeserved victory to the Meath team brought back memories of a match played 71 years ago involving our own county team. The occasion was the Leinster Semi Final of 1939 when the men from Kildare togged out in Drogheda against the county men from Meath in a match which ended in even more controversy than that refereed by Martin Sludden last Sunday. Meath’s ‘victory’ this year came courtesy of an illegal injury time match winning goal from a player who fell into the goal area before throwing the ball over the line.

Roll back to the summer of 1939 and the G.A.A. pitch in Drogheda where Meath and Kildare were pitted against each other in the Leinster Semi Final of that year. Included on the Kildare team that day were Athy club players Johnny McEvoy, John Rochford and Tommy Mulhall. Meath scored their second match winning goal in the last minute of the game, despite claims that the referee had blown his whistle for a foul. The Kildare players on hearing the whistle had stopped defending their goal before the ball was thrown in the Kildare net by a Meath player. Johnny McEvoy, formerly of Woodstock Street, was the Kildare goalkeeper that day and in an interview with me many years ago he gave me his account of what happened.

Kildare player Peter Waters was fouled about 21 yards out from the Kildare goal. John Rochford retaliated and a goalmouth melee involving players from both sides resulted. The referee blew his whistle and Bill Halpin, a Meath player, threw the ball into the net in disgust. Johnny McEvoy picked up the ball and sat on it as supporters swarmed onto the pitch. A Meath supporter waived the umpire’s green flag to signify a goal. The referee placed the ball on the ground and pointed outfield so the Kildare players assumed they had got a free out. The final whistle soon followed and the Kildare players trooped off the pitch thinking they had won the match. Johnny McEvoy returned to the goalmouth area to retrieve a dental plate which he had left on the ground wrapped in a handkerchief and it was then that he discovered that the referee had awarded the goal to Meath. When he returned to the dressing room to tell his mates, in his own words ‘the Kildare team tore out but the referee was nowhere to be seen’.

The Kildare County Board lodged an objection and Athy’s District Court Clerk, Fintan Brennan, who was then Chairman of the Leinster Council, got several of the players, including Athy’s Johnny McEvoy and John Rochford to swear Affidavits which were lodged with the G.A.A. Central Council after the County’s initial objection was rejected by the Leinster Council. It was to no avail. The referee’s decision in 1939 and again in 2010 was final. Tim Clarke, the Kildare County Board Secretary, was reported in the Leinster Leader as saying, ‘We have often got bad treatment on the field from referees but never have we been robbed barefacedly of a match.’ Kildare subsequently withdrew all its teams from G.A.A. competitions for a year.

The Leinster Championship Semi Final in Drogheda on 9th July 1939 deprived Kildare of a possible victory in that year’s All Ireland. Meath went on to win the Leinster Final and only lost to Kerry in the All Ireland Final by the narrow margin of 2 points. The controversial defeat ended Johnny McEvoy’s association with his home county’s Senior Football team as having joined the Garda Siochana he decided to tog out for a Dublin team. Johnny had the distinction of securing a Senior County Dublin Championship medal in 1948 to go with the Kildare Championship medal won with Athy in 1937. He first played for his native county in November 1937 and would also play for the Dublin Senior County team during his Garda Siochana days in the capital city.

The 1939 game against Meath and the controversial goal which deprived the Kildare men of victory was brought to mind on reading in a newspaper headline which followed last week’s game ‘Controversy abounds as Meath claim title in hectic final minute’.

As in 1939 the Royal County of Meath declined to offer a replay to their opponents. I suppose this is not unexpected in a sport, which with soccer, has seen the development of unsporting behaviour by players feigning injury and fouls in order to obtain advantage over opponents. Sportsmanship is not always to be found where expected and officials and team players who rely, when it is to their advantage, on the rules and ignore the spirit of the game are in the end the losers.

A history shared

2010-07-15T12:53:00.003+01:00

Last Saturday representing Athy I joined representatives of local history societies from around the country in welcoming visitors of the Ulster Federation of History Societies to our county town of Naas. The Ulster Federation is an umbrella organisation of history societies throughout Northern Ireland and in that regard fulfils the same role as does the Federation of Local History Societies in the south. The two federations have enjoyed excellent relationships extending back beyond the dark days of the ‘troubles’ and the visit to Naas by 35 Northern Ireland local historians was part of an Urban Experience Project initiated by the two federations over 20 years ago. The Project involves exchange trips between the two federations and these annual visits, either north or south of the border, help to cement strong bonds of friendship and cultural cooperation between all their members.

Seamus Moore, the newly elected Mayor of Naas, welcomed the visitors and as he did I was mindful that Seamus’ father Michael Moore, a native of Barrowhouse, had made his home in Nás na Rí, the meeting place of the Kings, some years after his involvement in South Kildare as a member of the Carlow/Kildare I.R.A. Brigade in the War of Independence.

While waiting for the Northern Ireland visitors to arrive Seamus showed me a banner made by Watsons of Sackville Street Dublin in 1882, on which was depicted a portrait of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Lord Edward was at one time a Member of Parliament for the Borough of Athy and the banner with the words ‘God Save Ireland’ and ‘Eire go Brath’ boldly emblazoned above and below Lord Edward’s portrait was apparently a Land League banner. I understand Naas Town Council has gone to a lot of expense to preserve this important artefact from our past and their decision to do so is highly commendable. I am reminded that I have sought in vain over the years to track down a number of banners which at various times graced parades and public meetings held in Athy and elsewhere in the County of Kildare during the Land League and subsequent Home Rule periods of agitation. The Luggacurran Land League banner was traced to a pub in the Swan, but unfortunately has yet to be seen or recovered.

The fine room at the top of the Town Hall in Naas which was originally built as the town gaol in 1792 is now used at the local Council’s meeting chambers. It is a graceful room, the walls of which are adorned with paintings recording scenes from the history of Naas which was once the second town of the short grass county after Athy.

A quick guided tour of some of the more important buildings in Naas followed, of which St. David’s Church, built on the site of an earlier Celtic church in the centre of Naas, was the highlight.

After lunch more than 75 local historians from north and south of this island visited Palmerstown House, the seat of the Bourkes who were Earls of Mayo. The present house, located just outside Naas, was built in the Queen Ann style, by public subscription as a tribute to the Earl of Mayo after he was assassinated in India. The Earl’s body was returned to Ireland preserved in a barrel of rum, thereby earning him the nickname ‘the pickled earl’. His story, and that of Palmerstown House, was eloquently related to the visitors by Brian McCabe of the local history society.

I was delighted to hear from Brian that the memorial to the old Fenian John Devoy which marked his birthplace in Kill has recently been replaced near to its original site following the works on the motorway. The Devoy family originally came from Athy and Michael Devoy of Kill wrote a short history of Athy which was published in the Irish Magazine of March 1809. Michael, whom I believe may have been John Devoy’s grandfather, also wrote a history of Castledermot which was published in the May 1809 edition of the same magazine.

The visit of the Ulster Federation Members was a very enjoyable occasion and gave the Naas Local History Society members an opportunity to showcase their ancient town. I was particularly impressed by the generosity of Jim Mansfield in allowing access to his fine house at Palmerstown. There were minimum restrictions imposed on the 75 or so interested visitors as they went through almost every part of the building. It was the highlight of the day and congratulations must go to Larry Breen, National President of the Federation of Local History Societies of Ireland, who is also an active member of Naas Local History Society.

In Eye on the Past No. 541 I wrote of Patrick Moran who worked for some years as a shop assistant in Athy and who was hanged in Kilmainham Jail on 14th March 1921 for his alleged participation in the events of ‘Bloody Sunday’ 21st November 1920. Kilmainham Jail will be the venue for the launch of ‘Executed for Ireland – The Patrick Moran Story’ on Wednesday, 21st July at 7.00 p.m. The book by May Moran will be of particular interest for Athy folk.

Proud history of St. Vincents

2010-07-08T12:57:00.000+01:00

Sixteen years ago I was approached by Eddie Matthews of the Eastern Health Board and asked if I would write a history of the local hospital, St. Vincent’s. The publication was to be ready for the 150th anniversary of the hospital’s opening as a workhouse which had predated the Great Famine by just over a year. The opening of Athy Workhouse on 9th January 1844 came just in time to relieve some of the harshest effects of the famine in and around the South Kildare area.

Regrettably when I began my research I was dismayed to find that all of the Workhouse records had been destroyed. The loss of this invaluable original source material was a huge disadvantage and prevented me from giving a detailed account of the institution as I traced its transition from workhouse to County Home to its final transformation as a geriatric hospital.

Kieran Hickey who was a staff officer in Kildare County Council when I was a lowly clerical officer wrote a foreword for the history of the hospital in his capacity as Chief Executive Officer of the Eastern Health Board. He mentioned how St. Vincent’s Hospital ‘now provides caring services for all levels of society. It is right and fitting that the hospital and its current staff, lead by Sr. Peig Matron, Dr. Giles O’Neill Medical Officer and Eddie Matthews Hospital Manager should celebrate what has been achieved and look forward with confidence to the next century and a half.’

I was reminded of what Kieran Hickey wrote sixteen years ago when I heard last week of local concerns regarding the possible closure of St. Vincent’s Hospital. Apparently some sections of the hospital have been closed and further admissions have been curtailed. This could be accounted for by seasonal staff shortages, but around the same time Martin Mansergh T.D. and Minister for State issued a statement regretting the partial closure of hospital services throughout the country. While acknowledging such closures as temporary measures he inferred that other closures were inevitable having regard to the difficulty of upgrading old buildings to meet the exacting requirements of 21st century medical standards.

Alarm bells went off when I heard this explanation for it immediately raised an issue which could weigh heavily against St. Vincent’s Hospital if the ‘health and safety’ brigade were required to make decisions about the Athy hospital.

Many of the buildings housing St. Vincent’s Hospital are old, their history going back to famine times. Therein lies a possible problem if the beaucrats are of a mind to close St. Vincent’s. Not being a county town Athy has none of the services or facilities which neighbouring towns such as Naas, Portlaoise and Carlow have come to expect. St. Vincent’s Hospital is the only local facility offering services on a countywide basis. It is an excellent institution which provides caring services as required for all levels of society in the county. That, more than the age of the building should determine St. Vincent’s Hospital’s future.

St. Vincent’s is part of our history, an important link with our past. It’s early years as a workhouse from where young female inmates were sent to Australia under a State sponsored orphan emigration scheme is the less appealing part of that history. The part played by the Sisters of Mercy in the development of nursing services in the workhouse infirmary is the happier side of its history. The Sisters of Mercy began to visit patients in the infirmary every Sunday soon after they arrived in Athy in 1852. When Elizabeth Silke was appointed Matron of the workhouse in 1867 she was responsible for looking after the female inmates without any nursing assistance. Soon afterwards the Board of Guardians asked the Sisters of Mercy to take charge of the workhouse infirmary. This they did on 24th October 1873. In time their influence extended to the workhouse itself and throughout most of the 20th century the Sisters of Mercy provided from amongst their numbers successive matrons for the County Home as the workhouse was called after 1923 and St. Vincent’s Hospital as it became in the 1960s.

One of the many interesting individuals who worked in Athy Workhouse was Robert Walker who was Master of the workhouse in the last 1870s. He was later Private Secretary to T.P. O’Connor M.P., Irish Parliamentarian and author who represented Liverpool in the British House of Commons. Walker was brother of Mrs. Ann Boylan, one time principal of Barrowhouse National School whose son, Monsignor Patrick Boylan was one of Ireland’s greatest scripture scholars. Monsignor Boylan who was Professor of Eastern Languages in Maynooth College died in November 1974 while he was Parish Priest of Dunlaoghaire.

St. Vincent’s Hospital has served Athy and County Kildare well for the last 166 years. We may be called upon sooner than we think to show our appreciation for this local institution by ensuring that it is not consigned to the pages of history.

Proud History of St. Vincents

2010-07-08T10:14:00.002+01:00

Emily Square: Central to Athy's history

2010-07-01T10:17:00.002+01:00

The announcement of the imminent erection of the ’98 Memorial commissioned over 12 years by Athy Urban District Council, as it was then known, is very welcome news. I gather the Memorial will be erected in Emily Square, that fine public space in the centre of our town which over the years has been the scene of many community events and celebrations. It is appropriate that Emily Square is chosen for the ’98 Memorial because it was in that very same arena that local men suspected of involvement with the United Irishmen were tortured during the early months of 1798. Thomas Fitzgerald of Geraldine House wrote of the experience of the Athy people at that time: ‘a man of the name of Thomas James Rawson ... had every person tortured and stripped ... he would seat himself in the chair in the centre of a ring formed around the triangles, the miserable victims kneeling under the triangles until they would be spotted over with the blood of the others.’

William Farrell of Carlow corroborated Fitzgerald’s account when he wrote: ‘the triangle was put up in the public street of Athy ... the men were stripped naked, tied to the triangle and their flesh cut without mercy.’

It was also in Emily Square that the Athy Yeomanry Cavalry lead by their Captain, the earlier mentioned Thomas Fitzgerald, were stood down in May 1798 amidst claims that they were disloyal. Colonel Campbell who commanded the 9th Dragoons then stationed in the local military barracks ordered the members of the Cavalry Corps to turn out in Emily Square. There they were ordered to dismount, to lay down their arms and strip their horses of saddles and bridles. This formal disbandment of Athy Cavalry Corps was a humiliating experience for its members who were for the most part local gentleman farmers and their sons. But in those tense days little could be taken for granted, especially when the son of the Duke of Leinster, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, was himself a leader of the rebellious United Irishmen.

Athy has enjoyed a chequered history since the time the Anglo Normans travelled up the navigable River Barrow to establish a township near the site of the ancient river crossing. Numerous attacks by the Irish on the Anglo Norman settlement from which the town later developed, led to the creation of a fortress town in which a garrison was constantly stationed. Athy would remain a garrison town until the mid 19th century by which time it had survived the Black Death, Plague and the Confederate Wars.

The United Irishmen’s rebellion of 1798 marked a turning point in the political allegiances of many of the local people of Athy. The awakening of the desire for self government first identified with the founding of the United Irishmen would lie dormant for many years after the ’98 Rebellion. However, a seed once sown would never die.

It was the emergence of Sinn Fein under the leadership of its founder Arthur Griffith, a society later infiltrated and controlled by the I.R.B., which saw military action replace parliamentary politics in the push for independence. The South Kildare area figured, although not very prominently, in the events which marked the Irish War of Independence and in so doing the people of this area kept faith with the legacy of the United Irishmen of 1798.

During the 19th century famine would come and go but oppressive poverty would remain a constant companion for a large part of the local people of Athy. Enlistment overseas in the same Army which had brutally defeated their forefathers’ rebellious efforts in ’98 were for many the only means of escaping the tedium and poverty of Irish provincial town life. Those who enlisted during the 1914-18 War have in recent years received their due recognition with the unveiling of a plaque on the front of the Town Hall facing out onto Emily Square. It is only right that the same square which played such a prominent part in the events of ’98 will soon be the site of a memorial to the men and women of the Year of Rebellion.

Mary Jo O’Rourke, formerly of 21 Geraldine Road, has emailed me from the Isle of Man. In 1987 or thereabouts when she was attending Scoil Mhichil Naofa she was part of a group from the school which performed in a concert held in Dreamland which she recalls was advertised as ‘Curtain Call’. Apparently a video was taken of the concert and she is anxious to try and trace a copy of the video to show to her young daughter as one of the songs from that concert is a lullaby which she now sings to her. Can anyone help Mary Jo in her search for the video of that concert?

Unique Irish historical document

2010-06-24T10:20:00.002+01:00

I am told it weighs 20 kilogrammes. It is claimed that each and every page of the 5,000 pages of the 10 volume report provide the most detailed insight ever into any military operation in world history. The fact that it was an operation carried out on the streets of an Irish town within living memory and culminated in the death of 14 innocent persons makes the Saville report a unique Irish historical document. My postman may not have realised this as he delivered two extremely heavy parcels containing the Saville report to me this morning.

It was Sunday afternoon the 30th of January 1972 when a citizens protest march against internment without trial organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association set off from Bishops Field in the Creggan Estate, Derry intending to finish at the city's Guild Hall. Just a week earlier I had left Monagan town having spent three years there amongst people whose lives and associations were touched by border activities, both legal and illegal. During my time there, which immediately preceded the start of the “troubles” I often visited Armagh and Belfast city. As the “troubles” developed my visits became less frequent but my familiarity with those cities forged a link with Northern Ireland and Northern Ireland affairs which was never to be broken.

Imagine then my horror on hearing that the Sunday afternoon protest march had resulted in the killing of 13 men on the streets of their home town and the injuring of 15 more, one of whom later died. The tragic events of that day were to find an echo in similar murderous atrocities over the years that followed as Northern Ireland descended deeper and deeper into a frightening and frightful state of war.

“Bloody Sunday” in Irish history described the day on Sunday the 21st of November 1920 when IRA volunteers went to addresses throughout the city of Dublin to shoot, in what can only be described as a cowardly fashion, English officers and men who were believed to be intelligence officers. 14 men were shot dead that day while in bed or in their bedrooms in much the same way as cowardly Irregulars shot the two Connor Scarteen brothers in Kenmare on the 9th of September 1922 during the civil war. However, following the murderous activities of the paratroopers in Derry on the last Sunday of January 1972, that Sabbath day would thereafter be inevitably known as “Bloody Sunday”.

The Derry killings led to a storm of protest and on the following day some public institutions in the North and shops in Derry closed as catholic workers went on strike. Society in Northern Ireland was polarised on religious grounds in 1972 much more so than it is today and here in the South a national day of mourning was called for Wednesday the 2nd of February as the funerals of the 12 of those killed took place in the North.

The sense of outrage felt by so many people found expression in protest marches organised following “Bloody Sunday”. I had just joined AnCo, The Industrial Training Authority and was working in Carrisbrook House in Ballsbridge. On the national day of mourning, Wednesday 2nd February, the entire staff of AnCo led by their Director General, Jack Agnew silently marched from Ballsbridge to the British Embassy in Merrion Square. That same evening the British Embassy was burnt to the ground.

The subsequent Widgery report on the “Bloody Sunday” shootings which comprised 61 pages (compared to 5000 pages of the Saville report) concluded that shots had been fired at the British soldiers before they returned fire. Much of the credit for the reopening of the investigation into “Bloody Sunday” must go to Jane Winter, Director of British and Irish Rights Watch and Belfast solicitor Patricia Coyle whose work on unearthing documents on the events in Derry led to Professor Dermot Walsh's report 13 years ago. “Bloody Sunday Tribunal Enquiry, a resounding defeat for both truth, justice and rule of law” prompted Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to press the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair for a new enquiry. To Blair's credit he agreed and the Saville enquiry opened in Derry on the 3rd of April 1998. 12 years later a new British Prime Minister David Cameron apologised on behalf of the British nation for the “unjustifiable” killing of 14 civilians in Derry 28 years ago.

Apologies are due by many others from all sides of different conflicts in this island going back as far as the Irish War of Independence and the bitter civil war which followed. Unfortunately for many the opportunity to apologise has long gone. All that is left now is sorrow at the savagery which marked the actions of so many.

Proud history of I.C.A.

2010-06-17T10:22:00.002+01:00

The link between Athy I.C.A. and Robert Owen, the father of the co-operative movement, or co-partnership in industry might seem at first to be somewhat tenuous. Owen, who was born in 1771 in the Welsh village of Newtown, became a legend in his own lifetime, combining his success as a businessman with that of rational thinker on education and his pioneering role as social reformer. Owen, who died in 1858, influenced many people including John Vandaleur who having attended a talk given by Owen in Dublin returned home to Limerick and founded the Rahaline Co-operative Association in 1830. Within three years the Workers co-operative centered in the area around Bunratty had failed and the next stage in the development of co-operatives in Ireland would not come for another 56 years.

Horace Plunkett, son of Lord Dunsany, imbued with the ideals of Robert Owen, started the next co-operative in Ireland when he founded the Dunsany Co-operative Society. Plunkett was to devote himself to the development of the co-operative movement in Ireland and assisting him in that task was Robert Anderson whom he had chosen as the first co-operative organiser in 1889. Anderson would become a central figure in the co-operative movement in Ireland as secretary of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society.

It was the work of Horace Plunkett and an address given by the Irish writer George Russell at the A.G.M. of the I.A.O.S. in December 1909 which inspired a number of women attending that meeting to organise an Irish version of the Woman’s Co-operative Guilds which were to be found in Britain.

Mrs. Ellice Pilkington whose brother Sir Thomas Esmond was a member of the I.A.O.S. was appointed the first organiser of the Woman’s Movement which was to be called the Society of the United Irishwomen. The first branch was set up in Bree, Co. Wexford on 15th June 1910 and the national organisation was registered as a co-operative society which in its initial years was helped financially and otherwise by the I.A.O.S. and the organisers of the co-operative movement in Ireland.

The Society of the United Irishwomen changed its name in 1935 to the Irish Countrywomen’s Association. It was, by and large, perceived to be a rural organisation catering for those whose families worked on the land. In the years after the name change, town associations were formed to cater for the needs of women in Irish towns and villages.

Athy I.C.A. was founded in October 1957 when a small group of local women from the town and surrounding countryside came together in the Macra na Feirme rooms in the Town Hall. Those involved and whose names have come down to us were Eileen Condron, Carrie McDonald, Gertie Gray, Mrs. Siobhan Kingston, Mrs. McNamara of Park House and Mrs. Elizabeth Kemp of the Model School. All have now passed on, with Mrs. Siobhan Kingston being the sole survivor when the Guild celebrated its 50th anniversary three years ago. The first President of Athy I.C.A. Guild was Eileen Condron.

As a national organisation the I.C.A. campaigned for rural water schemes, rural electricity schemes and organised summer schools from 1929 onwards at different locations throughout the country. The summer camps offered the first organised adult education courses in Ireland and since 1954 the I.C.A. Adult Education College at An Grianán has provided hundreds of courses for adults. In that year An Grianán at Termonfechin, Co. Louth was given to the I.C.A. by the W.H. Kellogg Foundation of America in trust ‘for the health, recreation and welfare of the people of Ireland.’ The Kellogg Foundation gave a further grant to the I.C.A. in 1967 to help finance the building of a horticultural college for girls in Grianán. That college unfortunately closed in 2003.

It is over 40 years since I was invited to give a talk at An Grianán to a small group of women on the role of local authorities in the annual Tidy Towns Competition. I was then a very young Town Clerk of Kells in Co. Meath which had achieved a small measure of success in that competition. I can still recall that evening as it was my first time to speak at a public gathering and it showed!

Athy’s I.C.A. members now meet in the Dominican Hall and apart from raising monies for charity are actively involved in cookery lessons (Italian and Thai I’m told), line dancing, digital photography, painting and a range of other interesting activities. Commencing on 18th July the local Guild members will be putting on an exhibition in the Heritage Centre. ‘Reeling in the Years’ will be an exhibition jointly organised by Athy and Fontstown Guilds to celebrate the centenary of the I.C.A. and offers an opportunity for the younger generation to see how life was lived in years gone by.

From Robert Owen to Horace Plunkett to Ellice Pilkington to Eileen Condron and the other ladies of Athy of 1957 there is a link which stretches back four if not five generations. The co-operative movement, the seed of which was first sown by Robert Owen and nurtured on Irish soil by Horace Plunkett, blooms today in the work and achievements of the members of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association.

Passing of Kevin Maher

2010-06-10T09:18:00.001+01:00

I was in Hay-on-Wye in the upper Wye Valley on the borders of England and Wales when news reached me of the death of Kevin Maher. Kevin was the subject of a previous Eye on the Past (No. 633) when I wrote of his immense contribution to the sporting and social history of Athy over many decades. A son of the legendary ‘Bapty’ Maher, Kevin, the sports man, graced the local golfing scene as the winner of the Captain’s Prize in Athy on two successive years, as well as the winner of numerous competitions over the years. He was a member of the Athy Golf Club Committee since 1947 and in later years was a trustee of the club. His sporting prowess extended to rugby and it was here that he suffered perhaps his greatest sporting disappointment when Athy lost the 1948 Provincial Towns Cup to Dundalk. The only score of that game was a penalty kicked by Frank Johnson for Drogheda, who for many years sat as a District Justice in Naas and Newbridge.

Kevin played a prominent part in the formation of the local Old Folks Committee and was responsible for the Committee’s subsequent acquisition of No. 82 Leinster Street which for many years served as the Old Folks Centre. A veterinary surgeon by profession, Kevin was elected Chairman of the Veterinary Benevolent Fund in 1981, a position which he continued to occupy for the next 23 years.

A gracious man, Kevin was intensely interested in his native town and I can recall many occasions when he wrote to me or contacted me by phone to clarify some matter or other the subject of one of my articles. His passing is a sad blow for his family and our sympathy goes to his wife Molly and to the Maher family.

I have been visiting the attractive market town of Hay-on-Wye, known simply by locals as ‘Hay’, for close on thirty years. My first visit was prompted by a television programme on the town and the role of Richard Booth in creating a book town out of the decaying economy of a Welsh market town. Booth opened his first book shop in Hay in 1961 in what was the old fire station. He was then just 23 years old and his success in acquiring libraries and book collections and selling on the books encouraged other book dealers to join him in Hay. Six or seven years later Booth purchased the town cinema and converted it into what was then and may still be the largest secondhand book shop in Britain. Today Hay-on-Wye boasts no less than 28 secondhand book shops in a town with a population of about 1,750.

The town’s success story, originally founded on book sales, has now been further strengthened with the continuing success of the Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts. First started in 1988 the festival which runs from the last week of May to the first week in June attracts an enormous number of world class writers. It was said by Bill Clinton to be ‘the Woodstock of the mind’, a claim which thousands of visitors who attend the festival each year would support. To the extraordinary attraction of the Welsh book town must be added the unique attractiveness of the independently owned local shops which offer a range and diversity of products and goods not likely to be matched by any of the international conglomerates which are to be found today in every shopping centre in Britain and Ireland.

Hay-on-Wye, a onetime fortified town on the Marches of Wales as Athy was on the Marches of Kildare, has become the book capital of Britain. It is twinned with the Belgium book town of Redu which, encouraged by Richard Booth’s success in the 1960s, started up its own secondhand book shop enterprises in 1984. Books have energised Hay’s economy, a fact which I can confirm having witnessed the enormous improvements in the town during my visits over the last thirty years.

When I visit Hay I am always reminded of Herbert Armstrong, the local Solicitor who was hanged for the murder of his domineering wife in 1922. Armstrong, of diminutive stature, a retired Army officer and a member of the local Masonic Lodge, attempted to poison another local solicitor whose offices were directly opposite Armstrongs. The failed attempt prompted police to exhume Mrs. Armstrong’s body and it was found that she had died of arsenic poisoning. Armstrong was tried, convicted and hanged in nearby Gloucester Prison on 31st May 1922. His offices and those of his lucky colleague are still operating in Hay as solicitors’ practices.

If you ever get the opportunity to visit Hay-on-Wye seize the chance to enjoy one of the great little towns of either Britain or Ireland, even if arsenic and solicitors do not find favour with you.

Eye 913

2010-06-03T16:35:00.000+01:00

‘And we moor, we don’t park’. The information came as canal boat 4B glided to a halt at the Ardreigh mooring following a short trip up the Canal, as well as the Barrow, to mark the latest fitting out of the 98 year old former by-traders boat.

It was a balmy summer evening when the boat’s current owners, Eunice and Cliff Jeffers with a few friends on board manoeuvred the former turf boat away from Ardreigh in the direction of the Railway Bridge and beyond. For many months past I had been a daily interested onlooker as the boat was revamped and its housing reshaped while it was moored in the Canal cutting just beyond my end garden wall at Ardreigh. The work progressed slowly but steadily as Cliff, oft times alone, but occasionally with help, enthusiastically refitted one of the remaining by-boats on the Irish Canal system.

Canal boat 4B was built in Portadown for Sir John Purser Griffith of the Leinster Carbonised Turf Company in Turraun, Co. Offaly, primarily to draw turf from the midland bog. It was fitted with a 15hp Bollinder engine which powered the 20 ton boat, with a capacity to carry 40 tons of turf. By-traders boats, as they were called, were manned by two crew members and 4B had Joe Daly as its first skipper, with Jim Bracken as his assistant. Turf deliveries to Dublin in the years immediately prior to the 1916 Rebellion and for many years thereafter, was its principal trade. On return journeys Guinness and a host of other goods formed the cargo as the 4B wound its way through the Canal locks which had been operational long before railways and tarmacadam roadways were thought of.

Just as war in Europe erupted in 1939 the boat’s ownership changed and James Doyle of Allenwood, known as ‘Big Jim Doyle’ became its new skipper. He used the 4B during the Second World War to bring turf from the Midlands to Dublin. At the end of the war the boat was acquired by Jack Gill, a canal boatman who already operated another by boat, the 31B. It was in the 1950s when publican Jack O’Neill purchased the 4B that it began to make regular trips on the lower Barrow navigation. It was then used to transport timber and it was maybe at that time that the 4B first was seen in this area.

It continued to be used commercially, even after the closure of the freight carrying business on the Grand Canal in 1959. Purchased by Carroll brothers of Carrick-on-Suir the 4B was used to draw washed sand from the riverbed at Mooncoin. I am told by Eunice Jeffers that the sand was taken from the riverbed at low tide and loaded into the 4B which brought it to Carrick-on-Suir where it was stockpiled for subsequent sale to local builders.

After 58 years of constant use as a cargo boat the 4B was sold and over the next few years was converted for use as a leisure boat. The Bollinder engine was replaced with a Thames Trader lorry engine and the Johnson family brought the now revamped 4B onto the Shannon River where it was used for almost 30 years. In 2001 the boat returned to the Grand Canal and was based at Hazelhatch, Co. Kildare where it was used as a house boat until purchased four years ago by Eunice and Cliff Jeffers.

The 4B travelled the Canal waters last week as far as the dry dock before returning and moving upstream of the Barrow as far as the former Bachelors factory. It was a journey which brought the boat through two Canal locks and under two bridges, built over 200 years ago but which still showcase the skill and ingenuity of 18th century engineers. The lock walls examined up close as the 4B was manoeuvred in place to move up and down the Canal system reminded me of the extraordinary skills of the 18th century stonemasons who cut and shaped the limestone stones which lined those walls. Their size and weight held the carved stones in place without the need for any visible form of mortar, while the sheer scale of the work in digging out the Canal system by hand over two centuries ago left me full of admiration.

Passing under Augustus Bridge I saw for the first time the steel plating, now rusting, which was put in place in the 1890s when the previously humpbacked 18th century bridge was replaced by a more traffic friendly bridge to ease the passage of farmers carts travelling to the towns fairs and markets.

On the River Barrow we passed under the bridge erected two years before the 1798 Rebellion by the ‘Knight of the Trowel James Delahunty’. There is an inscription on the river side of the bridge facing Carlow which I could not read. Is there anyone out there with a good camera who might be able to take for me a photograph of the inscription which unfortunately appears to have weathered very badly?

A wonderful trip on the Athy waterways ended for this land lubber with the quote at the beginning of the article. I remembered both with immense pleasure.

Eye 912

2010-05-27T16:49:00.002+01:00

Last week our community was attacked in a most mindless and vicious way when attempts were made to burn down St. Michael’s Parish Church. The culprit, and I suspect it was someone acting alone as it was highly unlikely that the criminal stupidity extended to more than one person, failed in his/her attempt to destroy what the people of Athy had worked so hard for over many years. It was Fr. John McLaughlin, the senior curate, who in the early 1950s first announced plans to replace the existing Church building erected almost 150 years previously. That Church which had served generations of Athy folk was built in 1808 on what was described at the time as ‘swampy ground’. It had formed part of the commons of Clonmullin which from medieval times had been the local commonage enjoyed by the people of Athy for grazing animals. The present Church was opened on 19th April 1964.

The first Catholic Church erected in the town following the Reformation was located in Chapel Lane on the left hand side as one approached from Leinster Street. It was built at a time when the main street of Athy was still called High Street, having acquired that name hundreds of years previously. The Duke of Leinster’s family who were the largest property owners in the town would give their names to the streets of our ancient town following the extension of the Grand Canal to Athy in 1791.

I believe the Parish Church in Chapel Lane to have been built about 1720 as the Penal Laws began to be relaxed. The date of its erection is not noted anywhere that I can find and I give the year 1720 as official reports for 1731 noted that two priests had charge of Athy Chapel. The Dominicans, who had been banished from Athy over 30 years previously, would appear to have returned to the town in 1735 when records show that a Prior had been appointed to head up the Athy Friary.

Unlike the Church building programme which followed the granting of Catholic Emancipation in 1829, Church buildings of the early 18th century were not ostentatious buildings and were for the most part confined to side streets and out of the way places so as not to draw adverse attention to Catholic worship. Chapel Lane presumably acquired its name from the siting there of the Parish Church and the name remained long after the Church itself was no more.

Athy’s Parish Church in Chapel Lane, unlike many of its counterparts throughout the country, survived the civil unrest of 1798. However, two years later it was torched and burned to the ground in an arson attack on the night of 7th March 1800.

Three local men were arrested and lodged in White’s Castle Gaol on the following 14th April. Their imprisonment was not due to any involvement in the burning of the Church but arose from their alleged attempt to implicate a soldier of the South Cork Militia and two local yeomen in the attack on St. Michael’s Church. Timothy Sullivan, a member of the South Cork Militia which was then stationed in Athy, had sworn information against them. He claimed that he was on security duty ‘at the gate next to Mrs. Dooley’s house on the night the Chapel of Athy was burned.’ Continuing he swore that he was solicited by James Noud and later by Fr. Patrick Kelly and Thomas Fitzgerald of Geraldine to swear against John McKeon of the Cork Militia and two local men John Drill and John Willock. Sullivan’s sworn Affidavit led to the arrest and imprisonment of Noud and two other local men Patrick Dooley and Joseph Hendrecan. What eventually happened to them I cannot say.

The Parish Priest, Fr. Maurice Keegan, filed a compensation claim and received a payment of £300 from the British government. Collections were taken up for several years in the town of Athy and realised the sum of £7,100 which with the compensation already paid financed the building of a new Church on a swampy site believed to have been donated by the Duke of Leinster. It was built in 1808 and remained in continuous use until 1960.

The events of March 1800 were fortunately not repeated in May 2010 and the second St. Michael’s Parish Church on the same site at the edge of Clonmullin Commons will hopefully continue for quite a long time yet to serve as our Parish Church.

Two weeks ago I posed the question as to the name of the Athy man who held the position of Provost of Trinity College long before the late Bill Watts, formerly of Barrack Yard. The correct answer was Richard Baldwin and it came from a reader in Australia. Mike Robinson, an old school friend of mine, contacted me by email with the answer. I will hopefully write of Provost Baldwin in a future article.

Eye 912

2010-05-24T14:42:00.002+01:00

Eye 911

2010-05-24T14:40:00.002+01:00

A review of the Development Plan for the town of Athy has commenced and last week a meeting was arranged for the Carlton Abbey Hotel as part of the public consultation process required under Irish planning legislation. Arranged by Athy Town Council with the assistance of planning officials from Kildare County Council it drew a disappointingly small response from the local people who will be directly affected by what’s included in the Development Plan and by the planning decisions which will result. The local attendance just about exceeded the number of Council officials at the meeting, but surprisingly not a single elected member of the Town Council attended.

Planning is a subject which excites, alarms, disturbs and occasionally pleases or satisfies, but not always in equal measure and seldom, if ever, does one find the entire community sharing the same views on any planning issue. It is surprising therefore to see such a lethargic public response to the well publicised notices of the meeting which was organised specifically as an integral part of the consultation process for reviewing the Town Development Plan.

The same week as the planning meeting was held, Kildare County Council erected a modified version of the Dublin ‘spire’ in Emily Square prompting an enormous degree of discussion and dissatisfaction amongst Athy people. Seldom have I met so many who expressed themselves as unhappy with the Athy ‘spire’ and who seemed anxious to know my views on the matter ‘given that Athy is a Heritage town’. My non committal response probably surprised many, for I am quite frankly less than enamoured of the Heritage town label being used as grounds for justifying one’s opposition to any type of development in the town. As for the ‘spire’ itself, like its bigger Dublin brother it is in my view an ugly intrusion into the town centre streetscape.

Given the earlier mentioned public consultation on the revision of the Town Development Plan it was surprising to find that no consultation whatsoever took place with the Town Council before Kildare County Council erected the ‘spire’ in Emily Square. As Athy Town Council and Kildare County Council are two separate and distinct corporate bodies it is reasonable to assume that the permission of the Town Council would be sought before Kildare County Council erected anything on a public open space within the functional area of the other local authority. I believe no such permission was sought or obtained – so much for local democracy.

Returning to the planning consultation meeting the Heritage town issue again raised its head, this time in the context of its possible deterrent effect on the development of the town of Athy. A lazy interpretation I felt of the real causes of the town’s ills.

Athy’s major problem is due solely to the town father’s failure to provide a road infrastructure capable of taking heavy goods vehicles and all the through traffic away from the retailing centre of the town. If the long awaited Southern by-pass was in place the independent retailers on the main street would be encouraged to develop a town shopping experience to rival anything offered by shopping centres in adjoining towns. The Southern Distribution Route would also help create better opportunities for industrial development than is now possible with the current traffic gridlocked streets. Athy needs industry, particularly so having regard to the apparent likelihood of Minch Nortons succumbing to corporate ‘plundermania’, which as in the case of the Irish sugar industry sees more financial advantage in closing factories and importing goods rather than employing local manpower in manufacturing.

The Town Development Plan needs to address not only the traffic issue but also how the planning process for Athy can best serve the local community’s needs for industrial development and improved retailing facilities in the town. The future for retailing in Athy in my view is best served by the development and improvement of independent shops in the town centre rather than on supermarket developments on the outskirts of Athy. There are many other matters affecting the future of Athy which need to be addressed in the new Development Plan, only one of which I will mention. It is the urgent need for a coherent plan for the development of the town’s waterways and trackways to maximise their potential use by locals and visitors alike.

The building of the Southern Distribution Route coupled with a parking policy which encourages shoppers to shop in Athy will provide the impetus for the regrowth of the town retailing centre. The road is vital but even more so is an imaginative approach to encouraging the development of the towns commercial, industrial and cultural needs for the benefit of all, making Athy a better place in which to live and work.

I understand that the Town Council will be accepting submissions on the Town Development Plan up to 27th May.

Eye 910

2010-05-24T14:32:00.003+01:00

A ‘Cultural Desert’ is how Athy was once described to me. There may have been an element of truth in that claim at a time when the town, having lost its cinema and its Town Hall ballroom, was also regretting the closure of Dreamland. It was that barn of a building on the Kilkenny Road which brought so much joy into the lives of the younger generation of Athy folk in the 60s and the 70s. A cultural oasis it was not, but somehow the Showband scene in which Athy’s Dreamland played such a prominent part was all we needed in those far off days to live out our dreams and brighten lives which were played out in the relatively unsophisticated Ireland of the 1960s.

Nowadays our lives have changed. Our expectations are much higher than they were 40 or so years ago. We demand a greater variety and a range of leisure activity than ever before and Athy which has always boasted some of the finest field sport facilities in the county of Kildare has of recent times come to life insofar as cultural pursuits are concerned. The ‘cultural desert’ began to retreat when Athy was designated a Heritage Town and obtained Bord Failte finance to develop the ground floor of the old Market House and Town Hall as a heritage centre. This development allowed what was previously an underused building of character and of no little architectural merit located in a prime location in the centres of the town to host lectures, exhibitions and festivals including the Shackleton Autumn School and the annual Medieval Festival.

In recent weeks we have witnessed the opening of the newly formed Athy Film Club based in the fine 60 seater auditorium in the newly built Athy College and the opening of the Community Arts Centre in Woodstock Street. The ‘cultural desert’ has finally disappeared and Athy can now boast a range of activities to meet the most exacting of local demands. As I write a piano recital by concert pianist Seiko Tsukomoto is scheduled for Friday night in the Arts Centre and over the next few weeks the Centre will host a series of concerts, performances and recitals, all of which are deserving of support.

On May Day the Community Arts Centre hosted an afternoon series of lectures on the development of Trade Unionism amongst the agricultural workers of South Kildare which was followed by an evening of songs and story by an American Professor of Literature who is based in England. Will Kaufman gave a wonderful rendition of some of Woody Guthrie’s songs interlaced with an invigorating and instructive commentary on American history of the 1930s and ‘40s. It proved to be one of the best performances I have enjoyed this or last year.

The Athy Heritage Centre is moving towards achieving museum status and when this happens the Centre will hopefully be able to display material, particularly artefacts found over the years in the South Kildare area, which are presently in storage in the National Museum in Dublin. If and when Museum status is granted it will represent a major advancement for the town of Athy.

The Heritage Centre, the Arts Centre and the Cinema Club could not and cannot survive without your support so this gentle reminder to all readers to make use of these great cultural local outlets whenever you can.

I learned of the recent death of Bill Watts, former Provost of Trinity College, whose early days were spent in Athy where he attended the Model School. I first met Bill some years ago, following which I wrote an Eye on the Past on the Athy man, whom I then believed, had been the only man from the South Kildare town to head up Ireland’s oldest and most famous university. In his autobiography published about a year and a half ago Bill devoted a chapter to his youthful life in Athy and it was at the launch of the book in the Long Library of Trinity College that I last met him. His passing is much regretted.

Incidentally I have recently come across another Athy man who also held the position of Provost of Trinity College. A copy of Volume III of Eye on Athy’s Past book to the first reader who can give me that man’s name.

The local Lions Club opened its Saturday bookshop at Leinster Street on Saturday. It will be open for the sale of second hand books each Saturday from 12 – 5pm for the foreseeable future. Used books can also be donated for re-sale, with all proceeds going to local charities.

Eye 909

2010-05-24T14:28:00.001+01:00

In the Dorset town of Tolpuddle there is celebrated each year a festival to commemorate the sacrifices made by 6 farm labourers whose courageous stand against their bosses is often credited with the birth of the English trade union movement. Their stories are similar in many ways to that of their Irish counterparts although a few decades would pass before the Irish farm labourers would feel confident and strong enough to take on the landlord class.

In 1831/32 there was a general call amongst the English working classes for an increase in wages and the labouring men of Tolpuddle successfully negotiated, or so they had believed, a wage of 10 shillings per week. The agreement came to nought when the farmers reduced the wages, initially to 9 shillings, then 8 shillings and finally 7 shillings, threatening to reduce it even lower to 6 shillings per week. The men agreed to form what they called an Agricultural Labourers Friendly Society but was in affect a trade union in which each member took an oath. It was the taking of the oath which led to their downfall, oath taking being a crime punishable by transportation. Six Tolpuddle villagers were arrested and tried at nearby Dorchester Crown Court on the charge of administering and being bound by secret and unlawful oaths under an act passed in 1797. This act had been passed to deal specifically with the naval mutiny of that year but it was now used by the landlords of Dorset to entrap and punish their farm labourers.

It is interesting to note that 5 of the 6 charged were practising Methodist, 3 of them being lay Methodist preachers. Their leader was George Loveless, a well known local preacher aged 37 years, a married man with 3 small children. His brother James was 25 years old, had a wife and 2 children who was also a lay Methodist preacher. Thomas Standfield another local preacher was aged 44 years and the oldest of those charged. He was married to a sister of the Loveless brothers and had 6 children. Another man charged was John Standfield aged 21 years while James Brine, the youngest at 20 years was the only non-Methodist in the group. James Hammett another lay preacher aged 22 and married with one child was the sixth member.

Packed juries so familiar in the Irish legal system of the 19th century were also a common enough feature of English law enforcement and before a packed jury and a hostile Judge the inevitable verdict was obtained. All were found guilty and sentenced to 7 years transportation and within a month or so they were on convict ships sailing from Portsmouth destined for New South Wales and Van Diemens land. No doubt their fellow passengers included many Irish men and women who for a wide ranging series of petty offences suffered the same faith as the Tolpuddle men – 7 years transportation. Their conviction caused protests throughout England and the Government were forced to give the Tolpuddle farm labourers, by now in Australia and Van Diemens land, a free pardon after a period of two years.

They were allowed to return to England where they remained for some time before 5 of them emigrated to Canada. James Hammett alone remained on in Tolpuddle where he died in the local workhouse in 1891.

The men from Tolpuddle have been honoured as martyrs for trade unionism because their trial and punishment, no different than that suffered by many others, came at a time when trade unionism was finally emerging as a powerful antidote to the influence of the landlord and ruling classes. The cause of the Tolpuddle martyrs was seen as a defence of the right of the working man to freely and legally combine and form trade unions. The Tolpuddle martyrs were then and remain today symbols of a struggle which was to be played out through the length and breadth of England, Scotland and Wales and would somewhat belatedly cross the Irish sea to empower their Irish counterparts in their uneven struggle against poverty and deprivation.

Eye 908

2010-05-24T12:51:00.003+01:00

For an Athy person Barrowhouse is synonymous with the I.R.A. campaign during the War of Independence for the name conjures up images of an ambush which saw the tragic death of two young men from the Barrowhouse area. The Barrowhouse ambush has become part of the folklore of South Kildare and sustains perhaps Athy and district’s most tangible claim to have played its part in the fight for Irish freedom.

Barrowhouse is our next door neighbour and even though it lies across the County border of Leix it is forever linked with the town of Athy. The connection owes as much to the short distance between the two as it does to the vagrancies of Irish church history which places the County Laois townland within the dioceses of Dublin as part of the parish of St. Michael’s Athy. A short distance away its near neighbour Ballyadams is in the diocese of Kildare and Leighlin.

How Barrowhouse on the west bank of the Gaelic Irish side of the River Barrow in medieval times came to be included in the Dublin diocese is a mystery. The Church of St. Mary’s, the only Chapel of Ease within the parish of St. Michaels, is reputed to have been built in the 1820s on a site donated by a Miss Fennell who lived in a thatched cottage to the left of the church. She would later leave her entire 15 acre holding to the local church. St. Mary’s, built in anticipation of the granting of Catholic emancipation, was the post penal law replacement for a church at Tankardstown which in pre-reformation days served as the local church for the people of Barrowhouse and Tankardstown. In Tankardstown graveyard today there can still be found some remains of that ancient church.

Soon after the building of the church at Barrowhouse work began on providing a small schoolhouse and it is believed that the building was completed in 1830. The school site had also been donated by Miss Fennell. Consisting of a large rectangular room the schoolhouse remained in use until a new school building was provided in 1998.

The first teacher in Barrowhouse is believed to have been a Hugh O’Connell and he was followed in later years by George Carmichael, John Fleming, Mr. J. Powell and Mr. and Mrs. J. Boylan, whose son was the eminent scholar and theologian Monsignor Patrick Boylan. The future Monsignor attended Barrowhouse School, as did another cleric, Rev. J.J. Malone who spent his priestly life in Australia. Fr. Malone was a writer and a poet and one of his better known poems was ‘The Old White Washed Schoolhouse of Shanganamore’ It was included in his book of poems ‘Wild Briar and Wattle Blossoms’ published in Melbourne in 1914 which carried a photograph of the old school. It included these lines,

‘I looked up the roll for the playmates of old -
Some were lying ‘neath the grass in the chapel-yard mould,
Some were tilling the fields where their childhood had flown,
And the roof that had sheltered their sires was their own;
Some had tempted the deep, and afar o’er the foam
Eat the bread of the stranger and hungered for home;
Some had followed the flag for the battlefield’s joy,
And the blare of the trumpet would madden the boy;
Some scrambled to fortune, some climbed unto fame,
And pawned their heart’s love to the lust of a name.
But the dead and the living came back to me there,
And the child sat again ‘mongst the children that were;
And the world of enchantment that swam from my ken,
Like a lost planet, rose in its glory again.
For memory, the wizard with magical power,
Flung around me the past, and I stood at that hour
By the well-spring of life and its fountain of lore,
In the old whitewashed schoolhouse of Shanganamore.’

The old whitewashed schoolhouse was closed by the Department of Education in 1975 and the two teachers, Eileen O’Connor, school principal and Frances Kelly were transferred to the newly opened school at Ballyroe. The proud people of Barrowhouse rallied to save their school and like the people of Dunquin in County Kerry whose school was also closed around the same time they kept the school open, paying the teachers out of their own pockets. Ignatius Brennan and Bernie Gibbons were employed and paid by the local community to keep Barrowhouse school open. In the face of the community’s commitment the Department of Education decided in 1976 to reopen the Barrowhouse School and Miss O’Connor and Mrs. Kelly were transferred back to their original positions. When Miss O’Connor retired in 1985 Gerry Mulholland was appointed principal and after many years campaigning a new school was built on a site adjoining the old school. The new school was opened in October 1998 with 44 pupils on the roll book and two teachers.

Barrowhouse school today has 78 pupils and three teachers, in addition to a special needs assistant, a resource teacher and a learning support teacher. The increase in pupil numbers has necessitated the building of an extension to the school and last Saturday Bishop Eamon Walsh blessed and officially opened that extension. Mrs. Pauline Lawlor who was appointed principal last September and Eibhlís Candy and Aoife Brennan and the rest of the Barrowhouse school staff shared in the delight of the local people in reaching yet another important milestone in the proud history of Barrowhouse community.

With the recent opening of the Community Arts Centre at Woodstock Street there is a cultural reawakening in our town. At different periods in its long history Athy was known as an Anglo Norman town, a fortress town, a settler’s town and a garrison town, but now with its various festivals including last weekend’s Medieval Festival Athy is fast becoming a centre for community art activities. Coming up is the Mayday celebrations scheduled for the Arts Centre sponsored by S.I.P.T.U. Starting at 2.00 p.m. on Saturday 1st May there will be a series of talks/lectures on labour history in South Kildare, followed by a concert in the evening. It should prove to be a most interesting event.

Eye 907

2010-05-24T12:46:00.003+01:00

The Kildare County Show offices will be opened at Leinster Street, Athy in premises which in recent years was home to Gerry O’Sullivan’s video business. Courtesy of the present owners Raggett Builders and the County Show Committee the premises will also be shared on Saturdays with Athy Lions Club. This voluntary charitable organisation has been operating in Athy since 1971 and will hold its second hand book sale on the premises each Saturday from 12noon until 5pm commencing on 8th May.

The Lions Club Book Sale has in the past been an annual event held over a weekend and has always been welcomed by many local people who enjoy reading. For a few Saturdays commencing on Saturday 8th May the Lions Book Sale will be held in the Leinster Street premises and as in the past Club members would welcome donations of paperbacks or hardback books of any description.

Over the weekdays the County Show Offices will be open in the same premises to provide information and help for anyone willing to book exhibition space or enter any of the events scheduled for the County Agriculture Show on 20th June. The Kildare County Show is fast approaching its centenary and it has gone from strength to strength since its recent revival following a lapse of some years. The colourful event has enjoyed a great following, not only by the rural communities but also by the people of Athy town who take immense pride in what is one of rural Ireland’s finest agricultural shows.

The co-operation between the Agricultural Show Committee and the local Lions Club is a fine example of community action and the addition, albeit for a temporary period, of a second hand book shop amongst the shopping experiences on the main street of the town will be most welcome.

Amongst the recent donations of books to the Lions Club was a signed copy of John Minihan’s photographic essay on Athy and its people which was published in 1996. ‘Shadows from the Pale’ with an introduction by Irish writer Eugene McCabe is a book of photographs taken by John Minihan in Athy over a 35 year period. The photographs of local people and buildings were exhibited throughout the world and evoked a highly positive response, including a claim by Harold Hobson, the noted critic, that Minihan’s photos were ‘sublime’.

‘Shadows from the Pale’ is a most important photographic record of our town and the book signed by John Minihan will be available for sale with all proceeds going to local charities. Since the publication of the book 14 years ago I have never come across a copy of the book for sale in any book shop in Ireland or England and so this copy presents a unique opportunity to acquire an extremely rare publication. The book is offered for sale to the highest bidder and given that a local charity will benefit from the sale proceeds I hope that there will be a generous response. Anyone willing to put a bid on this unique book can contact me or else call to the book sales office on Leinster Street on any Saturday from 12 noon until 5.00 p.m. commencing 8th May. The book will be sold to the person making the highest bid and bids will be received up to 5.00 p.m. on Saturday 15th May next.

There will be lots of other interesting books on sale at very reasonable prices at the Lions book shop. One book which however will not be on the shelves is one which I purchased in a second hand book shop in Charing Cross Road, London a few weeks ago. ‘Maces, Swords and Other Insignia of Offices of Irish Corporations’ was published in 1898 by the Arts and Crafts Society of Ireland in a limited run of 50 copies for presentation by the author. It was a reprint with additions and corrections from the journal of the Arts and Crafts Society of Ireland Volume 1 No. 2 and dealt chiefly with maces, swords and office insignia exhibited in the Society’s exhibition held in Dublin in 1895.

My interest in the book stemmed from the extensive coverage given to the Athy mace which was described as ‘one of the handsomest maces in Ireland’. I have previously written of the Athy mace in Eye No. 749 but much of the detailed information in the recently acquired book was not then available to me. The author is generous in his praise of the 18th century mace which in 1898 was to be found in Carton House, then the residence of the Duke of Leinster. He described it as ‘a magnificent specimen of Irish works in the middle of the last century and will probably be regarded as the finest of its kind.’

The mace had several Dublin hallmarks, including a small ‘w’ being the mark of Dublin silversmith John Williamson who made the mace. It was presented by James Earl of Kildare on 29th September 1746 to the Borough of Athy. He had succeeded to the Kildare Earldom following the death of his father in 1744 having served as a Member of Parliament for Athy for three years previously. He was later created the first Duke of Leinster. Interestingly he was father to Lord Edward Fitzgerald and to William the Second Duke of Leinster whose name is recalled in the main streets of Athy, William, Duke and Leinster.

On the rim around the head of the mace is engraved, ‘This Mace presented to John Butler Esq. by the Corporation of Athy – Nov. 1841’. Butler was admitted as one of the twelve burgesses of Athy in 1822 and served as Town Sovereign in 1833 and again in 1841 when Athy Corporation was dissolved. From his son Thomas the Athy mace was purchased by the Duke of Leinster in January 1876. I had always believed that Rev. F. Trench, the local rector, was the last Sovereign of Athy Borough but the presentation of the mace to Butler would tend to cast doubt on this. The Athy mace was sold by Sothebys in London in 1982 and a London silversmith outbid the then County Librarian Sean O’Conchubhair who had been authorised by the then County Manager Gerry Ward to bid up to 10,000 pounds for the unique artefact of local history. It was later sold to an American collector who presented it to the Museum of Art in San Antonio in Texas where it is now on permanent exhibition.

Eye 906

2010-05-24T12:42:00.001+01:00

I travelled on the new road leading from Gallowshill to the M9 motorway over the Easter weekend and marvelled at the previously unseen landscapes which the changing geography of the district has now opened up for us. The previously circuitous route via Shanrath and Foxhill leading to the village of Ballitore has been replaced with a direct route which leaves what was once the meandering track way of medieval man and beast, like a modern day castaway. Almost, but not quite superfluous, the ancient roadway now serves as a way of passage to dwelling houses which over the decades sprang up amidst the quietness of a rural setting.

The geography of this part of South Kildare has been changed in much the same way as the original road from Athy to Dublin was changed two hundred years or so ago to give us the straight stretches of roadway on either side of the Moat of Ardscull two hundred years or so ago. The old Dublin Road ran a few hundred yards to the east of the Moat but why it was changed I do not know. As the old road approached Athy it passed through the lands of Gallowshill, as did its 18th century replacement and as still does the new 21st century roadway.

Gallowshill was then a much more important part of the town’s geography than it is today. As the name confirms it was the site of the town’s gallows which stood as a permanent reminder of the fate which awaited those who infringed the law. Property rights in the 17th and 18th centuries and earlier were far more important than the right to life and the death penalty was applied rigorously for what might now appear to have been the most minor of offences. The path to Gallowshill was a well trodden one as the unfortunate miscreants were brought to the public place of execution where afterwards their bodies were left on the gallows as a deterrent to others.

A decade or so ago when excavations were being carried out on sandpits at Gallowshill a number of skeletal remains were found. In all probability these were the remains of some unfortunates who breathed their last on the town gallows at Gallowshill. Now as we approach the new Gallowshill roundabout we can be forgiven for overlooking the history of a place which in another age struck fear and loathing in the hearts of so many. Its story may never be fully known.

On another side of the town, this time out on the Carlow Road, there remains another new roadway awaiting completion. The Ardreigh bypass, which was the subject of much comment after the costly rediscovery of the medieval village of Ardreigh, will hopefully be finished before the year is out. In the meantime the archaeologists who spent so much time and money on excavating the Ardreigh site have provided a multi volume preliminary report on their findings.

The findings indicated that the Ardreigh site was of regional and possibly national importance. As in Gallowshill where the road alignment was changed over the centuries, it was clear that the medieval village of Ardreigh was served by a road which ran to the east of the present roadway.

A quite enormous amount of medieval material and artefacts was unearthed at Ardreigh during the archaeological excavations which commenced in 2000 and initially lasted for just over three years. The site was not worked on again until 2007 and was finally completed approximately a year later. In addition to medieval material the site also gave up evidence of prehistoric life, including a Neolithic stone axe head, as well as several sherids of prehistoric pottery and flint tools. One of the most important finds on the excavated site was an intact late Bronze Age pot. The findings all point to the Ardreigh site being a settlement dating from prehistoric through to medieval times.

The existing graveyard at Ardreigh was always assumed to have been the more modern successor of an ancient burial ground and the finding of nearly 1300 skeletal remains outside the eastern boundary wall of the graveyard confirms that the commonly held belief was indeed correct. The ‘Lost’ graveyard would appear to have held an unusually large number of child skeletons, an obvious indication of the high mortality rate in medieval times. Where however was the explanation for the five skeletons found buried outside the medieval graveyard boundary? Three skeletons were buried in the same grave which might indicate individuals executed for some criminal offence or other. The traditional Christian practice of burying corpses on their backs with their heads to the west and their eyes to the east was practiced during the life of the Ardreigh settlement. Incidentally it is a practice which was and is still followed in Old St. Michael’s cemetery but not in new St. Michaels where corpses are buried in a north south orientation.

The finding of the remains of large lime kilns, lime storage pots and industrial hearths, together with corn drying kilns, fragments of quern stones and the remains of some medieval structures points to Ardreigh having been the site of a substantial settlement. Its importance in terms of Irish archaeology awaits the outcome of further studies including carbon dating and Ardreigh may well prove to have had an early Christian existence. No matter what further findings are made Ardreigh has provided a unique collection of artefacts which adds enormously to the heritage resources of the area. The concern must be that those artefacts can eventually be restored to this area to help us redefine and clarify our prehistoric and medieval past.

The skeletal remains which were removed from the site for analysis will presumably be eventually returned to Ardreigh for re-internment. Would it be too much to hope for the recreation on the ‘idle’ land between the old and new road of the Ardreigh medieval village as found by the archaeologists?

My thanks to the readers who contacted me about the cast of Mary Mullans’ play, ‘The Turn of the Wheel’. Unfortunately no one has yet turned up a photograph of the cast, although I believe that such a photograph exists. If you can help me in my quest I would be delighted to hear from you.

Eye 905

2010-05-24T12:37:00.003+01:00

I turned to Byrne’s ‘Dictionary of Irish Local History’ for a definition of the word ‘moat’ as found in the in the Moate of Ardscull. It’s a word missing from Byrnes authorative reference book but he does deal with the word ‘motte’, a word championed by archaeologists when writing of fortified earthworks constructed by the Anglo Normans during the late 12th century. The Ardscull earthworks is generally accepted to have its origins in the late 12th or early 13th century when the Anglo Normans controlled this part of the island of Ireland. Byrne’s definition of ‘motte’ as a ‘truncated conical mound of earth often motted, palisaded and surmounted by a wooden tower, together with a lower adjoining mound or courtyard known as a bailey’ is less engaging than that included in ‘The Companions to British History’, an epic tome of thousands of definitions, facts and origins compiled by its author the late Charles Arnold Baker. This amateur historian who died last year aged 90 years defined ‘motte’ as ‘a steep sided mound covered with turf and surrounded by a ditch. The motte was topped with palisade, occasionally broken by towers, and it contained the owners house. Below there was commonly an enclosure (bailey) which might, but in early days seldom did, surround the motte. It was fortified by ditch and bank with a palisade or thorn edge. This accommodated the garrison and their animals.’

Remarkably, despite general acceptance that the Motte of Ardscull is a 12th or 13th century manmade fortification of Anglo Norman origins, no reference to this enormous structure can be found in medieval documents. It was only in Cromwellian times that a reference was found to the Ardscull Motte. In 1654 the Book of General Orders noted a request from the inhabitants of south Kildare for the State to contribute towards the cost of finishing a fort, the building of which had commenced at the Motte of Ardscull.

The motte was mentioned in the Kildare Archaeological Society Journal of 1897 as standing ‘on the summit of the high ground which rises 140 feet above and 3 miles to the north east of the town of Athy.’ It rises to a height of 55 feet above ground level and as such is one of the more substantial mottes in Ireland.

If, as we believe, it was an early example of an Anglo Norman fortification then as the 13th century unfolded it led to the development of the Borough of Ardscull on a nearby site. The borough was a settlement with a right to self government and entitled its burgess holders to a burgage which was a medieval holding recognisable by a narrow street frontage and a long narrow garden behind the burgess’s house. Medieval Athy also enjoyed borough status, as did Moone village and recognisable remains of burgage holdings can still be seen at the rear of shops and houses on the southern side of Leinster Street in Athy. Unfortunately, while there were 160 burgages in the medieval borough of Ardscull, no trace of the borough remains, largely due to deep ploughing over the years which has effectively removed all evidence of the medieval settlement. Undoubtedly there are underground remains of the settlement which may in time yield up their secrets if an archaeological dig is ever undertaken in the area.

The borough would of course have had a church and reference is indeed found in the Dublin Diocesan records at the latter part of the 13th century to the Church in Ardscull which was linked with St. Patricks Cathedral in Dublin. The Church was approximately 1 km. south east of the Motte and while no feature of the Church building survives above ground there is a raised area within the graveyard which is believed to have been the Church site.

While Ardscull would appear to have formed part of the demesnes of the Lordship of Leinster it passed to the de Mohan family through the marriage of Reginald de Mohan to Isabel, the granddaughter and heiress of William Marshall who had succeeded Strongbow as Lord of Leinster. It was Marshall who founded the borough of Moone and he is also likely to have done the same at Ardscull.

The borough of Ardscull was burned in 1286 and at the same time the nearby village of Narraghmore was also destroyed. This may have prompted John de Mohan to surrender all the lands he held in the area to the English Crown in 1299. Soon thereafter the King granted Mohan’s land, which included Ardscull, to John Wogan. The Wogan family were later believed by some writers to have played a part in bringing the Dominican Order to Athy. That claim however remains unproven. Ardscull, as distinct from the Motte, figured prominently in the events of the day and in 1309, on Candlemas Day, Lord John Bonneville was killed at Ardscull by Lord Arnold Powre and his accomplices. Bonneville was buried in the Dominican Friary in Athy, as were some of those killed six years later at what we now call the Battle of Ardscull, although it took place in nearby Skerries. Murder always seemed to catch the attention of the record keepers of the day as we have an account of Thomas Wogan and Walter Lenfalt killing thirty of the O’Dempseys of Laois at Ardscull on the Feast of St. Clement in 1346. The borough of Ardscull was to disappear almost without trace and certainly without any record of its passing, while the neighbouring village of Athy retained its position as the most important Anglo Norman settlement in south Kildare.

William Beaufort who lived in Athy in the latter part of the 18th century wrote articles, not always favourably received, on matters of archaeological and historical interest. He prepared a drawing of the Moate of Ardscull and produced a detailed description of the ancient fortification which was included in a revised edition of ‘Camden’s Brittania’, published in 1789. It referred to two apartments in which Beaufort discovered nearly 2 feet beneath the surface a fire hearth and the foundations of other buildings which unfortunately have all since been removed. They may have been linked with the Cromwellian fort work which were the subject of a petition in 1654.

Even the name ‘Ardscull’ provides unanswered questions for there is no general agreement as to its meaning. John O’Donovan in his Ordnance Survey Letters written in 1837 described the large fort at Ardscull as nothing remarkable except for its size and commanding situation, an opinion which would not be shared by many historians today. ‘Ard Scol’ he translated as ‘Hill of the Shouts’ or ‘Hill of the Heroes’ as the site of a battle between the Leinster men and the Munster men in the 2nd century which was mentioned in the Book of Lecan.

On Easter Sunday the local churches came together at sunrise on the Moate of Ardscull to celebrate Christian unity. The last time the Moate had witnessed such numbers was in more warlike days. Briefly and for a short time only early on that Sunday morning the site of the ancient medieval settlement was once again the centre of community activity as it had been many centuries before.

Eye on the Past 714

2010-03-29T15:32:00.003+01:00

Last week the Carlton Abbey Hotel was the venue for a pleasant event organised by the local troop of the Order of Malta. Reference to them as troops conjures up military images but historically the reference is not too far off the mark. Founded as a military order prior to the Crusades as the Knights of Malta to shelter and protect pilgrims travelling on the continent the Knights of Malta have long discarded any pretentions to militarism and now enjoy a well earned reputation as a voluntary medical organisation under the name of Order of Malta.

The Order of Malta came to Athy in the early 1950’s. I heard a reference last week to 1950 as the foundation date but what I do know is that the late Eamon McCauley was the prime mover in setting up the Order of Malta in Athy. Reference to Knights brings to mind images of secret religious organisations which of course the Knights of Malta are not. There are no connections between the Knights of Malta and the Knights of Columbanus, or indeed any other Knights for that matter.

The gathering in the hotel was primarily to make a presentation to the current leader of the local Order of Malta on the completion of thirty years service. The recipient of the presentation and of the kind words expressed by several senior members of the organisation at national and regional level was George Robinson or to give him his rank in the Order of Malta, First Lieutenant George Robinson. He is known by everyone as “Bargy”, but from where that nick-name came or what it means is a mystery to most of us.

Master of Ceremonies on the night was Bargy’s son George who did a first class job. I am always in admiration of the ability of young people today who unlike my generation are extremely confident public speakers. I can recall the fear and dread with which I once faced the prospect of making a speech in public. I now realise it was an unnatural response which was born out of a lack of confidence which seemed to be part of the makeup of those of us who lived through the discouraging decade of the 1950’s. Compared to the confident able young people of later generations, we were not at the races as the expression goes.

Bargy’s record of service with the Order of Malta required a degree of commitment and dedication of enormous proportions which were outlined by the various speakers, one of whom was Pat O’Rourke, another Order of Malta member who will himself in the not too distant future also have thirty years service in the organisation.

The local community is all the better for having the commitment of persons like Bargy Robinson and Pat O’Rourke at its disposal. Congratulations to Bargy on the recognition afforded to him.

This past week I have been immersed in the history of Athy Golf Club, so much so that the stuff is threatening to pour out of my ears. You will understand then why it is that I devote the rest of this Eye on the Past to a man who for many years was an important part of the golfing story which is Athy’s Golf Club. Sean O’Connor was from Labasheeda in County Clare, a place name unknown to me. He came to live in Athy in or around 1950, soon after marrying his wife Mary who was a chemist in the town. He was a young Lieutenant in the Irish Army based on the Curragh Camp. Soon after joining Athy Golf Club he figured amongst the prizewinners when he came second in the competition with a handicap of 22. Winner of a prize put up by some clerical members of the club later in the summer of 1950, Sean O’Connor was described in the local press as “one of the most promising beginners in the club”.

The following year Lieutenant O’Connor, partnering a Captain Lavelle, won an army fourball played in the Curragh Links, by which time his handicap had been reduced to 18. He again hit the headlines a month later when coming second with a score of 67 net in the Collins Cup which was a Curragh Camp competition open to members of the Irish Army and “associates of General Michael Collins”. The latter reference is an interesting one and prompts the question as to how and why associates of the late Michael Collins were identified for inclusion in an Army competition. O’Connor’s score was reported as “the best of any Army competitor, and all the more noteworthy when it was considered that he is only a short time playing golf.”

By 1953 O’Connor, now promoted to Captain, had reduced his handicap to 12 and was a consistent tournament winner on his home course in Athy. He practiced golf a lot, taking his game very seriously and always trying to lower his golf handicap as much as possible. He was a 7 handicapper the following year and by 1956 had become a 4 handicap golfer. Sean O’Connor’s ability at the game of golf allowed him to feature high up in all the golf competitions in which he competed. In August 1957 he went around the 9 hole course in Athy in 38 shots to equal the feat of local golf professional Phil Lawlor achieved just two weeks previously.

His greatest golfing achievements came first in 1964 when he was runner-up in the Irish Army Golf Championship, finishing one shot behind the winner, and thirteen years later when he won the Irish Senior Championship. A two day event played over 36 holes for golfers over 55 years of age Sean O’Connor, by now promoted to Commandant, lead by two strokes after the first days play with a round of 75. He carded a 77 on the second day to finish three strokes ahead of the second place player and so became the only Athy Golf Club member ever to win a national golf title.

Sean, who for several years was treasurer of Athy Golf Club, was elected club captain in 1958 and four years later with a 3 handicap was described in the local press as “Athy’s No. 1 golf player”. He served as president of Athy Golf Club in 1963 and 1964, but perhaps his most important role within the club was that of course manager. It was a job he took very seriously. I can remember sometime in the mid 1960’s at a time when I liked to potter around the course on my own hitting a number of golf balls (which one could do in those days) I came to the 9th hole and stayed there for a while chipping balls onto the green. I was oblivious (or so I still claim) to the notice facing the clubhouse which informed all and sundry that practice was forbidden on the 9th hole. As I chipped away Sean strode from the clubhouse and in the direct manner for which he was well known let me know in no uncertain terms that what I was doing was wrong and not, I can assure you, in terms of my golf swing. Shell shocked, for that was the effect the military man had on any luckless chap who had the misfortune to cross his path, I slunk away, never forgetting the tongue lashing I got from the Commandant.

Sean O’Connor devoted a lot of his spare time to Athy Golf Club. It was a voluntary commitment, much the same as the commitment of men such as George Robinson and Pat O’Rourke to the Order of Malta.

We, in the local community, are all the better for that commitment.

2010-03-29T15:23:00.004+01:00

Eye on the Past 715

2010-03-29T15:05:00.002+01:00

This week I am showing three photographs which will bring back memories for readers of Eye on the Past. The first photograph is of a group of L.S.F. Members from Athy taken in October 1942 on the occasion of the presentation of First Aid Certificates. Some, but not all of the men have been identified to me, and I would still like to hear from readers who can help to identify anyone in the photograph.

The second photograph was taken in the Showgrounds, Athy in July 1969 during the Athy Agricultural Show. No doubt many of you will readily recognise Anna May McHugh, Tommy Yates, Jim Doherty, Paddy Kehoe and Tom McDonnell, but can you put names on the others in the picture?

What about the third photograph of ladies in a show put on in Athy by the Musical and Dramatic Society? But what was the name of the show, when and where was it performed and more importantly, who are the four ladies behind Diane Donnelly who is sitting in the front?

Eye on the Past 716

2010-03-29T15:00:00.002+01:00

I was in London last week and availed of the opportunity to revisit the War Museum on Lambeth Road. A new exhibition on “The Battle of the Somme” which opened on 1st June prompted my journey across the city. Sadly it proved to be a disappointment. Opened to mark the 90th anniversary of the battle in which the French and British forces suffered 600,000 casualties for little or no gain against German losses of 300,000, it did nothing to awaken the horror or the inhumanity of that four month long battle. On the first day of the Somme the Anglo French suffered no less than 57,000 casualties and amongst them was an Athy man Robert Hacket.

The exhibition was largely given over to the works of the war artists including our own William Orpen and a few personal artifacts on display including the last letter of a 22 year old soldier who was killed in the first hour of the battle and the football kicked by a British officer across no mans land as he encouraged his men to advance against the German lines. I left the Museum extremely disappointed and headed back to the city centre, stopping on the way to visit the Methodist Central Hall in Parliament Square.

Described as an imposing square block in the Renaissance style it was built on the site of a Music Hall called the Royal Aquarium and fittingly the Central Hall still continues occasionally to be used for concerts and exhibitions. I am told that many of the larger British cities have Methodist Central Halls, all intended to be places where Methodist visitors and indeed anyone else can visit for services and as a point of contact. The Parliament Square building was opened in 1912 after a fund raising campaign launched fourteen years earlier in Britain and in Ireland which became known as the “Million Guinea Fund”. It was officially called the “Wesleyan Methodist 20th Century Fund” and was intended to raise a guinea from a million contributors to finance the building of the Central Hall in London as a monument to mark the centenary of John Wesley's death.

Wesley was the great evangelical preacher of his day who once passed through Athy while journeying from Portlaoise to Carlow but unusually for him he did not preach in the South Kildare town. The date was Saturday, 25th April 1789. Nevertheless a small Methodist community developed in Athy around the beginning of the 19th century and has retained a constant presence in the town for over 200 years. I was interested to find on visiting the Westminster Central Hall that it holds 50 bound volumes containing the names of those who contributed a guinea towards the “20th Century Fund”. The volumes are cataloged geographically and the pages record not only the donor's names but also his or her signature as individual pages were sent to each participating Methodist community before being returned to London for binding. The pages relating to the Irish contributors were however not to be found, even though the Irish members of John Wesley's Church contributed over £50,000 to the fund. However, Richard Rathcliffe whom I met on my visit and who is the archivist in the Central Hall told me that the monies collected in Ireland were retained to help develop the church's work in the various Irish Methodist circuits. The written records of the Irish donors were not forwarded to London and there is uncertainty as to whether they are still in existence. If they are, Westminster Central Hall and especially Richard Rathcliffe who has written a booklet on “The Wesleyan Methodist Historic Roll” would like to hear of their whereabouts.

The Great Hall located at the top of the grand staircase in the Central Hall was built to accommodate 2,350 persons in a space covered by a dome which is the third largest in London, being exceeded only by that of St. Paul's Cathedral and what was the reading room of the British Museum. The impression created is that of a vast open space, recreating the open air meeting style of John Wesley's ministry of the 18th century.

It was in the Methodist Central Hall that the general assembly of the United Nations held it's inaugural meeting in 1946 and another notable first was the premier of Lloyd Webber's first musical, “Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” held in the same hall in 1968. Webber's father was incidentally musical director of the Central Hall at that time.

I remember old folk in Athy, in the 1950's and later, referring to the Methodist Church in Woodstock Street as the Wesleyan Methodist Church. I wasn't aware of any particular significance in the name and indeed some years ago a member of the church assured me that the name Wesleyan Methodist was not correct. He was right as I found out when I read John Rathcliffe's booklet in which he outlined some basic facts about the “20th Century Fund” and the 50 leather bound volumes recording the names of the donors to that fund. In addition in the booklet he gave a succinct history of John Wesley's Church which was founded in 1729 as an Evangelical movement within the Church of England. After Wesley's death in 1791 his followers broke away from the Church of England and formed the Wesleyan Church. Disagreement among the Wesleyans lead to the formation of the Methodist New Connexions in 1797, the Primitive Methodists in 1807, the Bible Christians in 1815, the Wesleyan Protestant Methodists in 1827, the Wesleyan Methodists in 1834 and the United Methodist Free Church in 1837. The last three groups amalgamated in 1857 to form the United Methodist Free Church. In 1907 the Methodist New Connexions, the Bible Christians and the United Methodist Free Church came together to form the United Methodist Church. Eventually the Wesleyans, the Primitive Methodists and the United Methodists came together in 1932 to form the Methodist Church. So it would seem that the old folk in Athy were correct in referring to the Wesleyan Methodist Church which it was up to 1932 but which thereafter was more properly called the Methodist Church.
Another interesting meeting on the day of my visit to the Central Hall was with Mervyn Appleby who gave a delightfully interesting tour of the complex and later spoke to me of the Burslem Sunday School. A pottery town, now part of Stoke-on-Trent, Burslem was visited by John Wesley on several occasions from 1760 onwards and became a great centre of Wesleyan Methodism. The Burslem Sunday School founded in 1787 broke with the Wesleyan Methodists in 1836 in a dispute over teaching on the Sabbath. That is until 1971 when Mervyn Appleby as a young minister had the task of telling the “elders” of the Sunday School of the personal financial liability they would all have to shoulder while they continued to remain outside the mainstream Methodist Church. The Sunday School was closed and the nearby Methodist Church congregation swelled with the intake of the Sunday School adherents who en masse walked on the following Sunday into church to rejoin again the Methodist Church community their ancestors had left almost 150 years previously. It was a wonderful story and one which I hope Mervyn Appleby who played such a central role in the events of 35 years ago will record in writing while his recall of those days is still fresh in his memory.

One man who did record in his own way the life of the people of the Potteries was Arnold Bennett who as a young Methodist attended the Burslem Sunday School. His second novel, “Anna of the Five Towns” published in 1901 dealt with the provincial life of the Potteries and of his experiences there during the first 22 years of his life. Indeed he returned to the Potteries for the background to many of his novels and short stories and in time became the most famous author to come from the pottery town of Stoke-on-Trent.

The Methodist Church in Athy which now forms part of the Portlaoise circuit has recently seen the departure of its Minister Rev. Noel Fallows to Strabane to be replaced by Rev. Louise Donald who is taking up her first appointment. We wish her well in her ministry and also extend good wishes to Monsignor John Wilson who has replaced Fr. Philip Dennehy as Parish Priest of St. Michael's. We have had a number of Canons of the church as Parish Priests in the past but to my knowledge never a Monsignor. Is this I wonder a first for this ancient parish of ours?

Eye on the Past 717

2010-03-29T14:53:00.004+01:00

Jimmy Bolger, like myself, is not a native son of Athy. Nevertheless his links with the town go back so far, over 70 years in fact, to justify the abandonment of any claim to being “a blow in”. Jimmy was born in Graiguenamanagh in 1929, the son of Peter Bolger and his wife Kathleen Codd, both of whom worked as gardener and housekeeper respectively for one of the big houses which had survived the scorched earth policy of the Republican Movement in the aftermath of the War of Independence. The Bolger family came to Athy in 1933 to work for Ainsley Verschoyle who had sometime before bought Ardreigh House from local Solicitor Bob Osborne. For the next twelve years or so the Bolgers lived in the gate lodge of Ardreigh House before moving to a number of different addresses in and around Athy after Peter Bolger left Verschoyle's employment to take up gardening work with the Hosie and Shaw families. I was intrigued to hear Jimmy recall his family living in Stanhope Street in the residence attached to the public house owned by Scanlons. They were there for five or six years until Scanlons sold the public house to Noonans and from where Michael Noonan himself recently retired after many years in the business which had been first started by his father who had previously been a member of the Garda Siochana.

Jimmy attended the school in the local Christian Brothers where he recalls the diminutive Br. Nelson who was universally known as “Breezy”, Brothers Egan and Farrell and the two lay teachers, Paddy Spillane and Liam Ryan. Fellow pupils included Tommy O'Rourke, Jimmy Connell, Kevin Walsh, all of whom co-incidentally lived in Stanhope Street, Michael Egan of Leinster Street, Fergus Hayden, Des Noonan and Frank Duffy.

In the late 1940's Jimmy left school to take up an apprenticeship in the hardware and grocery business of Thompson's of Castledermot. One of the commonly sought after positions for young men and women of the day, shop apprenticeships had only then witnessed a change in the age old system where those wishing to be apprenticed to the retail trade paid what were relatively speaking large sums for the privilege of taking up such apprenticeships. It seems rather strange to us in this day and age that a young man or woman availing of the opportunity to train as an assistant in a grocery or hardware shop had to pay a lump sum to the shopkeeper and to work without pay for perhaps the first year of a five or six year apprenticeship. The system had changed during the Second World War and by the time Jimmy Bolger got his first job apprentices received in addition to free board the princely sum of five shillings a week in wages payable monthly in arrears. Five and a half years in the grocery and hardware business in the village of Castledermot provided a good grounding in retailing but more importantly made Jimmy aware of the problems which were part and parcel of Irish provincial life in the early 1950's and of the generosity of spirit which prevailed amongst the sometimes tough commercial patrons of Irish shopkeeping. Nowadays accustomed as we are to the supermarket where everything is checked out and paid for on the spot it is hard to imagine a time when giving and taking credit was almost an essential part of retailing, necessitating the keeping of “the book” into which purchases were noted on a daily basis.

Monday mornings in the grocery business of the late 1940's were spent in weighing out and packing the tea, sugar, flour and butter which in the war years and for some time afterwards were in short supply. Jimmy particularly remembers a time when rationing of some food stuffs was still in vogue and when bread tasted as he described it, “like sawdust”.

In the early 1950's Jimmy left Thompsons and went to work for Floods of Leinster Street. Tom Flood was a Dublin man who had bought what was the Railway Hotel in the 1920's. He carried on a very successful business and became a member of the local Urban District Council, being first elected to that body in June 1934. He died in October 1950 and his son Frank ran the business for a number of years and it was while Frank Flood was in charge that Jimmy Bolger worked in the Leinster Street premises. He was there for about three years when he emigrated to England to be with his girlfriend, local girl Moira Walsh, whose father was porter in the Provincial Bank in Duke Street. He got work in the co-op in Harleden, London and following promotion to Assistant Manager he and Moira got married in Athy in August 1955. Irish workers, despite having made valuable contributions to the industrial life of Britain during and after the war, were still badly treated on the English mainland. “No Irish need apply” was still a common feature of advertisements, whether for jobs or accommodation and Jimmy and his new bride were only too well aware of the discrimination against the Irish when they went looking for a flat. They eventually succeeded but the arrival of their first child prompted the return of mother and child to Athy as English landlords added children to their list of unwanted tenants which for so long had included “Irish and blacks”.

Moira, who was born at Geraldine Road, went back to Athy and within a few months Jimmy who returned for summer holidays got a holiday job in M.P. O'Briens of Edenderry which lasted for six months and effectively decided him against returning to England.

His sister Brigid had started with the I.V.I. Foundry in Athy in 1936 as a secretary to its founder Harry Hosie and twenty years later Jimmy joined the firm as a store man and later took on the role of sales representative on the retirement of Jim Tierney of Emily Row. He was to remain with the I.V.I. until 1973 when he purchased the Pipe Shop from Mrs. Mahon. Three years later he sold the business and when Jim McEvoy acquired what was formerly the Railway Bar at the top of Leinster Street Jimmy went to help him out for a few weeks but he remained there for ten years.

The I.V.I. was the first local industry to start up in Athy in the wake of the decline and ultimate demise of the indigenous brick making industry. For decades brick making provided the only constant, if irregular employment, in and around Athy, apart from farm work and work on the Canals. Captain Hosie as I believe he then was, started Industrial Vehicles Ireland Ltd. in or around 1926 and the business developed and prospered so much that in the 1950's more than 150 men were employed in addition to sales and office staff. It was a substantial element in the early industrial life of Athy and the story of the I.V.I. and its founder who after the Second World War returned as Colonel Hosie, having lost his only son Terry in that war, is a story which I hope to return to at another time.

During his years in the I.V.I. Jimmy also worked part-time for a number of local publicans including John O'Brien of the Railway Bar, his sister Molly O'Brien of the Nags Head and Jim Nelson of Leinster Street. His time with Nelsons coincided with the annual holidays of Paddy Cole, the Carbery man who spent almost twenty five years with Jim Nelson and who after Jim died emigrated to England. I wonder if any of my readers know what ever happened Paddy Cole.

My first memories of Jimmy Bolger centered on the C.Y.M.S., then located at the corner of Stanhope Street. I was reminded of the importance of that club in the life of the young and not so young men of Athy in the 1960's and when in Youghal last week I came across a very vibrant and active C.Y.M.S. operating out of quayside building which on a Sunday afternoon was as busy as I can remember our C.Y.M.S. was forty years ago. Sadly the C.Y.M.S. in Athy disappeared without trace some years after it moved from its original location in Stanhope Street to facilitate the building of St. Michael's Parish Church.

Fundraising for that church commenced in the 1950's under the guidance of senior curate Fr. McLaughlin and continued in the early 1960's under Fr. Corbett, who organised variety shows put on in St. John's Hall. Jimmy Bolger was very active in those shows, helping to organise them and acting as Master of Ceremonies. Some of the local businesses which took part in the variety shows which ran over a period of four years from about 1959 onwards included the Asbestos factory, Bachelor's factory, Bord na Mona factory, I.V.I. Foundry and “the shops”, the last being the combined efforts of the local shop workers and their friends, many of whom from a programme I have of one of their shows never worked in a shop in their life. It was all good fun which gave plenty of enjoyment to the locals and gathered together some funds for the church which opened in 1964.

The man from Graiguenamanagh, like myself, came to Athy when he was a few years old. Our paths crossed, even if decades apart, when I came to live in the house where Ainsley Verschoyle once lived and where probably the young Jimmy Bolger played amongst the gun dogs which I believe once roamed freely around the grounds of Ardreigh House. His story is part of the social patchwork of a town which in recent years has seen an unprecedented influx of newcomers who like Jimmy and myself will hopefully in time become an integral part of our town and its people.

Eye on the Past 900

2010-03-29T12:38:00.003+01:00

On Thursday last the Athy branch of the Irish Wheelchair Association celebrated the 50th anniversary of the founding of the first branch of the National organisation. Teach Emmanuel was ‘en fete’ for the occasion as volunteers, past and present, returned to acknowledge the wonderful work undertaken by that most underrated of organisations.

The I.W.A. was founded in 1960 by a small group of wheelchair users who had participated in the first Paralympics Games held in Rome. In September of that year the inaugural meeting of the I.W.A. took place on 10th November 1960 in the Pillar Room of the Mater Hospital Dublin, attended by several members of the Irish Paralympics Games team, as well as a number of civic minded individuals. Given the later history of the Athy branch of the Association it is, I feel, significant that the founding meeting was held in the Dublin hospital established by Mother Mary Vincent Whitty. This was the same Sister of Mercy who came to Athy in 1852 to take charge of the new Convent of Mercy and the nearby Convent Schools.

The Irish Wheelchair Association was founded primarily to improve the lives of people with physical disabilities and today the organisation has a network of 20,000 members with over 2,000 staff and many dedicated voluntary workers supporting and encouraging independence for all. The I.W.A. seeks to improve equality and access for wheelchair users as well as providing employment and housing, while encouraging social interaction. A quarterly magazine ‘Spokeout’ is published and made available to members of the Association.

Pride of place at the 50th celebrations went to Sr. Carmel Fallon and Sr. Alphonsus Meagher, both Sisters of Mercy who were part of the small group who in 1968 established the local branch of the I.W.A. It was these two Mercy nuns who with their colleague, the late Sr. Dolores, formed a girls club in Athy in 1968. The young club members were encouraged to visit wheelchair users in their homes and very soon the possibility of establishing a branch of the I.W.A. in Athy became a reality.

The driving force in setting up the branch was the Co. Galway born Sr. Carmel Fallon who entered the convent in Athy in August 1935. The year was 1969 and very soon the local branch developed as socials for wheelchair users were held in Mount St. Mary’s, annual Christmas dinners were arranged and summer holidays were spent in boarding schools operated by the Sisters of Mercy. None of this could have been done without the help of volunteers, both male and female, who from the very start devoted their spare time and energies to helping Sr. Carmel in her determined effort to provide services for the disabled, while integrating them fully into the local community.

Amongst the early volunteers (and apologies if anyone has been overlooked) were Leo Byrne, Lily Murphy, Mary Malone, Mary Prior, Michael Kelly, Bridget Brennan, John Morrin, Tommy Page, Paddy Timoney, Dinny Donoghue, Phoebe Murphy, Caroline Webb, Peadar Doogue, Fr. Lorcan O’Brien and Fr. Denis Lavery.

The Athy branch was in time to provide a fulltime activity service for the disabled and the first Day Centre outside of the association’s facility in Clontarf, Dublin was opened in Athy. Teach Emmanuel was developed on a site in the grounds of St. Vincent’s Hospital and represented a partnership between the Health Board and the Irish Wheelchair Association. It also confirmed, if confirmation was needed, that the diminutive nun from the West of Ireland had an admirable record of achievement since arriving in the South Kildare town at the height of the economic war of the 1930s.

In 1992 Sr. Carmel was appointed president of the Irish Wheelchair Association National Organisation and held that position for 10 years. She is now retired from active involvement in the day to day work of the local association, but still retains a kindly watching brief over the work of Teach Emmanuel.

The 50th celebration was graced by the presence of many of the volunteers, past and present, without whose work and efforts over the years the local branch of the Wheelchair Association could never have been expected to survive. That it has survived and indeed prospered, despite depending so heavily on voluntary financial donations and voluntary workers, is a measure of the generosity, not only of the volunteers involved, but also of the Irish public who can always be counted upon to help those who need their help the most. The Athy branch of the Irish Wheelchair Association can be justifiably proud of its many achievements in helping the physically disabled to better integrate with the local community. At the same time the people of Athy and district can take pride in the continuing success of a local organisation whose presence is a welcome addition to the medico social facilities of south Kildare.

Last week I wrote of the new Traffic Management Plan for Athy and referred to an alternative plan proposed by a group which I understood was the Irish Farmers Association. In fact I am told the plan in question arises from discussions within the Athy Traffic Action Committee and has the support of a large section of the business community. I gather their plan has not yet received the backing of the Town Council but perhaps that support will come when the Council members sit down with members of Kildare County Council to consider the Traffic Management Plan prepared by the Council’s consultants.

Hugh Bolger of 6 Offaly Street passed away last week. A native of Ballylinan he worked for many years in the Wallboard factory and his funeral was marked by a Guard of Honour of members of Ballylinan Gaelic Football Club and by the attendance of many of his former work colleagues from the now long closed Barrowford complex. Hugh married Loy Hayden, now sadly deceased, whom I fondly remember as part of the Offaly Street family of the 1950s. She and her brother Seamus lived with their aunt Mrs. Kitty Murphy and her husband Joe at No. 3 Offaly Street before moving to No. 6 when the Taaffes vacated that latter address to move next door to No. 5.

I had departed Athy for ‘foreign parts’, i.e. Naas, before Hugh married Loy and moved into No. 6. I got to know him over the years and he became part of the familiar Offaly Street background at a time when several of the older families were still living there. It is now a street much changed from my young days and the community of which I was a member and of which Hugh was later a welcome part of, has disappeared. Hugh was one of the last links with that street community and his passing is much regretted. He is survived by his daughters Sinéad and Áine and his grandchildren to whom our sympathies are extended.

Eye on the Past 901

2010-03-29T12:35:00.001+01:00

This morning I started to write the Eye, intending to relate my experiences of the ‘Open Night’ arranged by the local Toastmasters to which I had been kindly invited. However, just after 7.30 a.m. I got a phone call from a friend advising of the destruction of the Model School and commenting ‘that’s your Eye for next week’. Indeed he was right. The destruction of a local building of architectural importance, being one of several such buildings which formed Athy’s historical character, is a great loss. The relatively slow pace of development in Athy over the years had ensured a good survival rate for the most important elements of the town’s building heritage. The Town Hall, the Courthouse and White’s Castle are just some of the more important urban buildings which have survived and by doing so added an important dimension to the urban fabric of the town.

The destruction of the fine Model School is a terrible loss as the 19th century tudor gothic style building was a fine example of the work of that great architect Frederick Darley. There are other fine examples of his work in Athy, all due no doubt to the patronage of the Duke of Leinster. St. Michael’s Church at the top of Offaly Street, the Presbyterian Church and Manse and the Courthouse were all buildings designed by Frederick Darley. Indeed if one looks at some of the other noteworthy buildings in the town designed by Deane and Woodward and George Wilkinson among others, it can be seen that Athy is well endowed with buildings of architectural merit designed by many of the leading architects of their time.

Model Schools were part of a countrywide scheme proposed by the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland in its report for 1835 which stated: ‘32 District Model Schools should be established, being a number equal to that of the counties of Ireland, that those Model Schools should be under the direction of teachers chosen for superior attainments, and receiving superior remuneration to those charged with the general or primary school.’

Little appears to have been done about the Model School proposal until 1846 when the Commissioners in that year’s report gave further details of the proposed new schools.

‘That in Model Schools, established in the smaller county towns, a male and a female school and an agricultural school should be established – that from all the national schools in the neighbourhood, a certain number of the most deserving pupils be selected and be admitted as free scholars into the District Model School to act as monitors therein and to receive for their services small weekly payments.’

Athy was chosen in 1848 as a site for a District Model School, no doubt due to the influence of the Marquis of Kildare who replaced his father, the Duke of Leinster, on the Board of Commissioners for National Education in 1841. The Duke offered to lease a site for the school on the outskirts of Athy and the Commissioners on accepting the offer allowed the Duke to decide whether to have an agricultural college in the town or a District Model School with an agricultural department. He chose the latter and the building designed by Frederick Darley was erected. It was considered by the Education Commission as ‘very ambitious and needlessly expansive’ but undoubtedly it added enormously to the building heritage of the town which otherwise had very little else to boast of at that time.

The school was officially opened on 12th August 1852 and the first report of the school Inspector Edward Butler described the Head Master’s house as follows:-

‘The house contains on the ground floor a good-sized hall, large dining room, store-room, kitchen, with larder and servants’ room, etc; and two apartments, one for the Head Master, the other for the use of the resident pupil teachers during study hours. The second story, which is reached from the hall by a large flight of stairs, consists of an infirmary, two bed-rooms for the use of the Head Master, a wash-room and a dormitory for the four pupil teachers and four agricultural boarders, who reside on the premises, under the superintendence of the Head Master’.

There were two playgrounds, one for boys, the other for girls. On the first day the school attendance was 13 boys and 1 girl and in school to greet them was John Walsh, the Headmaster and Agnes Reilly, Mistress of the girl’s school. Both were Catholics and indeed in the early years of the Model School the teaching staff comprised Catholics as well as members of the Established Church and Presbyterians. The school attendance increased rapidly so that by 1858 there were upwards of 582 on the school rolls.

The Irish Catholic hierarchy objected to the Model School system and Archbishop Cullen of Dublin encouraged the Sisters of Mercy to open a school in Athy. The Sisters of Mercy arrived here in 1852, although it must be acknowledged that as early as 1844 the local clergy had spearheaded a weekly collection in the town to finance the building of a convent and school for the Sisters of Mercy. The Ballitore-born Archbishop was also instrumental in inviting the Christian Brothers to set up a school for boys in Athy and their arrival in 1861, combined with the earlier established Convent school, soon resulted in the non denominational education system in the Model School giving way to a system catering almost exclusively for members of the non-Catholic community. It was a situation which in more recent years had begun to be reversed as the intake of pupils to the Model School came from many different religious backgrounds.

An infant school was added to the District Model School in 1860 and a Miss Craig was appointed mistress of that section. The agricultural department which catered for young trainees who boarded in the adjoining house ran into financial difficulties after what was a promising start which had seen the farm attached to the school extended to 64 acres in 1855. The agricultural department closed in 1880 and the land was sold at auction.

The loss of the Model School is a terrible blow for the local Church of Ireland community and the school’s pupils and I hope that the fine building which has stood at one of the principal entrances to Athy for more than 150 years will be fully restored at some time in the not too distant future.

Michael Foot, the veteran British labour politician, died during the week aged 96 years. He was a remarkable man of great literary ability, a bibliophile, an erudite socialist and a most honourable politician. I first came across Michael Foot, the writer, when I read his biography of Dean Swift, ‘The Pen and the Sword’ which was published in 1957. He later wrote many more books including the two volume biography of another great British politician and socialist, Aneurin Bevan which confirmed his standing as a writer of exceptional ability. Michael Foot was harshly treated by the British electorate when he lead the Labour party in the 1970 General Election, but that most honest of politicians never deviated from the high principles for which he was noted. How I wish we had a few Michael Foots within the Irish political scene.

Eye on the Past 902

2010-03-29T12:32:00.003+01:00

With a name conjuring up images of a breakfast toast maker I was somewhat surprised to find that Toastmasters is a convivial gathering of people, young and not so young, all eager to improve their communications and interpersonal skills. The occasion for my enlightenment was an open night two weeks ago at the local Toastmasters meeting in the Carlton Abbey Hotel. My invitation came courtesy of my youngest son’s paramour Amanda, whom I jokingly refer to as ‘the Essex girl’. I was just one of several invitees that night and no doubt like me they all enjoyed the experience of sharing in the delightful atmosphere which prevailed that night in what was once the refractory of the Sisters of Mercy convent.

The welcome greeting which met each of the visitors that night was just the start of a genuinely friendly encounter with a group of enthusiasts which more than anything else made for a memorable night. The formality of the meeting belied the friendly and cheerful atmosphere. The handing over of the gavel signifying the passing of control of the meeting was just one of the formalities of the night, while reference to the Sergeant at Arms conjured up images of military rather than verbal engagements.

I could see how the well organised Toastmasters meeting can and does help the members to build confidence and skill in public speaking and the overall impression I came away with is of a group engaged in a worthwhile project aimed at helping the individual within the community.

Another open invitation extended to the general public last week was to view the new Community College building just beyond St. Joseph’s Terrace. Constructed over a relatively short period of time the new college building is a wonderful facility containing in addition to the usual classrooms a quite enormous sports hall and a raked auditorium suitable for use for many community related purposes. We have been most fortunate in Athy to have so many new schools provided over the last few years, the Community College being the third such facility to be located at the Tomard side of town in the space of just two years. The Gael Scoil is going strong in its new building, while St. Patrick’s Boys School is soon expected to have, in addition to its recently opened school, a further building extension which will permit all its pupils to be brought together on the one site.

With the opening of the Community College I am reminded that the town got its first sports hall following the demolition of St. John’s Hall when the former Dreamland Ballroom was purchased by the Lions Club and the Parish of St. Michaels in the late 1970s. Since then the local Gaelic Football Club opened its own sports hall in the mid 1980s, while Ardscoil na Tríonóide had a sports hall provided a few years ago. The young people of the area are now literally spoiled for choice when it comes to indoor sports facilities. Hopefully those in charge of these halls can agree on a user plan which will help maximise the benefits to the local people while ensuring that each sports hall is used to the best advantage of students, members and the local community at large.

Paud O’Connor, whose photographic shop in what used to be Granny Evans house in Offaly Street, continues to display an ever changing array of interesting old photographs. One such photograph is that of a Kildoon Gaelic Football team of the 1940s. Five of the players have been identified and as numbered are:- (1) Jack Nolan, (2) Mike Carroll, (3) Patsy Farrell, (4) Matty McCormack and (5) Jim Deering. Patsy Farrell who died over 20 years ago was a grand uncle of Dessie Farrell, the former Dublin footballer who now leads the Gaelic Players Association. Can anyone name the other members of the Kildoon team of 65 years or so ago?

Eye on the Past 903

2010-03-29T12:22:00.003+01:00

A few ‘Eyes’ ago (No. 896 to be exact) I wrote of the newly published Dictionary of Irish Biography and drew attention to some of those included in the multi volume publication who had links with the town of Athy. I propose today to delve a bit more into the nine volumes of this indispensible reference work to tell the stories behind some of those who once walked the streets of our town.

Thomas Grattan Colley, previously featured in this column and in the Irish Biographical Dictionary he receives extensive coverage as befitting a man who was a diplomat and a noted writer. Colley, who was born in Dublin in 1781, came to live in Athy with his parents and other family members when the Grattan Colley family home was destroyed during the Rebellion of 1798. They were part of the great influx of Loyalists, who fearful for their safety, descended on the garrison town of Loyalist Athy in the immediate aftermath of the outbreak of rebellion. He was educated, we are told, by a clergyman in Athy whom I imagine was Reverend Nicholas Ashe, a local Presbyterian minister. Ashe was also Sovereign of Athy during the early part of 1798 and as such presided over the local Borough Council. To his credit he did what he could to keep the local Loyalist militia from harassing the Roman Catholic population. His efforts, as evidenced in his letters to the Duke of Leinster, left him ostracised by the militant Protestants led by Thomas Rawson of Glassealy, particularly so when he refused to sign a memorial from what was described as ‘The Loyal Protestant Corporation of Athy’, calling on the Dublin Castle authorities to authorise the establishment of an infantry militia in the town which Ashe felt ‘would exclude our Catholic neighbours’.

Grattan Colley studied for a career in law but gave it up to enlist in the Louth militia. His military career was not successful and having married and settled in France he took to writing for a living and for a time acted as a correspondent for the London Times. He was later appointed as the British Counsel to Boston and played an important role in settling the border dispute between America and Canada. After returning to London Grattan Colley according to ‘The Longman Companion to Victorian Literature’ spent many years ‘churning out volumes of commentary on Anglo American affairs and a number of inferior volumes.’ His best known works included ‘Legends of the Rhine’ and his book of reminiscences ‘Beaten Paths and Those who Trod Them’. He died in London in 1864.

Nearer to our time was Dr. Juan Nassau Greene, a farmer and medical doctor who was born in 1918 in Argentina. His parents were natives of Kilkea, his father John being the third generation of the Greene’s to live in Kilkea House. The family returned to Ireland when Juan was a child and the future president of the N.F.A. attended school at Kilkea before going on to St. Columba’s College and later Trinity College. After graduating as a medical doctor in 1941 he enlisted in the R.A.F. and served for the duration of the Second World War in Britain, Burma and India. After the war he worked in St. Patrick Duns Hospital, but retired in 1948 to concentrate on farming.

The Dictionary of Irish Biography gives to Juan Greene the honour of being president of the first Macra na Feirme club in Athy in 1944. However it was, I believe, his father John Nassau Greene who held that position but Dr. Juan did become the inaugural president of the National Farmers Association in 1955.

Soon after his return to south Kildare in 1948 Dr. Juan became active in the Beet Growers Association and that Association in conjunction with Macra na Feirme held a number of meetings which eventually led to the setting up of the National Farmers Association. It was Dr. Juan Greene who at a meeting in the Four Provinces Ballroom Dublin on 6th January 1955 formally proposed the setting up of the N.F.A. He was to be the association’s first president, a position he held from 1955 to 1962.

The Biographical Dictionary states that ‘the subsequent flourishing of the N.F.A. and its successor, the Irish Farmers Association, as powerful representative organisations, owed much to Greene’s idealism, energy and organising sagacity through the formative years. Modest and unassuming he pursued a low key self effacing leadership style, preferring quiet behind-the-scenes negotiation to public posturing and earned wide respect for reasonableness and integrity. His position being full time and unpaid and involving considerable personal expense and extensive travel throughout the country he worked tirelessly to the ultimate detriment of his health.’ Dr. Juan Nassau Greene died in the Richmond Hospital Dublin on 9th November 1979 and was buried in Kilkea cemetery. His premature death deprived this country and especially the Irish farming community of one of the most influential men of his generation.

Another local man, but one I must confess I had not previously known of his Athy connection, was John Semple Jackson, born in 1920, the fifth child of Francis Jackson and his wife Annie of Farmhill, Athy. He was educated in the local Model School which sadly was consumed by flames within the last few weeks. After attending St. Columba’s, Rathfarnham, he returned to Athy to work for a while in his father’s business at Leinster Street. He joined the R.A.F. in 1943 and it is said that flight training over North America stirred a lifelong interest in geology following which he enrolled in Trinity College Dublin from where he graduated with a B.A. in geology and zoology. Appointed to the staff of U.C.D. in 1951 he continued his geological investigations and studies, resulting in the award of a Ph.D. and in 1957 he was appointed keeper in Dublin’s Natural History Museum. Eleven years later he commenced practice as a geological consultant and before long was a member of a number of government working parties for the preparation of inventories of outstanding landscapes and sites of scientific interest in Ireland. He was at various times between 1964 and 1977 the secretary, chairman and national president of An Taisce. He lectured on environmental conservation to architectural students and contributed to radio and T.V. debates on conservation and mining issues. He donated his extensive library to the Department of Geology, University College Cork in 1982 where it is now housed in the John S. Jackson Library. He died suddenly in November 1991 and is buried in County Cork.

I will return to the Dictionary of Irish Biography over the coming months.

I had a query during the week concerning the Athy Social Club Players who performed Mary Mullans’ play, ‘The Turn of the Wheel’ on the last night of the Kildare Drama Festival in 1959. Fortunately I have a programme for that play when it was put on in St. John’s Hall in February 1959. The three act play featured Christine O’Donohue, Jim Gardner, Len Hayden, Jo Lawler, Florrie Lawler, Dermot Mullan, Ger Moriarty and Patsy O’Neill. It was produced by Tadhg Brennan and the Athy performance was followed by a one act Irish adaptation of a celebrated French play.

Do any of the readers remember the performances in St. John’s Hall of ‘The Turn of the Wheel’ and more particularly does anyone have a photograph of the cast of that play? I would be delighted to hear from anyone who can help me.

Eye on the Past 904

2010-03-29T12:08:00.004+01:00

“McAleese recalls Irish war dead on Turkey visit”, read the headline on the story in last week’s Irish Independent filed from Ankara by Fergus Black. A high point of the Irish President’s three day visit to Turkey was the ceremony at Gallipoli to honour almost 3,500 Irish men who died during the six months of the ill-fated campaign in the Dardanelles in 1915. Some of those men were from the town of Athy and the surrounding countryside.

The Gallipoli Peninsula became a military target following Winston Churchill’s decision to take Turkey out of the war, while at the same time opening up another warfront against Germany. It would take a heavy toll of regular soldiers and of the reservists and volunteers who enlisted following the outbreak of war.

The regular 1st battalion of the Dublin Fusiliers which had been based in Madras India at the outbreak of the war sailed from Bombay and arrived back in Plymouth on 21st December 1914. On 9th April 1915 the 1st battalion was deployed for duty in Gallipoli and on Sunday 25th April 1915 took part in a large amphibious assault on Helles beach intended to land at five small coves at or near the southern tip of the peninsula. The landing at what was designated “V” beach was to be made by boats containing three companies of the 1st battalion Dublin Fusiliers followed by an old collier “River Clyde”, carrying the rest of the Dublin Fusiliers and members of the Munster Fusiliers. The ‘River Clyde’ had holes cut into her sides from which the soldiers were to emerge once the boat had been beached. However, the Turks had anticipated the landing and were in place in well protected defensive positions before the Irish, Scots, Welsh and English soldiers attempted to walk onto the beach. They were met with a continuous and deadly gunfire which gave the Dublin Fusiliers little or no chance. Among the casualties that first day was Lawrence Kelly of Chapel Hill, Athy, son of James Kelly and the former Kate Lawlor. He was just 23 years of age.

The next day the surviving soldiers advanced against the Turks and under continuous fire managed to capture a number of trenches and a nearby village. However, a counterattack by the Turks which started on the 28th of April inflicted further heavy casualties on the advancing soldiers.

On Friday 30th April John Farrell, aged 31 years, of Janeville Lane and Christopher Hanlon, aged 27 years, both from Athy and members of the 1st battalion R.D.F. were killed. An Irish officer serving as surgeon on the ‘River Clyde’, Dr. P. Burrowes Kelly wrote a letter to his father Gilbert Kelly at Ballintubbert giving an account of the landing on the Gallipoli beaches, ‘when (we were) about 60 yards from the shore they (the Turks) opened up on us and such a din of pom poms and bullets I never want to be in again ..... our men were simply butchered and the water was red with blood and the air boiling with bullets.’

The first batch of wounded soldiers from the Dardanelles arrived back in Naas in July 1915 and an account in the Kildare Observer of one of those soldier’s experiences read : ‘the landing was something awful, it was like trying to scramble onto a rock with six hands to every one of yours pushing you back. There was no cover and we the Dublins and the Munsters who were with us suffered terribly.’

The next important date in the chronology of death of local men during the Dardanelles Campaign was 12th July 1915. On that fateful day two young men from this area died in Gallipoli. The Turkish trenches before Acai Baba were captured but Frank Fanning of Convent Lane and another local man Daniel Delaney were killed. By a strange coincidence a photograph of Frank Fanning was recently discovered and is reproduced with this article. Frank’s younger brother John had also enlisted as a drummer boy. He survived the war and returned to Athy where he died in 1955.

After the declaration of war in August 1914 the Dublin Fusiliers raised a total of eleven battalions as part of Kitchener’s call for a new army. Both the 6th and 7th battalions were formed at Naas in August and were assigned to the 30th Brigade in the 10th division at the Curragh Camp. These two battalions were to figure prominently and tragically in the Gallipoli campaign. On 11th July 1915 men of the 6th and 7th battalions sailed from Devonport, England to Mitylene and on 7th August 1915 landed at Gallipoli in Suvla Bay. With the extra troops then available the army launched simultaneous attacks on the Turks from the original landing point at Cape Helles, from Suvla Bay and from the area known as Anzac where the Australian and New Zealand troops had landed. However, the difficult terrain and stiff Turkish resistance soon lead to the stalemate of trench warfare. On Saturday 7th August Tommy Grimes of Ballitore was killed. He was a regular soldier and a member of the 1st Battalion.

On Monday 9th August 1915 two members of the 6th battalion, William Moran of Athy and Michael Kinsella, aged 26 years, of Hallahoise, Castledermot, were killed. Six days later Henry Price, aged 45 years of Ballitore, another member of the same battalion was killed in action.

From the end of August 1915 no further serious action took place and the battle lines remained unchanged. Despite this Patrick Byrne of Kilabbin, aged 32 years, was killed on 29th October 1915. He was the last man from this area to die in the Dardanelles from where the British Army began to evacuate in December 1915.

The Helles Memorial which stands at the top of the Gallipoli Peninsula is an obelisk over 30 metres high which records the names of soldiers killed in Gallipoli who have no known graves. Amongst those commemorated on the memorial are William Moran, Michael Kinsella, Henry Price, Daniel Delaney and Thomas Grimes.

At Cape Helles is the “V beach” cemetery where the remains of Lawrence Kelly, Christopher Hanlon and John Farrell are interned. Frank Fanning is buried in the Twelve Acre Copse Cemetery which is in Cape Helles. This cemetery was developed after the Armistice when bodies were brought in from isolated sites and small burial grounds scattered around the battlefields of Gallipoli. There are 3,360 First World War soldiers buried or commemorated in the cemetery but sadly 2,226 of the burials are unidentified. Frank Fanning’s body was identified and he lies in a marked grave. Patrick Byrne, the 32 year old son of Catherine Byrne of Kilabbin, is buried in Azmak Cemetery, Suvla.

The recent visit of President McAleese to Gallipoli is an important acknowledgement of an almost forgotten part of our national and local history. The men from Athy and the surrounding countryside who died in the Gallipoli campaign had long passed from memory but amongst us today are their descendents who can take consolation from the knowledge that names retrieved from the hidden folds of our forgotten history can now once again claim our respect and remembrance.

Eye on the Past 718

2010-03-24T10:14:00.002Z

A recent enquiry from New Zealand as to the author of a poem “ My home town in Kildare” required some research which failed to answer the authorship question but nevertheless threw up other material, the results of which now forms the basis for this article. But firstly the poem, the first stanza of which read

“Tonight I am sadly thinking, I don't have much more time
For I am almost eighty and my health is in decline
I think of a place that's far away, old friends and neighbours there
I wonder if they remember me, in my home town in Kildare.”

The initial enquiry was made on behalf of a native of Castledermot, now living in New Zealand and naturally enough my thoughts turned to two men from around that area, each of whom published a book of poetry. “Many Moods in Many Metres” by Thomas Greene of Maganey was published postumously in Dublin in 1902. He had died the previous year aged 58 years. However, references in the Kildare poem to “the forty hours procession” and to “benediction after Mass” were unlikely to be the work of a member of the Church of Ireland so Thomas Greene was ruled out. For much the same reason, George Henry Graham, a native of Castledermot was also disregarded. He was a Methodist whose book of poetry “Lest we Forget” was printed by R.T. White of Fleet Street, Dublin, when I cannot say, but sometime after 1894.
George Graham was an interesting man whose ancestors were in charge of the Post Office in Castledermot for upwards of a 100 years or so before finally losing that position after George's father committed suicide in February 1857. George Henry who was born in the year of Catholic Emancipation 1829, for a long time harboured a desire to emigrate to Australia but following his father's death, he thought hard of leaving his mother. He had two sisters, Elizabeth who married Samuel Cope of Castledermot and Sarah who married Richard Giltrap of Elverstown. His mother, Mary Ann died in 1859 but even then, George for some reason or other postponed his plans to emigrate. We know that he married Ann Marie Brown of Plunketstown and the following lines in his poem“That Old Churchyard” indicate that when in November 1866 George and his wife set sail for New Zealand on the ship “Himalaya” , they left behind in the churchyard in Castledermot the remains of their three young children.
“Within that Church, those vows were made.
Which sweetly during life
With Anna's lot bound up my own
And made us man and wife,
Our children, three short gleams of bliss
Shed on our hearts, on high
Their spirits fled, their little forms
Within that churchyard lie”
George and Anna Graham reached New Zealand in February 1867 and they settled in Waimate which is about ten kilometres inland and almost halfway between Christ Church, Dunedain and Queenstown. Nowadays, Waimate is a small town with a population of about 2,700 served by approximately 50 shops but when the Graham's arrived they were amongst the first settlers in the area. George Graham carried on farming and three years later he was appointed Clerk of the Magistrates Court. He had been involved in Court work while in Ireland, exactly in what capacity I have not found out. He appears to have undertaken many different roles while in New Zealand and apart from farming and working as a Court Clerk, he also worked as a Newspaper Reporter and was appointed a Justice of the Peace. However, it is in his role as an advocate of the Temperance Movement that he is best remembered in present day New Zealand.

He is commonly regarded as the father of Temperance work in Waimate where he took a leading role in the first Temperance meeting held in the town at Christmas 1868. His lifelong involvement in the Temperance Movement was an interesting and very commendable change from his young days in Castledermot where, like most young men of his time, he took drink. But even before he embarked on the “Himalaya” George Henry Graham was committed to the Temperance Movement and indeed spent a lot of his time while on board the ship travelling to New Zealand encouraging fellow passengers to sign Temperance pledges. As a Methodist lay preacher and a temperance reform advocate, Graham was an accomplished public speaker and a regular contributor in print for the cause of temperance principles.

His wife, Anna Marie died in 1873 leaving him with a son George and a daughter Ann Marie, both of whom were born in New Zealand. The young Ann Marie died aged 21 years while George (Junior) achieved fame as one of a team of three men who were the first to reach the summit of Mount Cook in New Zealand.

George Henry was Mayor of Waimate in 1891 and 1892 and in 1894 he returned for his first and only visit to Ireland. That visit was the subject of a poem which he titled “Once more I have seen thee” in which he wrote of the joy and sadness on reliving scenes from the past
“Once more have I seen thee, old Ireland
And wandered along thy dear shore
My glad feet have trod
The rich verdant sod
Of thy hills, plains and valleys once more.

Graham returned to New Zealand where he was elected Mayor of Waimate for the third time in 1894. In addition to this role, he at various times acted as Secretary of the Public Library Committee and indeed he was the first secretary of that committee when appointed in 1882. He was also secretary to the High School Board of Governors from its inception in 1883 until his death and for 25 years was Treasurer of the local Masonic Lodge.

George Henry Graham died on 25th February 1911 at the age of 82 years. On the day of his death, flags were flown at half mast and business premises in Waimate closed for the funeral. At that funeral, the Masonic Lodge attended in full, regalia and the Masonic Service was performed. He was survived by his second wife Louisa and his son George. His obituary in the New Zealand press noted that“his liberalism was always of the sound, progressive, humanitarian kind. His Irish brogue knew how to flatter whilst it preached and the not displeased subject of his shafts would remain smiling though rebuked. He was a man liked by Catholics and Protestants alike”.

His brother William Graham who remained in Castledermot died in December 1891 unmarried aged 71 years. However, the links between the Grahams and the Cope's which were first forged with the marriage of George's sister Elizabeth to Samuel Cope in the 1860's were renewed when Jeanette Graham, grand-daughter of George Henry Graham, herself a New Zealander married Samuel Cope of Knocknagee, Castledermot in 1934. Sadly within three years of their marrige, 41 year old Samuel Cope died. His widow later returned to live in New Zealand.

Castledermot born, Samuel Henry Graham is today remembered in the New Zealand town of Waimate where Graham Street in the centre of the town is named after him.

Eye on the Past 719

2010-03-24T10:10:00.003Z

Last weeks article prompted the editor (assuming it is he who composes the headlines to accompany the Eye on the Past) to headline my piece on Samuel Henry Graham as “Waxing Lyrical in Castledermot”. Well this week, if I am to follow his lead, the lyric making trundles across country westward to reach the rural outpost of Rheban. Looking up Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of Ireland published in 1837 I find under the heading “Rheban, County of Kildare - See Churchtown”. Now I have always regarded Rheban as quite a distinct area in its own right and certainly as separated as one could hope for from neighbouring Churchtown. But no, when I turn to the entry for Churchtown I found it described thus - “Churchtown or Rheban, a parish in the Barony of West Narragh and Rheban containing with part of the post town of Athy 2009 inhabitants of which number 706 are in the town. This parish is situated on the River Barrow and contains 7245 statute acres”.

So now you have it, Rheban and Churchtown are interchangeable names for the parish of - well what is it to be – Rheban or Churchtown? If we look to the past for something by which to rate the claims of either Churchtown or Rheban to primacy insofar as the parish name is concerned, then the evidence weighs heavily in favour of Rheban. After all Rheban was believed to be a site of the ancient town of Raiba noticed on Ptolemys map as one of the principal inland towns of second century Ireland. It was also of course the site of Rheban Castle built by the St. Michael family, the original Lords of the Manor or landlords of these parts.

Churchtown on the other hand does not appear to have any great claim in history, except that it's name is obviously an indication of an ancient ecclesiastical settlement in the area. Then there was the musical tradition of Churchtown which gave us the Churchtown Pipe Band. But nearer to our own time the sporting prowess of Rheban, exemplified in the Rheban G.A.A. Club started back in 1929, guarantees for the Parish of Rheban an unqualified acceptance of it's right to be known as such rather than the Parish of Churchtown.

I was put in mind of all of this when following the recent death of Dan Foley, his widow Bernadette passed on to me a copy of a ballad called simply “The Rheban Victory Song”. What, I wondered, gave rise to the ballad, the answer to which was readily to be seen in its lines.

It was apparently composed in 1940 by Pat McEvoy of Rheban whom I am told was one of the famous McEvoy brothers and whose brother Mick was one of the stars of the Rheban football team which brought the first silver cup to the club in the form of the 1940 Junior Championship. The club had been formed eleven years previously in the wake of County Kildare's victories in the All Irelands of 1927 and 1928. Imagine, not just one senior All Ireland but two in succession for the shortgrass county which has suffered a dreadful drought ever since.

The Moore brothers, John and Tom, were the prime movers in setting up the Rheban club and older brother John was the first club chairman, while Tom was elected secretary and treasurer, positions he would hold for over 50 years. The club played junior football and suffered defeat in the Junior Championship Finals of 1937 and 1938. Two years later the club contested the Junior Final for the third time and their opponents, Ardclough, proved so difficult to defeat that the first match ended all square. The replay took place three weeks later when Rheban came out winners by scoring 8 points to Ardclough's 1 goal and 1 point.

The Rheban football panel included Alf Kane, Mick Hickey, Owney Pender, Tony Keogh, Mick McEvoy, Billy Marum, Tom Hickey, Arthur Lynch, Hugh Owens, Pat Fitzpatrick, Paddy Myles, Jack Foley, Willie Moore, Jim Kane, Pat Connolly, John Cardiff, Billy Tierney, Joe Barry and Pat McEvoy. Pat McEvoy composed the Rheban victory song to mark what was a famous occasion in the history of Rheban club.

“THE RHEBAN VICTORY SONG

The fame of old Rheban has spread round Kildare
Of games they have played in towns here and there
In Narraghmore, Ballytore, Newbridge and Naas
But, to tell of the final, I must leave some space
Ardclough are the victors away in the north
They are hopeful of winning the final - but trath
The're forgetting that Rheban have won out the South
But bedad they'll remember, before 'tis played out
The big day is here, it has come to decide
The team that will conquer, the team that must bide,
Our gallant supporters are here in their throngs,
To cheer us to victory and right all our wrongs.
The whistle is sounded, the ball is thrown in
Ardclough, they are up, and, for a win
With a goal and a point up in five minutes play,
Sure they're yelling already that we've lost the day.
But alas for their hopes sure their cheers are in vain,
For our captain has rallied us all to the game,
And now we settle down to good football and fast
For ours is a team that strikes to the last.
From that bad beginning we show them some style
With point after point we wipe out their smile
Too late they discover when we take the lead
That nothing can break down our spirit or speed
The men of the moment are Myles Fitz and Lynch,
With the backs and the goalie not giving an inch
Our forwards are playing like All Ireland men
Sure the likes of that game we will ne're see again.
There goes the whistle, the game it is done
Hurrah for old Rheban, Good men one and all
Undaunted, they've kept on tho' many a fall
Now to conclude with three cheers for the names
of the men who helped us and brought us to fame
Ber Kane ever faithful, Tom Moore for his brains
And Tom Mack for his field where we always could train.”

Following last weeks article I was delighted to get a phone message on the morning the paper reached the local shops giving me the name of the writer of the ballad, “My Home Town in Kildare”. Later in the week I discovered that sadly the Castledermot man who wrote the ballad died last year but his widow gave me the background to the ballad's composition which if you remember from last week found its way to New Zealand from where an enquiry had come as to its origin and composer. Now the story can be told and I hope to do so in the near future.

In the meantime ballads, songs and poems feature large on the horizon for Colm Walsh whom I am told is putting together a CD of the many such works relating to Athy and South Kildare. It promises to be an interesting bringing together of the musical and poetical effusions, ancient and modern, relating to this area and it's people. Keep an eye out for the CD which I am sure will be in the shops in time for the Christmas period.

Eye on the Past 720

2010-03-24T10:09:00.001Z

Athy Workhouse (now St. Vincent's Hospital) was the subject of a report which appeared in the British Medical Journal in 1896. The report gives an interesting insight into the basic almost primitive nature of health services provided for the elderly and the insane 110 years ago.

“Athy is an important market town, and the workhouse, which is on its outskirts, draws its inmates from a large agricultural district. The medical officer, Dr. O’Neill, lives some distance from the house, and we were unable to time our visit to coincide with his. [Dr. O'Neill referred to in the report was Dr. Jeremiah who had been appointed Medical Officer the previous year in succession to his father, Dr. P.L. O'Neill who had held the position from 1874 to 1897] The matron, however, kindly placed herself at our disposal. In this workhouse the sick have overflowed into the body of the house. The infirmary originally planned for 30 patients, has at the present time to accommodate 42, and there are besides over 80 beds for cases of chronic infirmity requiring nursing, which are placed in the infirm wards in the body of the house. [The Infirmary was part of the original warehouse building which opened on 9th January 1844. As appears from the report it catered for the infirm who required nursing] There is an average of 95 inmates under treatment, exclusive of the lunatics, and this out of a total of 200, the number booked as being in the house on the night preceding our visit. The infirmary, consisting of a middle block and two wings, is given up to the cases which require most attention; in the middle portion is the operating room, on the first floor; below, the surgery, and the male side the kitchen, which occupies the space of two rooms. The walls throughout are whitewashed, the wall surface being smooth and the ceilings plastered. A match-board lining is carried round the walls at the height of the head of the beds. The windows are diamond paned, in heavy metal frames.; the upper half falls inwards, the lower turns on a pivot; there is no other ventilation. The bedsteads are principally the old harrow frame, with fibre mattresses, but on the male side; there are some spring beds. Between the beds were tables with a drawer on each side; there was a long table with benches for meals, and a few arm chairs. The ward crockery was kept in cupboards, and the linen store in a cupboard on the landing. In the operating room we were shown the instruments, which were creditably kept; this room contains a table, desk, and bed. On the female side the wards were not very full; an empty room was in use as a day room; in the second ward, of ten beds, was a child with acute chorea- we have seldom seen a worse case; another with phithis; a case of fractured thigh; anaemia; ulceration of the legs; a strumous child; and two women who were dressed. One of these told us that she “had her chest bad,” and the other had some internal trouble. On this side there are ten beds more than on the men’s side. The lower ward was used as a sleeping room for any inmates whose services were required at night in the wards. The male patients also were few in number. In the first ward, of six beds, they were all up; in the second, containing ten beds, three were in bed, one with bronchitis, another with an ulcerated leg, and the third was a case of senility. As the visit was paid in the summer we found the sick department at its lowest. The wards were being scrubbed, which gave them a disorderly appearance. The lunatics in this union are kept in cells. There is accommodation for six on each side, in three cells. [The reference to lunatics and the cells in which they were accommodated is a surprise revelation and the first reference I have found to the detention of the insane in the local workhouse] The so-called dayroom is the corridor outside the cells. These cells are bolted at night and there is no spyhole. On the male side were five patients; they were out in the exercise yard. On the female sides were two patients, seated on a bench in the corridor. An infant belonging to the wardswoman was in a cot in one of the cells. These divisions were clean, but unspeakably dreary and cheerless. The airing court on the female side, in which we were pleased to notice benches, is spacious and had growing flowers; it is used in common by hospital patients and by the idiots. The epileptics are in this class. The infirmary nursing is in the hands of three nuns who are not trained [The Sisters of Mercy first began to visit patients in the Workhouse infirmary some time in the 1870's. The Board of Guardians made an approach to the Order to take over responsibility for the Infirmary which they did in or around March 1880]; they have the usual pauper helps, one to each ward. The nuns are also responsible for the lunatics, though on both sides an inmate was in charge. There is no night-nurse; if necessary inmates are placed on duty at night, and if more nurses are required by day, a larger number of inmates is sent from the house; quantity is not stinted if the quality be more than doubtful. The maternity ward is in the body of the house, close to the infirm wards. It is a large room, having, however, only four beds, one of which was occupied; there is no labour bed. The ward is not good-dark, badly ventilated, and difficult to warm in winter; the windows are placed high in the wall, and on one side only. The beds are straw on the “harrow” frames. A door leads to the nursery, a small room, and beyond is a small garden in which is an open shed with bath and cold water tap, a privy and a receptacle for foul linen; the shed was much blocked with pails and odds and ends of lumber, making it practically useless for its original purpose. As previously mentioned, a large number of hospital patients are treated in the infirm wards, where 42 beds in two wards are assigned to them in each wing. These wards are fitted up as sick wards, and here we saw helpless cases-paralysis, old age, etc. On the male side there are 20 in bed, on the female side only 8. The matron is responsible for the nursing of these patients, and has a wardsman or woman in each ward. These wards are locked at night on the outside; there are no bells to the officers’ quarters, and though they are termed convalescent wards, most of the patients treated in them will never reach the convalescent stage. Nor are there any appliances for nursing, no water supply, no offices, no proper ventilation, the only light and air coming through a large window at either end of the ward. More serious still is the great distance between these wards and the infirmary proper, and the absence of all supervision at night. The guardians have placed good stoves in the wards, and also by the provision of small tables, chairs, etc. have endeavoured to overcome some of the difficulties of nursing, but the structural defects still remain. The sunk portion of the floor has been levelled, so as to provide space for the iron-framed bedstead with fibre mattress. In some wards we saw a few “harrow” beds in use. The fever hospital is a separate building [The Fever Hospital was separate from the Workhouse and was in operation before the Workhouse opened], standing on a higher level than the workhouse. It is better planned for the requirements of the sick, and as there is no fever, we were told that the doctor sends thither such patients as in his opinion require better air. It is nursed by two trained nurses and has its separate kitchen and laundry. In the girls’ and boys’ dormitories we were pleased to notice that the guardians had superseded the straw ticks on the floor by spring bedsteads, that they had levelled the floor, and on the girls’ side they had removed the partition, thus improving the light and increasing the cubic space. The fireplaces throughout are the old grates, except in the infirm wards. The kitchen is still in its primitive condition-huge boilers, with their separate furnaces, and no range. The water for house use is heated in the laundry. This laundry serves all departments, except the fever hospital. We are informed that the feeding troughs are still in use in the dining-hall for serving the stirabout to the able-bodied. In sanitary matters this house is on a level with others of its class.

The privies are on the trough system; they were not in a cleanly state, and in some cases we noticed great carelessness in placing the trough. There is one bath in the infirmary, with hot and cold water supply. There are no indoor conveniences. Soil buckets are used in the infirmary and infirm wards, and remain unemptied at night. The water supply is ample, and is pumped up daily.

Eye on the Past 721

2010-03-24T10:04:00.002Z

The material which follows was extracted from an article on Athy and its industries which appeared in the Leinster Leader in March 1898. The references to the Mills and the Brickworks are of historical interest given that both industries have long disappeared.

“The industries of Athy, as they exist today are not numerous, but they are fairly flourishing. The flour, Indian meal and oatmeal mills of Messrs H. Hannon and Sons constitute by far the most important industry of the district. There are three mills-the Ardreigh (Athy) mills, in which flour alone is manufactured; the Plumperstown mills, also used for the manufacture of flour, and the Athy mills devoted solely to the manufacture of Indian meal.

The Ardreigh Mills were purchased from the Messrs Haughton in 1895, and since then they have been gradually growing in popular esteem, so that their present proprietors have been able to look back upon over two years of continued prosperity. During last year over 8,500 barrels of wheat were manufactured into flour of every quality-Acme, Champion, Rollo Firsts, X L and Prime Foreign for bakers, and Extra Firsts, Prime Irish Retailers (patents) Households, Seconds, Thirds, and Wholemeal for retailers. Practically all the wheat consumed in Athy comes from the flour mills of Ardreigh of the Messrs. Hannon, whilst an extensive trade is also carried on with Athy, Stradbally, Castlecomer, Monasterevan, Kildare, Portarlington, and Edenderry.

Of the total quantity of wheat manufactured in the mills last year 1,000 were native-grown. This has given such an impetus to the wheat growing industry in the district that it is calculated that the acreage under this cereal has been trebled this year. The farmers are well satisfied with the price they obtained, and have resolved to devote a larger area to the cultivation of this grain in future. No wheat produces such a white flour as the native, and the best results are obtained mixing it in small proportions with the foreign article. The Messrs. Hannon find that they not alone are able to compete with, but that they are able to beat foreign producers and manufacturers in fair competition in the open market. This is saying something for Irish enterprise, and covers an idea of the era of prosperity, which might be established, did the example of the Messrs. Hannon meet with a more general emulation. Certainly we would be considered the richer did less bags bearing the well-known brand "San Francisco, U.S.A.," enter the country. The mills were fitted up with the most modern machinery by Henry Simon, of Manchester. I got my information with regard to them from Mr. H. Hannon who waxed enthusiastic over the great benefits, which would accrue to the country from the establishment of industries on a large scale. The manager of the mills, Mr. Price, explained to me the process of manufacture in a most lucid and intelligent manner. Writing towards the end of the last century a celebrated doctor and litterateur gave expression to the statement-"The bread of Nice is very indifferent, and, I am persuaded, very unwholesome. The flour is generally musty and not quite free of sand. This is either owing to the particles of millstone rubbed in grinding, or to what adheres to the corn itself on being threshed on the common ground." Well, as regards the Ardreigh Mills there’s no danger of sand entering the composition of flour manufactured therein, as, the wheat goes through a most elaborate cleaning process, whilst as to mill-stones-none exist-they have been long since discarded. The wheat arrives by barge on the Grand Canal, and Mr. Price explained how it is then placed in elevators, thence to the receiving separator, where the dirt is removed by a preliminary cleaning. The separator is known as the Ureka Dustless Receiving Separator, and can treat 100 barrels of grain in an hour. It is then placed on the various lofts for storage, and subsequently drawn off and mixed to produce the different qualities of flour required. It is then again drawn off and cleaned by a "Dustless Milling Separator," is transferred thence to a divider, next to the cockle and barley cylinders of which there are eight, after which it is thoroughly washed by a scourer. It then goes to a whizzer, where it receives a partial drying. The damp in completely expelled by a Simon Dryer-a patent which is to be found in very few Irish mills, and which dispenses with the old tedious system of kiln drying. The dryer is about 50 feet long, and extending from the bottom of the building upwards, and whilst the wheat which is conveyed from the whizzer by means of an elevator, falls gradually through an opening in which it is played upon by hot currents of air. It falls from the dryer into bins, where it is allowed to remain for a few hours, after which it receives a final cleaning by a brush machine. The final stages in process of manufacture are quickly got through. The corn goes successively through brakes, scalpers, and purifiers, when finally the flour and semolina are separated from each other by a centripetal dressing machine. In the mills the most perfect cleanliness was observed. Mention must be made of the courtesy and business tact of the managing clerk, Mr. Dobbin, to whose energy and resource not a little of the success which has attended the firm is owing. About twenty men are constantly employed in the mills.

The Plumperstown Mills

During last year 9,338 barrels of wheat were manufactured into flour in the above mills. The principal markets are Carlow, Tullow, Baltinglass, and Castledermot. The price paid for wheat in this and in the Ardreigh mills last year was £1 0s 6d per barrel. With this the farmers were well pleased, and the result is that the stimulus afforded through purchasing has induced them to treble the area under the growth this year. Four hundred tons of Indian corn were manufactured into meal last year.

The Athy Mills

In Athy Mills [located in what is now Edmund Rice Square] 400 tons of Indian corn were treated last year, whilst a large quantity of oats was also manufactured into meal. There are, of course, separate mill wheels for the manufacture of Indian Meal. The best patent oat meal, flaked meal, and mixed meal are manufactured and the flaked is packed neatly and conveniently in cotton bags in weights of a stone, a half stone, and a quarter stone.

The Brickworks

The Brick-making industry in the district received an important impetus in the year ’93, prior to which it had become well nigh paralysed owing to the competition carried on by English firms under more advantageous circumstances. Before ’93 it was found that the sale of home made bricks in the district was gradually declining. This was owing to two causes. One was that the machine made bricks of England were larger and therefore more economical for building purposes, and the other that the new and improved process of manufacture by machinery gave the manufacturers or vendors an opportunity of placing on the market an article at the minimum price. In ’93, however, the thinking men of the district put their heads together, and with the co-operation of friends outside, formed a company to manufacture bricks on the newest and most improved methods, and a sum of £120,000 has since been expended on machinery and buildings on a site on the Monasterevan road at the northern side of the town. Mr. Maurice Dominick, J. P., Great George’s street, Cork, is Chairman of the Company; Mr. Joseph Doyle, Curragh Camp, V. C. , Mr. Thomas A. Seagrave, late manager of the Hibernian Bank, Athy, and Mr. Robert Anderson, Castlemitchell, being other directors. Mr. S. Telford, T.C., a gentleman who takes a deep interest in the fostering of local industries, is Managing Director. Mr. Anthony Reeves, the courteous secretary and general business manager, took me over the extensive premises and explained the process of manufacture from the time the clay is wheeled from the field in lorries until the bricks come forth burned and ready for the market. About forty men are in constant employment throughout the year, and an average of £50 weekly is paid in salaries and wages. The working men earn from 10s to 20s per week, and as the work is perfectly healthy it can easily be seen what a boon such an industry is in the district. Mr. Reeves spoke in the highest terms of the treatment his company received from the Great Southern and Western Railway. Prior to ’93 the rate was 15s; it is now only 6s, this concession being made by the railway people in order to assist in the development of the industry. The railway company are also going to run a siding from the railway up to the brickworks, a distance of 400 yards. With a preferential rate and an article than which no better can, in the opinion of experts, be placed on the market, it is no wonder that the industry is developing. Although the weekly output of bricks amounts to 80,000 Mr. Reeves assured me that the supply was quite unequal to the demand. The principal market is Dublin, where the products of the company are now used by all the leading builders. The National Bank, Rathmines, at present in course of construction, is being built by bricks manufactured by the company. Octagon, bull-nose, and every variety of moulded brick are made. The five huge tanks on the premises are capable of holding material sufficient to manufacture 400,000 bricks. Those to which we have referred are the principal industries of Athy. The good they do could only be thoroughly understood and appreciated should they but cease to exist for a month. Mr. Plewman is an active member of the Town Commission of which he is Chairman. He has taken a prominent part in organising the fairs and markets, and does much to add to the general weal.”

Eye on the Past 722

2010-03-24T09:55:00.004Z

Richard Daley is Mayor of Chicago and to distinguish himself from Richard of Athy he spells his name with an “e”. I was reminded of both when I recently spent some time in the Windy City during which I took the opportunity to do some research on the Irish in that part of America. Daley, the Mayor, has presided over the affairs of the Illinois city for several years and by all accounts his stewardship meets with the general approval of the residents. Certainly the doorman of my hotel was loud in his praise of Mayor Daley. Patrick O'Sullivan, a native of Sneem, Co. Kerry has lived in Chicago for 29 years but even as he spoke to me the Kerry blas reasserted itself so that by the time he finished talking he sounded as if he was standing outside the Great Southern Hotel in Parknasilla instead of a hotel in the Chicago Loop.

Everywhere you look in Chicago you see the results of a municipality geared to making the city a pleasant place in which to live and work. Renowned for its architecture Chicago has developed a cultural awareness which is second to none. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in the Millennium Park, a development of recent years which complements and enhances the already existing people oriented facilities of the city. Just a short distance from the Park which includes an auditorium capable of catering for thousands, is the worlds largest public library opened just a few years ago. It was there that I spent some time, much shorter than I had expected, because of the readily accessible records which with the minimum of fuss were made available to me to consult and to copy as I wished. I found myself contrasting the ease with which I was able to conduct my research there with the sometimes stultifying procedures I've had to comply with before doing similar research in this country.

My research centered on a man of whom I had often heard my mother speak. He bore the same name as her only brother, Anthony O'Regan, but his place in history was assured by virtue of the fact that he was Bishop of Chicago before the diocese became an Archdiocese. In fact he was the third Bishop of Chicago, an appointment he had initially refused but eventually accepted when pressed to do so by Rome. I knew nothing of the man who was the uncle of my Mayo grandfather, but amongst my mother's papers I found a copy of the Bishop's Will, his photograph and a press cutting regarding the return of his body for burial in his native Cloonfad. The story of Bishop Anthony O'Regan unfolded as I picked up and read various tomes on the church in Chicago, most of which had been published many years ago and all of which were long out of print and unavailable in this country.

Having achieved what I had set out to do in a much shorter time than I expected I delved into the history of the Irish in Chicago and could only marvel at the impact that Irish emigrants had on Chicago and the mid West. Indeed the influence of the Irish is everywhere to be seen in the social, economic and religious life of the American people, but perhaps nowhere other than in New York, is such influence stronger than in Chicago. The reason is fairly obvious. The Catholic Church had a presence from a very early stage of the development of the city of Chicago and nowhere is that presence more visible even now than in the area which was once a predominantly Irish neighbourhood. St. Patrick's Church on West Adams Street with its twin towers of contrasting styles is the iconic reminder of the working class Irishmen and women who a few years after the Great Famine financed the building of the Church. The priest in charge of the parish at the time was Timahoe, Co. Laois man, Fr. Denis Dunne who a few years later, despite recognising that the average Irish emigrant was not enthusiastic about the abolition of black slavery, nevertheless set about the raising of Irish volunteers to fight on the Union side in the American Civil War. The 90th Regiment comprising 980 Irish emigrants left Chicago to fight in the war, but only 221 returned in June 1865. Their contribution did much to integrate the Irish into the new United States.

The nave of St. Patrick's, itself unusual in the context of Chicago in being a brick built Church, had an interesting collection of stained glass windows depicting Irish saints. Irish politics of defiance is represented by a stained glass window commemorating Terence McSweeney, the Mayor of Cork who died on hunger strike in London in 1920. Stained glass played an important part in the architectural revival of Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871 and one of the great architects of the time was Irishman Louis Sullivan, many of whose concepts and designs for stained glass windows are on display in the Smith Museum of Stained Glass on Chicago's Navy Pier. It's quite a magnificent display of such work, indeed the best collection I have ever seen in one place.

Another element of the Catholic Church's involvement with the Irish in America centered on education and care of the sick and elderly. It was here that the Sisters of Mercy played a major role. Interestingly the first Sisters of Mercy arrived in America in December 1843 having travelled from St. Leo's Convent in Carlow. Seven nuns out of twenty-one from that convent who had volunteered to take up the invitation of an Irish priest in America travelled to the States where they set up the first Sister of Mercy convent in Pittsburgh in December 1843. I had understood that one of the nuns involved was related to Patrick Maher of Kilrush but I am now not at all sure on that point. Maher was one of the principal benefactors of the Convent of Mercy established in Athy in 1852 and of the Christian Brothers Convent founded nine years later and indeed one of his daughters was for many years superior of the Athy Convent of Mercy.

The nuns from Carlow earned for St. Leo's the right to be called the cradle of the Mercy congregation in America by virtue of that first American convent founded in December 1843. Just three years later six Mercy nuns travelled from Pittsburgh to Chicago and opened there a convent which they called “St. Francis Xaviers”. Within ten years the Sisters of Mercy in Chicago had opened an orphanage, a hospital and schools, one of which they called “Francis Xavier Female Academy”, a forerunner of the present day St. Xavier's University and the Mother McCauley High School. However, before the 8th anniversary of their arrival in Chicago was reached, five of the original six nuns had died, none of whom were more than thirty years old. They succumbed one by one as victims of the cholera epidemics of 1849 and 1854 during which they had tended to the sick of the city. However, their places were quickly taken up by young Americans so that by 1856 the Sisters of Mercy in Chicago numbered 88.

I did not get an opportunity to visit the Irish American Heritage Centre in Chicago but from what I heard it is an organisation actively involved in promoting Irish culture amongst the second and third generation Irish and fulfilling that role quite well. Indeed I could well understand how any organisation involved in promoting arts and culture would prosper in Richard Daley's Chicago. It's a handsome place in which the City Council takes pride in promoting community involvement in the arts. Everywhere is to be seen evidence of that in the promotional material produced by the City Council. How I wish the municipal governors of our little town would take a similar interest on our behalf. Maybe the Mayor's namesake would take up the cause.

Eye on the Past 723

2010-03-24T09:47:00.003Z

I can't remember when I first met Margo Gough. The redoubtable Margo was a lady of character. Charitable and generous, despite her oft repeated claim as to be the meanest woman in Leinster, she was fiercely independent, yet appreciative of whatever was done for her. An active woman, she proudly cherished the benefits of fresh air and her walks along the River Barrow with her trusty walking stick clutched behind her back afforded her the opportunity to meet, greet and talk to passing acquaintances and strangers alike. Margo raged against the advancing years which curtailed her outings outdoors. Life was to be treasured and shared with others and she found the restricted confinement of indoor life an unacceptable disadvantage of old age.

I liked Margo. Anyone whose concern for the less well off in a Continent as far away as India had an appreciation and an understanding of the true meaning of the brotherhood of men or perhaps I should write, the sisterhood of women. The Dominicans held a special place in Margo's heart and her visit to the Barrowside Chapel for morning mass was a daily occurrence which lasted for as long as her health permitted. The presence of two Dominican priests including her friend Fr. Hugh Fenning at the funeral mass was an acknowledgment of Margo's long standing affinity with the Order of the Black Preachers.

Margo passed away aged 84 years, just a few days after Mrs. Alice J. Lawler, aged 98 years. Widowed at a young age when her husband Jim was killed while working on the Poulaphouca Electricity Scheme, Alice Lawler was, for as long as I can remember, a valued and trusted member of the staff of Bob Osborne's office and subsequently that of his son Cyril. She was a lovely good natured lady who during her long life brought a smile and good humour wherever she went. May both Margo and Alice rest in peace.

Delving into correspondence recently received by me I have a number of unanswered queries with which I need some help. A lady from Massachusetts America, having read the second book of the Eye on the Past series asked me for some information on the Caulfields of Levitstown. I have some reference to Dan Caulfield who was one of the principal Catholic landowners harassed by government troops during the 1798 period and if I recall correctly he was one of the parties to whom the site of St. Michael's Parish Church was transferred to in trust in the early part of the 1800's. The family seems to have left the area in the 1880's when according to my correspondent “the estate was forfeited”. Can anyone throw any light on the Caulfields of Levitstown?

Another less recently received query was from a London man who is preparing a book for publication on prize book plates. A rare example of an 18th century plate puzzled him. It was quite a handsome engraving showing Apollo awarding laurels to a young lad with a Temple in the background. The engraving is surmounted by a scroll with the words “Athy School” and beneath the engraving was written the name of the prizewinner with the signature of the school head “Nich Ashe”. I was able to identify Nicholas Ashe's signature from copies of some letters he wrote to the Duke of Leinster during and after the '98 Rebellion.

Ashe had a school in Athy, the first reference to which I have found was in 1791. It was then mentioned as the school in which Thomas Lefroy and his brother Ben enrolled after arriving from County Longford. In keeping with private schools of the time it was probably a private house catering for a small number of boarders located somewhere on the main street of the town.

Thomas Lefroy would later in life become Chief Justice of Ireland and he had a romance with Jane Austen during the summer of 1795. The character Fitzwilliam Darcy in her book “Pride and Prejudice” is reputably based on Thomas Lefroy with whom Jane Austen is believed to have fallen in love.

Nicholas Ashe was the Church of Ireland curate at Fontstown, a position to which he was appointed in 1794. He was elected sovereign of Athy for 1797/'98 and the latter part of his term in office coincided with the early weeks of the rebellion. Ashe, as town sovereign, encouraged the rebels to hand up their arms and tried, unsuccessfully it must be said, to stem the acts of cruelty which were common to both rebels and crown soldiers. He was a good man, as one would expect of a man of the cloth, but he was nevertheless roughly treated by the soldiers, 60 of whom were quartered with him in his private residence. This imposed the responsibility of feeding the 60 soldiers on Ashe who was so impoverished as a result that the Duke of Leinster was moved to claim “Ashe was obliged to do his duty as a magistrate in his slippers”.

Nicholas Ashe was appointed vicar of Laraghbryan, Maynooth in 1799 and he died there in 1816. It's quite likely that the Duke of Leinster obtained the appointment to enable him to get away from the loyalists of Athy who turned against Ashe, as did the crown soldiers, because of his efforts to get the Irish rebels to peacefully hand up their arms.

Has anyone come across an Athy school bookplate, and perhaps more importantly are there any documents or maps to show where Nicholas Ashe's school was located just over 200 years ago?

I have on my desk as I write a photocopy of a telegram received in Castledermot in 1915 addressed to “Murphy Kileen Maganey Kildare” with the message:

“Regret to inform you that No. 7618 Martin Murphy was killed in action on 21st October. Letter follows
Commander Irish Guards”

Murphy was 22 years old when he died in France, and fighting on the same war front was his brother Jack who would survive the war and return to live in Meeting Lane Athy. There were two other Murphy brothers, one too young to enlist, but the eldest Michael wore the makeshift uniform of a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army. Enlistment to fight in the First World War did not indicate political affiliation with the crown or indeed disassociation from the ideals of the Sinn Fein party. Divergences of political opinion were largely absent from the Ireland of 1914 and 1915 and would only emerge following the Easter Rebellion of 1916. But by then the thousands of young Irishmen emboldened by the apparent glamour of uniformed life and the thrill of overseas travel had committed themselves for the duration of the war.

The awful tragedy of those years is captured in the telegram announcing the death of young Martin Murphy who died as his brother Jack continued his temporary army career in war torn France, while brother Michael joined local men Ned Kane, Tom Wilkie, Paddy Cosgrave and others in drill and arms training for a future war – the Irish War of Independence. Irish history is full of these apparent contradictions but behind them lies explanations and the reality of life as it was lived in Ireland 90 years ago.

Eye on the Past 724

2010-03-24T09:44:00.002Z

A younger generation filled the pews in the front rows of the church just to the right of the coffined remains of a school pal of 50 years ago. They were the nephews and nieces of P.J. Hyland, all members of the extended Hyland family of whom P.J., as the only brother to four sisters, was the father figure. It was a role which might not have seemed all that suited to a man who in public was quiet and reserved, almost to the point of shyness, but who bloomed in the company of family and friends. And he had many friends, for P.J. Hyland was a man for whom friendship was an important part of passage through life. His friends were the friends of a lifetime, many gained in youthful school days and those privileged to share his friendship were the lucky ones.

He was a kind and thoughtful friend, proof of which was evident in his concern for another school pal whom he encouraged to be part of a Christian Brothers school class reunion organised a few years ago. P.J. went out of his way to ensure that his friend would share in the celebrations, even if for whatever reason he was initially reluctant to do so. His thoughtfulness on that occasion touched me and showed another side to the P.J whom I had known since our own school days.

The Hyland family goes back several generations in Athy and as I stood at the graveside I marvelled at the happy coincidence which found the Murray, Prendergast, McElwee and the Hyland family graves located in close proximity to each other in St. Michael's cemetery. But then it was no coincidence for the four families were all related by marriage at a time when the cemetery caretaker was P.J.'s grandfather, Peter Hyland, who in April 1942 was granted the unusual gift of a free burial site in St. Michael's by his employers, the then Urban District Council. The gift followed his retirement some years previously after 44 years service as cemetery caretaker and on choosing his own burial site he evidently arranged for the Murray, McElwee and the Prendergast families to lie close at hand. On Peter's retirement the position of cemetery caretaker was filled by his son Thomas, who was P.J.'s father.

P.J. Hyland was a year older than myself but we shared classrooms in the local Christian Brothers schools up as far as first year in the secondary school. Like many others in those days P.J. left school as soon as he was legally entitled to do so and started work with McMahons who were then doing contract work in Minch Nortons. He subsequently spent many years in the Wallboard factory and I was living in Dublin when the factory closed down and P.J.'s photograph appeared in the national newspapers with the story of the closure of Athy's largest factory. He would later join his brother-in-law Wag O'Keeffe in managing the Jet service station at Blackparks, a position from which he retired a few years ago. A longtime member of the C.Y.M.S., he was its Chairman in the latter years of its occupancy of the former Social Club premises which were an adjunct to the old Comrades Hall in St. John's Lane. He remained the C.Y.M.S. Chairman during and after the Society's move to Mount St. Marys. He tried over several years to revive the fortunes of the once active C.Y.M.S. but in the end the society had to close its doors. It was a sad occasion for those who remembered the heady days of the C.Y.M.S. stretching back to its original premises at Stanhope St. P.J. was very disappointed by the demise of the C.Y.M.S. but still hoped that at some future date its revival would be possible. It was not to be in P.J.'s lifetime.

One of the great, if not the greatest love of his life, was Gaelic football. I remember P.J. as a very stylish centre fielder, whose leap for the high dropping ball was marvellous to behold. He had the grace and majesty which one usually associated with the legendary Kerry footballer Mick O'Connell. Graceful in movement his unhurried style is forever etched in my memory. He was a good club player who plied his football skills for a long time in the interests of the club with which his name will always be associated. Athy Gaelic Football Club founded way back in October 1887 has had many great supporters over the years but few have matched the intensity of P.J.'s feelings for the club whose efforts on the field have not been matched with many great successes over the years.

How P.J. would like to have lived through the late 1930's and early 1940's when the sporting prowess of Athy Gaelic Football Club was in its ascendancy. It was then that great footballers such as George Comerford, Paul Matthews, Tommy Mulhall and Barney Dunne, to name just four of the lynchpins of that time, plied their footballing skills. Athy Gaelic football was an important part of P.J.'s life both as a player and a supporter and inevitably because of the club's lack of success it was an attachment which did not bring too many occasions for celebrations. No great success marked P.J.'s years on the Athy senior team but he basked in the reflective glory of Athy's last championship final win achieved during the 1987 season.

In the Hyland household at Leinster Street marriages in recent years gave Round Towers and Rheban a foothold where previously the only team recognised was Athy. P.J. liked to “rattle the cages” of the Round Towers and Rheban allegiances of his nephew-in-laws, forever probing, forever questioning the relative merits of footballers from the respective clubs. Gaelic football was his great interest and with his passing Athy Gaelic Football Club has lost one of its keenest and longest serving supporters.

Another sportsman of a different generation, this time a man whose successes in greyhound racing made him a legend in his lifetime, also passed away. Paddy McEvoy was 89 years of age when he died and during his active sporting life he achieved some remarkable records. Paddy was the subject of an Eye on the Past about five years ago when a double feature, Nos. 432 and 433 was required to document the successes of the man who on his retirement in 1993 as manager of Wimbledon Stadium was described as “one of greyhound racings greatest trainers.” It was a tribute richly deserved for Athy-born Paddy had trained the winner of the English greyhound Derby not just once, but three times, a record unrivalled to this day. It was a wonderful gesture for those associated with greyhound racing in this area to provide a guard of honour as Paddy's remains were brought from Rigney's Funeral Home to the church on Monday evening. In the same way the members of Athy Gaelic Football Club provided a guard of honour for P.J. Hyland, an honour which highlighted the contribution of both men to their respective sports.

Jim Flood of Fontstown died a few days earlier, again like Paddy McEvoy at a good age, which in Jim's case was 92 years. I had the pleasure of talking to and interviewing Jim a few years ago at the time when he was just 87 years old and I remarked what an extraordinary memory he had of people and of past events. Jim, who was born the year before the Great War, was an extremely active man and I last saw him walking the Dublin road at Fontstown a few weeks ago as I drove to the capital city. He lived to see the enormous increase in traffic which passed his house at Fontstown each day and drew comparisons with his school days of the 1920's, when as he related it, there was only one car on the road. It belonged to Captain Hone who drove down to Kilmead every Thursday to pay his workmen.

I was privileged to have had the opportunity of meeting and interviewing Jim Flood and Paddy McEvoy, both of whom shared their stories and their experiences with me. The privilege of sharing school days and a friendship with P.J. Hyland is one I will treasure.

May the good Lord be kind to P.J., Paddy and Jim.

Eye on the Past 724

2010-03-18T15:32:00.007Z

Eye on the Past 725

2010-03-18T15:28:00.002Z

I was fortunate enough to spend a few days recently researching in the British Library where I came across some papers which helped me to partially solve a puzzle that has troubled me for some time. The story of Johanna Macken is a most unusual one. It was a name I had heard now and again in my younger days but always, it seemed to me, a name that seemed to produce a slight frission of disapproval when mentioned by persons of a certain age. With the instincts of the Christian Brothers boy, I knew better than to ask my elders too many questions. I was later to discover that our town had produced at least one authoress whose fame had travelled far to other lands but who was perhaps not always as appreciated as she should have been in her own home town.

The future writer, Johanna Macken, was born in the late 1850's or early 1860's in the Castledermot area. I have been able to find little information about her early life which seems in any case to have been fairly uneventful but she almost certainly attended the Ballitore Quaker School which had formerly counted Edmund Burke and Napper Tandy among its pupils. It was perhaps this influence that prompted her to become a Quaker sometime in her early adult life, a move which proved to be only the first of the quaintly individualist touches that would mark her personal career from then on. For Johanna was an unusual and might I say libertarian personality for her day – a hint of which must have survived to ensure her part in the bawdy rhymes that innocently echoed around the local school yard almost a century later.

The first time I discovered that Johanna Macken had a reality outside of our schoolboy chants was many years ago in Webbs book shop on Aston Quay, home to many a lost literary treasure and a place which has long since become a casualty of Dublin's ever diminishing book trade. It was a shop I always enjoyed visiting, as much for the pleasure of chatting to its elderly guardian Tony Lamont, a man of abstruse and varied learning as for the opportunity of whiling away my hours amongst its towers of ancient tomes. On hearing I was from Athy, Tony one day chuckled mischievously to himself and fished out a greyish pockmarked little item from one of the rear shelves. It was a slim book on the history of Castledermot, obviously a product of the previous century but what caught my attention was the name boldly emblazoned on the front, that of Johanna Macken. The title recalled the star of our childhood songs - fiction made flesh and a story was then related to me which I was finally able to corroborate for myself almost 30 years later while in the British Library.

The Castledermot book was the first of Johanna's long and prolific literary career. It appears she soon thereafter began publishing under a disguised male name – in the manner of her predecessors Charlotte Bronte and George Elliott – to escape some of the prejudice against female authors that still survived in the 19th century. The Castledermot book was a local affair but my researches have shown that Johanna Macken was involved in the production of a myriad of literary creations. In the era of the three volume novel – vast affairs which were the stock and trade of the lending libraries dotted throughout Britain – Macken quickly made her mark with “Claire”, a five volume effort which won comparisons with Samuel Richardson's “Pamela” for its sympathetic account of a working girls passage through life. With the novels she produced over the next decade or so (at a rate of roughly two a year that would shame many of our current crop of authors) it seems that Johanna Macken established a solid name writing under the nom de plume “Mete Lane” as a writer of romance and adventure stories. These imagined tales of high society were a world apart from her humble lifestyle which she lived out, I believe, in a small cottage in the Kilkea area. Nevertheless they were a staple feature of the diet of the British public at the turn of the century and indeed part of the forgotten social history of the time.

But Tony Lamont had a more curious story to tell than that of a now neglected lady novelist. It seems that Johanna Macken under one of her many pseudonyms was also the author of a series of pornographic novels that were equally popular in the late Victorian and early Edwardian eras, but even less likely to be noted by the compiler of literary histories. Under the name of Jack Makedo, she wrote a number of what one might call racy page turners for Londons Blackheart Press, the titles of which are descriptive enough in themselves and need not be repeated here. It was perhaps at least one of the reasons why this strange author has become a hidden part of Athy's past. Lucrative these novels may have been, but their existence was certainly designed to pass under any official radar. It was the last of these books, “A Haunted Heart” which was destined to secure Johanna Macken, alias Jack Makedo, her own unusual place in literary history. Fifteen years before James Joyce's Ulysses would create a similar controversy, Macken's last novel was unexpectedly seized on arrival in the United States by the U.S. Post Office and those involved in its importation were charged with attempting to distribute obscene material. There was no celebrity trial for an author who was – in another of her many guises – one of Britain's most popular writers of the penny romance. The ensuing press scandal ensured that many of Macken's remaining titles were removed from the shelves of the British and Irish book shops.

All that remained in her home town, a place soon to be consumed by the larger dramas of a World War and a War of Independence (and in any case not regularly preoccupied by the scandals of the London literati) was the faint echo of a stained reputation. All that passed down to myself and my pals in much later years was the fantastical character who starred in many a ribald rhyme.

Johanna Macken faded into obscurity after the trial of her New York distributors and to the best of my knowledge never wrote another book. I have often wondered what became of her, but I understand she did remain in the South Kildare area and probably survived to a distinguished age, most likely under another of her many pseudonyms. Though the photograph reproduced here shows the lady writer in her heyday – and many of my readers who may have come across her would have done so when she was at a rather more advanced age – I would appeal to anyone who could help me to properly conclude the story of this most unusual woman.

Until then her only surviving epitaph will be that chanted in a rowdy school yard over fifty years ago.

Johanna Macken had her pride
Which was never, ever at her side
For when she had the sudden urge
She upped and wrote a dirty dirge.

Eye on the Past 726

2010-03-18T14:56:00.003Z

Sport plays an important part in most of our lives. Whether as spectators or one time participants we store up memories from which we can draw to replenish the fading joys of long forgotten youthful endeavours on the playing or athletic field. Funerals are always ensured to trigger the treasured bank of sporting memories; memories which were once casually put aside and apparently forgotten. However, they readily come to mind as conversation flows and names and events of a youthful past are mentioned.

Such were my thoughts when attending on the same day recently the funerals of two local men whose lives in a strange way followed somewhat similar patterns. Both John Dooley and Tom McCarthy were relatively young men, probably unknown to a younger generation, but in their time were active members of our community.

Tom was known as “shopboy”, a nick name which I once presumed came courtesy of a working stint with the L&N or some other local grocery. However, this was not so. His parents, Pat and Agnes who lived in No. 4 St. Joseph's Terrace, acquired in the early 1950's a messenger boys bike no longer required by one of the local shopkeepers and young Tom used it when cycling around the town. The readily recognisable messenger bike with Tom on board was a regular, if somewhat unusual site around Athy and inevitably the young Tom soon acquired the nick name “shopboy” McCarthy. It was to remain with him for the rest of his life.

When Tom left school at an early age he worked initially in Tegral before he became a Foundry worker in the I.V.I. There he spent the greater part of his working life and was there until the Foundry closed down. During his young days Tom played soccer for Athy A.F.C. second team, and Gaelic football for Rheban, the current members of which club provided a guard of honour at his funeral. As a member of the I.V.I. Factory team Tom won a Leinster factory league medal in 1962. After the closure of the I.V.I. Tom went to work for a while with the Co-op Foundry set up by Dom O'Rourke and Syl Bell which is based on the Kilkenny Road.

Tom, who lived all his life in the McCarthy family home at St. Joseph's Terrace, was the son of Pat McCarthy and Agnes Kelly who was originally from Canal Side. His brother Jim died in 1953 at 15 years of age from meningitis, while his younger sister Mary died 23 years ago. As Fr. Dennehy so eloquently put it when receiving Tom's remains in St. Michael's Church, “he went into himself in more recent years.” However Tom, or as we all knew him “shopboy”, was a man who gave offence to no one. Irrespective of whatever difficulties he may have had in later years he held the affection and respect of those who knew him. He was 67 years of age when he passed away, survived by his brother Pat to whom we extend our sympathy.

John Dooley was laid to rest the same day as “shopboy” McCarthy and strangely both were of the same age and in all probability classmates in the local Christian Brothers school. John died on the day of his 67th birthday. He was a son of John Dooley, a native of Paulstown, Kilkenny, who came to Athy in 1930 to work in the grocery section of Jacksons of Leinster Street. John Dooley Senior married Bridget Hyland and with their three children of whom John Junior was the eldest, lived in St. Patrick's Avenue.

John Dooley Senior was the man who almost singlehandedly over several decades held aloft the hurling banner as he attempted to keep alive the most exciting of Gaelic games in this part of the footballing kingdom of County Kildare. Athy had a hurling club in the 1920's and indeed had contested the 1929 Senior Championship Final which was won by the Curragh Army team, McDonaghs. For whatever reason the 1930 competition was not completed and the Athy Club apparently went out of existence to be revived in 1932 by John Dooley Senior. Looking back over the G.A.A. records it is clear that his efforts did bear fruit, for Athy won the Senior Hurling Championship in 1936 when John Dooley Senior played and also won in 1959 when defeat on the field was turned around with an objection upheld by the County Board. Athy Hurling Club also won junior championship titles in 1937, 1943, 1950 and 1958.

I well remember his efforts in the mid 1950's when he revived underage hurling in Athy after many years. The field at Chanterlands which was later to be acquired by the local G.A.A. Club was the centre of many of our efforts to master the camán and the sliothair. Hurling operations were directed from No. 3 St. Patrick's Avenue where the Dooley family lived and for years John Senior worked indefatigably to popularise the game of hurling in this area.

John Dooley Junior played hurling with Athy for several years in the 1950's and the 1960's and maybe later and in the latter years served as secretary to the club. His father retired after 37 years involvement with the Hurling Club having served at different times as secretary and chairman. He had also served as chairman of the Kildare Hurling Board and during his period of office the county won the All Ireland junior title of 1934.

At John's funeral I learned for the first time of the exploits of some of my old school mates who played with him in the 1964 Senior Hurling Final which Athy lost to Eire Og. Ted Wynne, always remembered as an excellent footballer, tells me he played in that hurling final and with my good friend Teddy Kelly on the subs bench that day I can only assume that Frank English was otherwise engaged or else he might also have been pressed into action. However, the story of the '64 final which saw Eire Og take the first of four consecutive senior titles was the coming on in the second half of Eire Og super sub Paddy Power. Paddy, who once taught in the Christian Brothers School in Athy and was later Minister for Defence, scored 2 goals soon after coming on in the second half and thereby sealed the Athy teams defeat. Eire Og would contest the senior hurling title each year thereafter for the following nine years and suffered its only defeat in 1968 when Ardclough won. Unlucky Ardclough were the defeated finalists on no less than seven occasions between 1965 and 1972.

John Dooley, when he left the local Christian Brothers school in the late 1950's, worked in Minch Nortons and figured prominently both on the playing and administrative side of the Athy hurling club following his father's death. His involvement in the club lessened in more recent years but his interest in hurling and the fortunes of the Athy club never diminished. Like Tom McCarthy John's latter years were troubled by illness but he was always available and willing to help with any queries on Athy's hurling past.

John Dooley was for many years a member of the committee of the C.Y.M.S. It was a sad coincidence that both himself and the last C.Y.M.S. chairman P.J. Hyland passing away within a week or so of each other. John is survived by his sister Mary and was predeceased by his younger brother Gerard who died in 1991. The members of Athy Hurling Club provided a guard of honour at John's funeral in fitting recognition of the contribution that he and his father made to the sport in Athy. Ar dhéis Dé go raibh a anam.

Two upcoming events deserving of your support are the Shackleton Autumn School to take place over the October Bank Holiday weekend and John MacKenna's new play coming to Athy Town Hall on Thursday, 28th September. The play, “My Father's Life” which premiered last week in the Moate Club, Naas is the story of John Clare, the 19th century English peasant poet and his relationship with his daughter Eliza. Incidentally, I hear that John MacKenna's new book, “Things you should know” will be launched in early November.

The Shackleton Autumn School will be opened by Senator David Norris on Friday, 27th October when he will deliver the Shackleton Memorial lecture which you will recall was given last year by Brian Keenan. The lectures which commence the following day and extend over the weekend will bring to Athy a number of renowned English and American writers. Programmes for the Shackleton weekend can be obtained from the Heritage Centre, Athy, Ph. 8633075 and by e-mail at athyheritage@eircom.net.

Finally, happy 90th birthday to Noreen Ryan who with family and friends celebrated the occasion last weekend. Noreen is remembered as the first secretary of the Old Folks Committee and in later years as a director of Athy Heritage Company.

Eye on the Past 727

2010-03-18T14:40:00.001Z

The first play I ever saw was “The Barretts of Wimpole Street”. I was eleven years of age when my eldest brother Jack brought me to the Town Hall to see the Social Club Players in Rudy Bestier's classic. What is now the main library room was then the local theatre cum dance hall and while the stage presentation of 53 years ago is almost lost to me I can still recall, for whatever reason, the appearance on stage of May Fenelon. I can't recall any of the other players who that night took part in the play, the action for which was centered on Elizabeth Barretts bed sitting room at 50 Wimpole Street in London.

I was reminded of this when on Thursday night last I slipped in, somewhat late I have to admit, to watch the cast of “My Father's Life” perform in John MacKenna's latest work. The performance was in the exhibition room next door to the main library room and of necessity because of the absence of an elevated stage the play was enacted in the round.

John MacKenna, one of the founders of the Mend & Makedo Theatre Company, has long championed for a theatre/arts centre for Athy and more than anyone else he has kept alive the theatrical flame in the town of Athy which was once a vibrant centre for the dramatic arts. The Social Club Players of the 1950's and early 1960's were the most successful successors to a long line of amateur theatrical companies which graced the stage in this part of Kildare over many decades. What was important for the success of these groups is that they had a stage on which to perform. In earlier years the Comrades Hall in St. John's Lane vied with the Town Hall as a venue for amateur theatrics, and I remember both venues being used at different times by the Social Club Players. Today Athy does not have a theatre, big, small or otherwise and the public spaces available for cultural events in the Heritage Centre or the exhibition room of the Town Hall are not so suitable for dramatic productions.

Despite this the Mend & Makedo production of “My Father's Life” was a first rate performance which drew a remarkably warm response from a small but receptive audience last Thursday. I was particularly struck by the performance of Sarah Maher, a young actress who brought a wholesome sweetness to her portrayal of the daughter of the English peasant poet, John Clare. She was particularly good when interacting with the other players, her measured assurance of movement, expression and voice belying her relatively short experience as a stage actress. She was less convincing when adopting the narrative role, especially in the first part of the play. The conversational tone she adopted at times seemed hurried and perhaps too casual, but as the play progressed this improved so that by the plays end she had the audience enthralled. A good performance, indeed an excellent performance by a young girl whom I believe has a great future in theatre. As usual I can't give a compliment without a little gripe and it is this. Her last line as she left the stage I felt was unusually flat.

Noel Lambe was good in the role which was particularly suited for him. His performance relied more on visual expression of the writer's intentions rather than a recital of lines and for this Noel was ideal. Strangely I thought that the author of the play gave a performance which was not one of his best. I have seen John in all his plays going back almost 25 years and he has never failed to excel in the many challenging roles he has undertaken in the past. The Northamptonshire accent he adopted for his role of John Clare was by and large maintained through the play at the level which was credible, but somehow or other his portrayal of the mad poet did not quite come off. The tortured visage of an institutionalised lunatic could not be visualised as I looked at the face of the man I know so well. It was a good performance, but not a great one. The reason I think lay in the difficulties presented by the physicality of the actor playing the part of a man who spent so many years in a lunatic asylum. It's possible that the fault may not be the actors but rather my own for retaining a visual representation of how I believed an early 19th century English asylum inmate would look.

All round it was a fine performance by the Mend & Makedo players in an original play by one of our finest writers. John MacKenna's literary output is impressive and in November his new book “Things you Should Know” will be published. I gather the book will be launched in the Town Hall on Saturday, 4th November by radio and T.V. personality Derek Mooney, but more about that nearer the event. In the meantime you should try and see “My Father's Life” which is being toured throughout Leinster over the next few weeks.

Earlier on Thursday I travelled to Dublin for the launch of Zolton Zinn Collis' book “Final Witness – My Journey from the Holocaust to Ireland”. Zolton featured in an Eye on the Past I wrote some years ago and in the meantime he has been one of those responsible for organising the Holocaust Memorial Day which is held in January each year. Intended to cherish the memory of all the victims of the Nazi Holocaust the Memorial service organised in association with the Department of Justice and Dublin City Council serves as a reminder of the dangers of racism and seeks to provide lessons from the past that are relevant today. Zolton has for many years gone from school to school talking to young people about the tragic defining episode of the 20th century in which he lost so many members of his own family. His is a sad story but one he says that must be remembered and never forgotten. With the publication of his book the story will now be available to a wider audience. It is a story with which we should make ourselves familiar if we are ever to aspire to freeing ourselves of the evils of prejudice, and accept the part we have to play in fighting racism and other forms of discrimination.

The book launch took place in Dubrays book shop in Grafton Street and the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, on a busy political day took time out to perform the launch. It was nice to see many from Athy who took the trouble to travel to Dublin to support Zolton and those of you who did not have that opportunity will be pleased to know that Zolton will give a talk in the Town Hall in the near future. Further details will be given in this column. In the meantime the book is on sale at €13.99 and I would recommend it as an important testament of a courageous man.

I finish this article with a few lines from a poem written by John Clare in his latter years. They are the words of a simple countryman, the son of a labourer who himself worked as a farm labourer, whose tombstone at Helpston which I visited a few years ago bears the epitaph “A poet is born not made”.

“I lost the love of Heaven above
I spurned the lust of Earth below,
I felt the sweets of fancied love
And Hell itself my only foe.

I lost Earth's joys, but felt the glow
Of Heaven's fame abound in me
Till loveliness and I did grow
The bard of Immortality.”

Eye on the Past 728

2010-03-18T14:31:00.003Z

In all the years I have lived in Athy I never, that is before Sunday last, spent any time boating or canoeing on the River Barrow or the Grand Canal. All that changed last week when in deference to my age I was invited to take part in a canoe trip on the river during Age Action Week. It's extraordinary to think that many of us reared within stone throwing distance of a river or a canal bank never took a boat trip up or down either waterway. It was as if we had turned our backs on the water corridors in much the same way as had the local house builders of the past who kept the dwellings of the local people as far away as possible from waters edge. Indeed the houses in Athy had their backs to the river and it was only the canal stores of the early 1800's which embraced the man made canal to form a pleasant and harmonious setting which survives to this day.

Last Sunday a couple of elderly and not quite so elderly males, each chaperoned by a young skilled canoeist, set out from the slip at Rathstewart to travel on the river to Levitstown. As we approached Crom A Boo Bridge we passed over the site of the weir which once ran across the Barrow almost opposite St. Michael's Parish Church. It had been put there to divert water into the millrace which powered the mill at the town centre bridge. The last owners of the mill were the Hannons of Ardreigh and the closure of the mill in or around 1924 gave the Barrow Drainage Board an opportunity to dredge the river and remove the weir. Many of you, I'm sure, will have seen photographs of the Barrow Drainage Scheme of the 1920's and particularly the photograph of the workmen standing in the river bed which had been drained while they removed the weir.

Crom A Boo Bridge which I passed under for the first time ever last Sunday presents an awesome sight when viewed from underneath one of its arches. The Duke of Leinster lay the first stone of that bridge in 1796 and how well it has endured the passage and weight of traffic for more than 200 years. That same bridge was defended by local loyalists under the command of Thomas J. Rawson during the 1798 Rebellion and for a few months of that year the heads of some hapless local rebels were displayed on Crom A Boo bridge as a grim warning to the disaffected locals.

Just after the bridge the river widens, or at least it once did, when the stone quay walls of the harbour were exposed and kept free of mud dredged from the river bed. Unfortunately the earlier mentioned Barrow Drainage Scheme resulted in the filling in of the harbour in the centre of the town with dredgings from the river bed and the planting of a tree or two on the heaped soil was thought a worthy replacement for what had been lost. The opening up of the harbour back to its original quay walls has been discussed for years but we still wait for those in authority to authorise the restoration work which when done will add greatly to the appearance of the river and the town itself.

The horse bridge and the railway bridge soon came into view as we journeyed downstream to meet the Grand Canal. The first pre-stressed concrete bridge in Ireland was built in Athy in 1919 as part of the Athy Wolfhill railway line which was opened to facilitate the movement of coal from the Wolfhill collieries. The difficulties posed by the First World War had prompted the building of the Wolfhill railway line but when the war ended and coal supplies again became plentiful, the local coal fields were closed. Train movement over the bridge was for decades thereafter limited to the carrying of cement to the Asbestos factory, but even that has now ceased. The railway bridge will in time carry motor traffic as part of the relief road measures planned for Athy.

We passed over the weir separating the Barrow River from the Grand Canal to paddle a course along the west bank of Lords Island, keeping clear of the canal cutting and instead keeping to the River Barrow as it meandered between banks handsomely endowed with ash and drooping willow trees. The site of Ardreigh Mills, closed like its town centre counterpart in and around 1924, was quickly passed as we struck out for Levitstown. Up ahead was Bunberrys Weir where nearly fifty years ago we youngsters from Offaly Street spent many an enjoyable afternoon in what was then a popular bathing place. I can't say I had as much enjoyment as Niall Smith or his friends had in their time in Bunberrys which included, if Niall is to be believed, the playful removal of a young maiden's swimming togs by a teenager who would later become a well known figure in footballing circles.

On our right ahead of us appeared Kilmoroney House, even in the October morning sunlight a sad and almost ghostly sight on the headland, while just beyond on the left were the remains of what was once Grangemellon Castle. What stories could be told of “Handsome Jack” St. Leger who came to live here in 1766. A member of the Hellfire Club which is reported to have met occasionally in Grangemellon Castle, Jack was the founder of the English classic horse race which today bears his name. We had bypassed the Levitstown canal cut to stay on the River Barrow and in so doing missed out on the longest canal cutting on the Barrow navigation which runs to two miles or so. Tankardstown Bridge made its appearance as we approached Levitstown Mill which was to be our final destination. What I wondered was the connection, if any, with Christine Longford's play, “Tankardstown”, written perhaps fifty years ago and seldom, if ever, performed since. I had never before been up close to the mill at Levitstown which was burned down in 1943. It operated as a maltings up to then and the canal boats travelled up and down each day to and from Dublin with malt on the journey to the city and Guinness on the return journey. Here we got out, well satisfied with our journey, and pleased with ourselves at having experienced something which most of us had never before enjoyed. Jimmy Kelly, the oldest and freshest looking of the lot, was I believe a seasoned canoeist, but Niall Smith, Dave Henshaw, Noel Scully, Jack Wall and myself were first timers who needed all the help we got from our youthful minders that day. My thanks to rugby playing Ciaran English for seeing me safely on the journey. I gather Ciaran recently received a sports award for Gaelic football. In my time he would have been the recipient of a GAA ban if he had even looked at a rugby match, not to mind playing the oval ball game.

The River Barrow is a rich source of game and coarse fishing and on our journey downstream we came across mute swans and ducks, the first flying overhead while the ducks paid little attention to the water invaders whom they no doubt noticed at a quick glance were too enfeebled to pose a threat. At Levitstown I gather eel traps are still in use, a reminder of the rich harvest to be garned from the local river of a delicacy which I must admit I ate for the very first time only a few weeks ago in a London restaurant. In my younger days eels were always plentiful in the Barrow, but somehow or other they never seemed an attractive fish and so were avoided by many, including myself, until a few weeks ago. Having tasted eel for the first time I must profess a liking for the fish which in medieval times was a rich source of nourishment for those living in the village of Athy, including the Dominicans who had their own eel weir on the River Barrow.

Congratulations to Dave Henshaw and Mark Wall and everyone involved in the Age Action Week. This ould fellow enjoyed himself immensely. A special thanks to Aidan McHugh and his team of canoeists who gave up their Sunday morning to steer a few old codgers safely down the Barrow.

Finally, I came across a reference last week in Florence O'Donoghue's book “The I.R.B. in the 1916 Rising” to the Philo-Celtic Society of New York. In the book O'Donoghue, quoting from the diary of Diarmuid Lynch, referred to the appointment of Michael J. Doyle of Athy as president of the Philo-Celtic Society in New York. The society, founded in 1873 by Irish emigrants, sought to encourage the use of the Irish language by holding Irish classes in and around New York city. The society survives to this day. But whom I wonder was Michael J. Doyle, formerly of this town, who was president of the Philo-Celtic Society of New York? If you can help to identify him or his family connections I would be delighted to hear from you.

Eye on the Past 729

2010-03-18T14:28:00.002Z

The death of Con Costello, historian, author and columnist for the Leinster Leader has deprived his adopted county of it's foremost historical researcher and it's most prolific writer on historical topics. I was privileged to have served as a member of the County Kildare Historical Monuments Committee for the last eight years or so under the chairmanship of Con. He brought to his role a wealth of knowledge pertaining to the places and buildings of the county unrivalled by anyone I know. From his first book “Ireland and the Holy Land'”published in 1974 to his last “A Class Apart – the Gentry Families of County Kildare” published last year he maintained a scholarly rigour and precision in all his historical writings.

His written legacy is to be found in the twelve books that he wrote and the twelve hundred or so articles written for his Leinster Leader column “Looking Back”. Con Costello was a truly exceptional local historian, local in the sense that his research tended to concentrate on the localised historical picture and not in the disparaging sense in which academic historians tend to regard those whose research and writing operate outside the hallowed halls of academia. His research undoubtedly helped to extend and conserve the history of the short grass county while his weekly newspaper articles helped to bring the fruits of his research to a much wider audience than could ever expect to be reached by book publishers. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam

The October Bank Holiday weekend will see the sixth Ernest Shackleton Autumn School taking place in the Town Hall Athy. Commencing on Friday the 27th of October the weekends events will be opened by Senator David Norris who will give the Shackleton memorial lecture. Norris, who is a distinguished Joycean Scholar, is also one of the most significant figures in Irish political and cultural life today. Incidentally, the proceedings on Friday evening are open without charge to everyone and if you would like to hear in person one of the most engaging and interesting public speakers you are likely to meet in a long time do come along to the Heritage Centre. That same evening a musical performance devised by Cliff Wedgbury will be given in the Castle Inn commencing at 9pm. Wedgbury, London born but now living in Cork is a singer and poet who has previously performed in the National Museum in Dublin during last years Shackleton exhibition which exhibition was on loan from the New York Museum. Admission to the Wedgbury show “The Boss – A Life told in Story and Song” is €5.

The weekend lecture series starts on Saturday morning at 10.30am in the Town Hall with Dr. Seamus McCann's talk on “South Georgia” followed by Joe O'Farrell's talk on the “Ross Sea Party”. McCann is an experienced Antarctic scientist while O'Farrell, a lifelong student of polar history, will reprise the lecture he gave the National Museum in Dublin last year.

On Saturday afternoon at 2.30pm we welcome New Yorker Margot Morrell who is travelling from the Big Apple to talk on her book “Shackleton's Way”. The book examines the success of Shackleton's leadership skills and draws on it to give insights into the nature of man management and leadership. The final lecture that day will be given by Jarlath Cunnane who received the prestigious Blue Water Medal from the Cruising Club of America earlier this year in recognition of his achievement as skipper and builder of the Irish yacht Northabout which completed the first east to west Polar circumnavigation in October 2002. His talk entitled “Northabout – A Polar Circumnavigation” will deal with that epic journey.

Whites Castle will be the venue for a special performance for children by Cliff Wedgway of his show to take place on Saturday at 3pm. On Saturday night the inaugural Shackleton Autumn School Dinner will be held in the Clanard Court Hotel and not the Carlton Abbey Hotel as stated in the programme of events. Tickets at €30 each are limited and early booking with the Heritage Centre is advised.

On Sunday the 29th of October the lectures resume at 10.30am with Robert Stephenson co-ordinator of the acclaimed Antarctic Circle website dealing with the topic “Antarctic Sites Outside The Antarctic – Memorials, Statues, Houses, Graves and the Occasional Pub”. Twelve noon brings on stage the inimical Dr Bob Headland of the Scott Polar Institute who will deliver his lecture “Attainment of the North Pole – A Historical Account”.

The film on Sunday afternoon will be “With Byrd at the South Pole”. Released in 1936 this is an Oscar winning documentary of the Americans journey to the Antarctic together with his famous first flight over the North Pole. Following the film there will be an open forum with an opportunity for questions to be asked of the participating speakers.

Later on Sunday evening a one woman play “A Father for My Son” based on the life of Captain Robert Scott's wife is to be performed for the first time in Ireland by Jenny Coverack. Jenny trained as an actress at the world famous Bristol Old Vic and the play written by herself and Robert Edwards has been performed to acclaim all over the world.

The field trip which has been an outstanding feature of the Autumn School in recent years will again take place on Monday the 30th of October starting from the Heritage Centre at 10am. During the trip a visit will be made to Ballytore for the formal launching of the Folk Archive of County Kildare.

The Antarctic Adventures a group of re-enactors who specialise in recreating the world of Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen will recreate over the course of the weekend a three man sledging party of the 1901-1930 period with clothing, sledges and equipment of the period.

Books and memorabilia relating to Shackleton and the Antarctic will be on sale during the weekend and this year a specialist book dealer will be in attendance with books of interest to those attending for the weekend lectures.

It promises to be an interesting weekend and one deserving of support by the local people of Athy. Programmes for the Shackleton Autumn School can be collected at the Heritage Centre where bookings can also be made for all or any of the events. A weekend ticket to include the dinner on Saturday night and all lectures and events costs €65 and may be obtained by contacting the Heritage Centre on 059 863 3075. The individual lectures cost €5 each.

A special thanks this year goes to local employers Tegral Building Products who are the principal sponsors of the sixth Shackleton Autumn School.

On Wednesday 1st November at 8pm Zoltan Zinn Collis, whose book “Final Witness – My Journey from the Holocaust to Ireland” was recently launched, will give a talk in the Town Hall. Zoltan's experiences as a young boy in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II is a tragic story and part of those horrifying events which were a defining episode in the history not only of the twentieth century but in the history of mankind. Admission to the lecture is free but because of the limited seating available those wishing to attend should arrive as early as possible.

Eye on the Past 730

2010-03-18T14:23:00.002Z

I missed the recent launch of the Sullivan Brothers CD and to make amends I went out
immediately and bought the disc. The first time listening to their songs and I listened to them all, I had mixed feelings, but their songs grew in appeal, at least that's what I found after I had played the CD for the third time. Its a wonderful achievement for a singer to put out a record in much the same way as it is for an aspiring writer to publish a book. The Sullivan Brothers have achieved great success over the last twelve months and who knows, the CD may bring them further and even greater success into the future.

The last months of 2006 promise to bring a veritable avalanche of books and CD launches, what with the Sullivan's musical contribution soon to be followed by a CD of songs and stories relating to South Kildare by Colm Walsh. Brian Hughes, I gather, is working on his second CD and while I have no knowledge of when it will appear, I would hope it will issue in time to catch the Christmas market. Of course, the recording daddy of them all, Jack L issued another CD a few months ago and like his previous releases, it proved to be the work of an extraordinary musical talent.

Local writers are also busy, what with Zoltan Zinn Collis' book hitting the book shelves in September followed soon afterwards by John MacKenna's latest contribution to the literary scene. In November, the local Golf Club will publish its centenary history while the long awaited book on County Kildare in the County History series will be launched before Christmas.

There are a lot of good things happening in and around South Kildare and the local Town Hall will host a number of events during October and November. The Shackleton Autumn School kicks off on Friday evening, 27th and goes on for the following three days with a variety of events including some extremely interesting exhibitions with lectures, drama and music. There is literally something for everyone and every age over the October Bank Holiday weekend in the Town Hall and the Heritage Centre.

And the following Wednesday, Zoltan Zinn Collis will give a talk in the Town Hall. This is an event not to be missed and comes soon after the launch of his book “Final Witness – My journeyfrom the Holocaust to Ireland”. Three days later, the Heritage Centre will be the venue for the official launch of John MacKenna's latest book, “Things you should know”. Derek Mooney of radio and TV fame will launch the book which has already been tipped for literary honours in 2007. John MacKenna is presently touring his play “My Fathers Son”with The Mend and Makedo Theatre Company which tour finishes in Mullingar this week. November is definitely MacKenna's month for on Sunday 12th hisOratorio, “Still and Distant Voices” which he wrote some years ago to commemorate the involvement of local working men in World War 1 will be performed in the Methodist Church in Woodstock Street. Music for the Oratorio was composed by Mairead O'Flynn when she was a teacher in Scoil Mhichil Naofa some years ago. She is now Principal of the National School in Ballymore Eustace. Interestingly, Jack L's father, Sean Loughman and the golden voiced Jacinta O'Donnell are the singing stars of the Oratorio, more details of which will be given in next weeks Eye on the Past.

I got a letter from one of my Athy readers concerning my piece on the River Barrow canoe trip with particular reference to the railway bridge. You may recall that I mentioned that the bridge built in 1919 as part of the railway extension to Wolfhill was the first prestressed concrete bridge in Ireland. My correspondent tells me that his father, who was a well known building Contractor, claimed that “Coy” Moore's father mixed all the concrete for the bridge using a hand turned mixer. Can any other local confirm that story for me.

Another letter received this week was from a woman in Fairview, Dublin whose mother worked for the Hannon's in Ardreigh House in 1920. Her mother, who was from Castledermot, started working for the Hannon's who previously lived at Prumplestown, Castledermot when she was a month short of her fourteenth birthday. The pay was one pound a month which Mrs. Hannon sent home to the young girl's mother in Castledermot. The charming letter gave an account of life in Ardreigh House eighty six years ago and I smiled at the following reference which brought back memories of summer evenings spent by me and my friends at Sunnyside in the late 1950's. “Entertainment for the girls who worked in Ardreigh House consisted of walking out to Bray or into Athy. They seemed to know every shop worker who ever worked there at the time and indeed, my mother bought her groceries for two decades in Dublin from a man whom she had known when he served his time at the grocery in Athy”.

When I read the letter, I was prompted to think yet again of the treasures of memory and the life experiences which all of us have garned for ourselves and which for the most part are destined never to be shared with others. I have at various times in the past raised the desirability of encouraging older people to record their reminiscences of times past. There are some extraordinary stories to be learned, many extraordinary people with tales to tell which, if not told will soon be lost forever. I know that the late Billy Kelly was engaged on behalf of the library services of Kildare County Council in recording the folk memories of people living in his area of South Kildare but how far that project progressed, I cannot say. I do know that last year Laois County Council through its Heritage Officer instituted an oral history project with the intention of recording the reminiscences and the experiences of the older generation. In the mid 1930's the Folk Commission in conjunction with the primary schools throughout Ireland organised a Folklore collection scheme, the results of which now form a major part of the holdings in the Department of Folklore in University College, Dublin. This was a scheme organised on a twenty six county basis through the Folklore Commission and points the way as to how an oral history project could be established nationally if we are ever to hope to reclaim the untapped fields of enquiry dealing with the social life and labours of ordinary men and women. Now that Heritage Officers have been appointed by some County Councils, perhaps the Minister for the Environment might consider ensuring that the Heritage function in each county is directed so that a national scheme for recording oral history can be set up under the aegis of the Department while using the Heritage Officers in each County as the County organisers for the project.

Writing of the Minister reminds me that the Relief Road Project for Athy has been the subject most often raised with me by locals during the past week or so. Everyone wants to know what is happening about a new road. It would seem that precious little information is being given out by either Kildare County Council or the Town Council. The latest information I have is that housing developers at Gallowshill are required to build sections of the outer relief road where it borders the lands being developed for housing. As a result, I am told that approximately 180 metres of the outer relief road has been laid down and that further development of that road as far as the railway crossing can be expected, but when I don't know. I welcome the current Town Council Chairperson's invitation to the local people to make known their views on the relief road measures.
It makes a huge change from the attitude of a previous Council which when presented with a petition signed by more than 2,500 local people ignored the views expressed. Indeed, the local people who attended the Council meeting to present the petition were rather discourteously treated by some public representatives on that Council. Democracy was not best served that day in the Council Chamber. However, that is all water under the bridge now, and given the current Town Council's continuing attempts to get Kildare County Council to move on the relief road, we must be hopeful that the County Council, which moved with amazing speed when dealing with the Inner Relief Road Project in the lead up to the An Bord Pleanala oral hearing can bring the same energy and commitment to putting an acceptable Relief Road in place for the town of Athy.

The Sullivan Brothers CD “Keep Holding On” which I mentioned at the top of this article was dedicated to the memory of Mark Browne, a young man who died last year after a long battle against illness. I did not know Mark personally but knew his parents and following his funeral, I wrote some lines of appreciation for a young life so sadly lost. A few weeks ago, his father Kieran gave me a copy of a number of poems which he was inspired to write following the loss of his only son who was dearly loved and greatly missed. Having read them and particularly one poem entitled “Without Him”, I have to admit that I have seldom been moved so much by words written on a page The poem written by Kieran Browne following the death of his only child is very evocative and a fine piece of writing and reads:
My past I have lost
My past and my future
My hoped for dreams gone forever
Gone are the days I would never say never
No shared enjoyment of Milligan and Co.
No shared appreciation of symphonies and riffs
Of images on celluloid
The past to be viewed during the twilight years
No man to man chats
No disagreements on which players were prats
No nuptials now
No “Grandad” called out
Memories of body and soul being tortured and broken
No explanation at my bedside when it's my turn to die.

Eye on the Past 731

2010-03-18T12:56:00.003Z

On Saturday, 11th November the local Golf Club will hold the 2006 Captains Dinner in it's relatively new Club House at Geraldine . The Captain this year is Ger Ennis. A low handicap golfer, he was honoured to be elected as the Club Captain during the Club's centenary celebration which commenced earlier this year with the holding of a Club Committee meeting in the offices of Athy Town Council. That meeting was a symbolic re-enactment of the first public meeting held in the Urban District Council offices in the Town Hall, Athy on the 30th January 1906 when the plans for the setting up of a Golf Club in Athy were first given a public airing. The meeting one hundred years ago was called by John Corcoran acting in consort with a number of local men. Because the records of Athy Golf Club have been lost, we cannot positively identify the other men involved but it would seem that they probably included M. J. Minch of Rockfield House, Rev. William Duggan a curate in St. Michael's Parish Church and Patrick Lynch who lived in the Abbey in Emily Square.

The formative years of the Golf Club were marked by the early retirement of it's first captain and the enforced resignation of it's second captain all within the space of approximately eighteen months. The Club quickly regrouped and continued to develop even if somewhat slowly for the first few decades of its existence.

Golf in the early part of the 20th Century was the preserve of the well heeled members of society and even the onset of the First World War which saw the enlistment of hundreds of local working class men had no appreciable effect on the local Golf Club. However, the enlistment of club member such as Dr. John L. Kilbride and Dr. Eugene Minch must have had some impact given the small membership of the club at that time. The remaining club members according to the report of the Irish White Cross played their part in the war effort by putting on amateur shows for hospitalised soldiers.

The course at Geraldine was constantly undergoing improvements but even as these improvements were put into place, the club suffered a decline in membership to the extent that it's continuing existence was in doubt. At a time when financial rectitude did not condone the borrowing of money, whether small or large, the club found itself with an overdraft. The monies owed to one of the local banks was quite small but those in charge of the clubs affairs were sufficiently alarmed to question whether Athy Golf Club could continue to operate. That crisis was referred to by Dr. John Kilbride in April 1938 on the occasion of a presentation to Dan Rice, retiring Headmaster of the Model School, a founder member of Athy Golf Club and for many years the Honorary Treasurer of the club. “Some years ago when it looked as if the Golf Club would have to close down, Dan Rice was the person responsible for securing for it a new lease of life” claimed Dr. Kilbride.

The financial storm was weathered and the subsequent history of Athy Golf Club was one of continuing success. That success was ultimately marked with the extension of the original nine hole course to become an 18 hole course and the erection of a modern clubhouse with restaurant facilities. It is a matter of record that the eighteen hole course came about as a result of a conversation between the clubs landlord Brian Tobin and the club's President, Denis O'Donovan in September 1990. This followed an earlier unsuccessful attempt to provide a nine hole extension to the course for which the Club purchased land which was later resold. Denis relates in an article he wrote for the centenary history of the club how they met on the 4th September 1990 as Denis was playing the old 8th hole and Brian was working in the adjoining field. The conversation came around to the “possibility of extending the course to eighteen holes” which could only be done with the agreement of the landowner who himself was a member of the Athy club. Ten days later Brian advised his willingness to provide additional land for the course extension subject to agreement on appropriate terms. The rest is history and is retold in the centenary history book which I understand will be launched at the Captain's Dinner on November 11th.

Denis O'Donovan's role in the development of the eighteen hole course and the building of the new clubhouse cannot be overstated. Denis has played a key role in the centenary celebrations of the club and in particular worked tirelessly for three or more years extracting newspaper reports of the clubs activities dating back to 1906, which in the absence of Club records were used when compiling the centenary history of the club. Denis came to Athy from Limerick in 1960 to work in the local asbestos factory believing that his time in Athy was to be of a short duration before he continued on to Dundalk. He finished his working life in Athy, retiring in 1995. A member of the Golf Club since 1960 he has served on the Golf Club committee and is a former Club President and Club Captain.

The membership of Athy Golf Club has increased enormously over the years. From the initial 15 or so men who made up the Club Membership in 1906, it has grown to approximately nine hundred and ninety members today. Perhaps one of the more significant changes over the years was the recent admission of females as full members of the Club. Another significant change, albeit one which came about gradually as Irish society prospered, was the welcome shift in the publics perception of golf and golf club membership as the preserve of the well off members of the local community. Athy Golf Club has a membership from all walks of life and is all the better for that.
Tonight (Wednesday) a talk will be given in the Town Hall, Athy starting at 8.00 p.m.by Zoltan Zinn Collis, a survivor of the Holocaust whose book,“Final Witness – My journey from the Holocaust to Ireland” has recently been published. Zoltan has an amazing story to tell and one which deserves to be heard. The name Collis is that of his adopted parents who were William Robert Collis and his wife. Robert Collis, as he was generally known, was one of three remarkable brothers born in Dublin all of who wrote books of commendable merit. John Stewart Collis, twin brother of Robert served in the First World War and during the Second World War was a farm worker who subsequently wrote of his experiences. His books which are highly recommended include,“While Following the Plough” and “The Worm Forgives the Plough” both of which deal with mans relationship with the soil. I first came across these books when they were recommended to me by a writer friend who in many ways is a kindred spirit of John Stewart Collis. I had earlier come across Robert Collis' autobiography “The Silver Fleece” written some time before the Second World War and also a play of his with the never to be forgotten title “Marrowbone Lane” which was specially written for the Marrowbone Lane Fund founded to combat T.B.. Robert was a paediatrician who entered Belsen in 1945 with a Red Cross team where he found the young boy, Zoltan Zinn whom he would take back with him to Ireland. The third Collis brother was Maurice who spent many years in India and whose writing was largely devoted to oriental topics.

The three Collis brothers were remarkable men of letters. John Stewart the Philosopher, Maurice the Orientalist and Robert the paediatrician and concerned medical activist have left an honourable legacy both in literature and in the arts.

Finally, I read of the recent death at 90 years of age of Jim O'Flaherty of Greystones. Jim was for a long time an official with the post office here in Athy. It was here that he met and married Carrie Glespen of Duke Street. He was a founder member of Athy Credit Union Limited and indeed was elected first President of the Credit Union by his fellow Directors following the inaugural meeting held at 82 Leinster Street on the 17th May 1968. It's remarkable to consider that in it's first year of operation savings in the Credit Union amounted to “almost” £5,000. Nowadays Credit Union savings are measured in millions and ensures that the objective of the Credit Union “to save together for the purpose of helping one another” remains a key element in its service to the community. Jim O'Flaherty and those other men and women who were involved in the setting up of the Credit Union will aways be remembered.

Eye on the Past 732

2010-03-18T12:46:00.001Z

“I'm a survivor of the Holocaust”. These were the opening words spoken by Zoltan Zinn Collis when giving his talk in the Town Hall last week. The chilling words were spoken in the relative comfort of the room where over 200 years ago, the notorious hanging Judge, John Toler, later Lord Norbury presided over the trials of local men whom he sentenced to death. Death is to be seen everywhere throughout the history of Athy. It was a constant threat for Irish Rebels of the 1798 period as it was for the local families living in the unsanitary hovels which lined the laneways of Athy at the beginning of the last century. Listening to Zoltan's account of Belsen Concentration Camp brought home the numbing horror of genocide and the horrific savagery of war.

Just outside the room in which the attentive audience listened to his story was the town centre square named after Emily, Duchess of Leinster, mother of the 1798 leader, Lord Edward Fitzgerald. It was in that same square that civic and church leaders of almost a hundred years ago standing on platforms placed in front of the Town Hall urged their listeners to enlist to fight in the First World War. The year was 1914 and the young and the not so young Athy men who joined up did so to fight an enemy who less than thirty years later would unleash a terrible campaign of genocide against Jewish families. Zolton and his sister Edith survived those terrible days but at what cost. Broken in body but not in spirit, Zolton continues to tell the story so that we who were spared the horror of war do not ever forget the awful consequence of armed conflict between nations.

His compelling story was inspiring as is the story of the young men from this town who responded to the call of Church and civic leaders of their day to march off to war. They paraded to the local railway station feted by the local townspeople while one or other of the local bands played Irish martial airs. They were heroes before they had even fired a shot in anger, but for many of them, that parade up Leinster Street to the railway station was the last time they would see the town in which they had been born and reared. For many would never return, but even in death their lifeless bodies were denied burial in the soil which they had worked as farm labourers. Blown to pieces by exploding shells, these men were never to have the dignity of a grave with a name marked on a simple grave marker. Instead, their names would be marked on the great war memorials at Ypres or Tiepeval where the names of over one hundred and twenty thousand soldiers whose bodies were never found are recorded in stone. Some of the young men who once walked the streets of our town whose broken bodies were never found include Joseph Byrne, James Dillon, Moses Doyle, Martin Hyland, Patrick Leonard, John Mulhall, Patrick Tierney and Patrick Deegan.. Moses Doyle served with his friend Joseph Murphy who was twenty five years old. Doyle at home on leave in Athy prior to his own death told how his friend on the day he was killed spoke of a dream where his dead mother bandaged his injured head. Later that same day, Murphy was shot through the head as he looked over the parapet of the trench.

Many of the young Athy army recruits died, theirs lives extinguished by gunfire and so they became part of the remembered dead in graveyards which are to be found everywhere the sound of war echoed across the countryside during 1914-1918. More than 219 men from Athy and district died in the First World War and of these 121 came from the small market town of Athy. The horrendous loss of life had a devastating effect on the future development of the town. To the pre-war poverty of local families was now added broken family relationships and ties which many believe led to problems within families and the local community for decades thereafter.

Hundreds of men who enlisted returned home after the war some broken in mind and body. Others were dispirited by the rejection which they encountered. The lost limbs, the crutches and the primitive wheelchair were a regular sight around Athy after the war. So too were the men who suffered the after effects of gas poisoning and those unfortunates who lived out their lives as shell shocked army veterans. There was no band to greet them at the railway station on their return, no church or civic leaders to praise them for what they had endured. They returned to a country where the political scenario had changed after they had departed. Irish Republicanism was in the accendancy, Sinn Fein having achieved remarkable success at the November 1918 elections. The fight was not now with Germany . It was nearer to home and the working class men who had joined the British Army during the war were by and large excluded from the rising tide of Irish Nationalism.

How did men like Hugh Holohan of Belview who fought in the Dardanelles feel on his return home? He served in the Leinster Regiment and in 1948 he died at the age of 76 years. How about Michael Rowan, originally from Derryoughter, Kildangan who also served in the Dardanelles and who came back to this country suffering from shell shock. He later married Alice Wall and they lived at 41 St. Joseph's Terrace while Michael worked with Tom Brogan the blacksmith. These men and their colleagues lived out what remained of their lives in a town which in their lifetime did not acknowledge the part they had played in a horrific world war. This year, the Town Council to its credit remedied that omission by unveiling a plaque on the Town Hall wall which in earlier years had formed the backdrop for the recruiting platforms of 1914 and later.

Next Sunday, 12th November we will gather as many of us have done over the last fifteen or so years at old St. Michael's Cemetery at 3.00 p.m. to remember the war dead of this town. The rejection and neglect of over seventy years can never be totally eradicated but at least now that our nations history acknowledges the sacrifices of the men of the 1914 – 1918 war, we can remember them without in any way feeling that we are doing a disservice to what we ourselves believe in . Whether you are a Republican, a socialist or party political member, commemorating the war dead of your town can be a tribute, not only to the young men of a past generation but also to your own respect for our towns past history.

Later on Sunday 12th, there will be a performance of the Oratorio “Still and Distant Voices” composed to commemorate the men of Athy who died in the 1914-1918 war. It was previously performed approximately fourteen years ago at a time when many of the generation which succeeded those men of the Great War were still alive. Manyof the sons and daughters of the war veterans attended that performance which was put on in the Presbyterian Church in the Dublin road. Next Sunday, the Methodist Church in Woodstock Street will be the venue. Music for the Oratorio was composed by Mairead O'Flynn and the words provided by that wonderful wordsmith John McKenna. Performing on the night with be the author himself John McKenna with Charlie Hughes and Mary McCormack. The singers will be Jacinta McDonnell and Sean Loughman with music provided by Mairead O'Flynn. The Oratorio is an impressive piece of work and is being specially put on next Sunday the 12th as part of the Remembrance Day ceremonies for the war dead of Athy. Incidentally, admission is free and the performance starts at 8.00p.m.

The events of Sunday 12th November follow on after the ceremonies held earlier in the year for the 90th Anniversary of the 1916 Rising. That we can celebrate our Republicans traditions while acknowledging and respecting the part played by our townsmen in a world war while wearing a British uniform is surely a measure of our maturity as a nation and is society.

Eye on the Past 733

2010-03-18T12:44:00.001Z

Enda McEvoy, a sports writer with the Sunday Tribune was moved to write an article for the “Kilkenny Voice” which appeared in it's edition of the 31st of October. Headlined “The town that Time Forgot” his article is a damning indictment of our town. Athy he describes as “an awful looking town with a hangdog appearance and peeling facades and crumbling hotel and shop fronts that haven't received a lick of paint since about 1972”. Apparently a seasoned traveller between Kilkenny and Dublin which necessitates a journey through our town, McEvoy posed a few questions for “local worthies to consider amid their red faced splutterings” at the next meeting of the town council.

“What attractions or facilities does Athy boast” asks the Kilkenny man before extending his cross examination to enquire as to what Athy offers the visitors and concluding with the question “Why does Athy resemble a town that stopped evolving over 30 years ago”. He cites Athy as a prime example of what happened to a place that “has been let down by it's civic leaders – as Athy so clearly has”.

How does one respond to McEvoys questions and claims of civic neglect? On the one hand many would believe that he is right when he writes of a town let down by it's civic leaders but equally he is wrong with his sweeping claims of “an awful looking town with it's hangdog appearance.” Athy is perhaps one of the most attractively located inland towns in Ireland accessible by both the River Barrow and the Grand Canal. Due to the ravages of 17th century wars which saw the destruction of much of the earlier medieval village the subsequent reconstruction of the urban settlement gave us extensive open spaces in the town centre. The interlinking Emily Squares provide extremely pleasant public spaces in which two buildings of architectural merit, the Court House and the Town Hall provide a pleasant backdrop.

The long narrow main street so typical of early urban settlements of the thirteenth century brings with it unfortunate drawbacks when faced with twenty first century motor traffic. The solution was never going to be the building of another road parallel to the main street and within shouting distance of it. More apparently stated as within engine noise distance of each other and creating within the two streets an island of the town centre shop buildings whose customers would be forever subjected to a constant barrage of traffic noise and fumes.

If there is a shabbiness about some local buildings(and I must admit that there are buildings on the main street that represent a blot on the streetscape) the problem is accentuated by the close proximity of the passing traffic especially the heavy goods vehicles which should be removed entirely from the town centre. The ever increasing traffic trundling through Athy town centre from early morning to late at night contrives to keep the shoppers away from the retail shops whose success or otherwise will largely determine if the shabbiness complained of by McEvoy will be tackled. There is little incentive for local shop keepers to spend money on repairs or decoration if the customers are staying away. It's almost a chicken and egg situation but with one difference. The removal of through traffic and especially the heavy goods vehicles, from our town centre is essential if the retailing heart of Athy can reclaim the success which once marked it's efforts.

One can readily understand why McEvoy questioned what facilities the town boasts. These may not be obvious to those passing through the town in a car. For those lucky enough to live in Athy there is an enormous wealth of sport organisations with facilities which are second to none. However there is a serious deficiency when it comes to the arts. While the earlier mentioned Town hall houses the town library and the heritage centre there is no dedicated arts centre to serve the needs of the local community. This has been a serious omission in the town facilities ever since the loss of St. John's hall in the early 1960's and shortly thereafter the change in the use of the Town hall from ballroom-theatre to a factory space.

It is not only in the retailing stakes that Athy has slipped behind all the neighboring towns. When we come to consider the cultural needs of the towns people we find that it is an area where we have lost considerable ground. Newbridge has it's Riverbank Centre, Naas it's Moat Club and Portlaoise its Dunamaise Theatre. This brings me to consider McEvoys claim that Athy has been let down by it's civic leaders. What do you think? What do we expect of the nine men and women who collectively constitute the town council and who in conjunction with the town officials manage the affairs of our town? Are they there only to receive complaints of broken doors and windows in council houses, attend to complaints of broken public lights and generally to act as receivers of complaints to be passed on to the council officials? This would seem to be the belief held by a lot of the local people and importantly so far as the town councils members are concerned, these same people have a vote to cast in the next local election. Unfortunately, the messenger boy element has become an important part of Irish politics, both nationally and locally.

What can we say for the town fathers? Do they devote their time and energy to deal with the corporate business of Athy in a way which would satisfy any auditor of corporate performance? I'm afraid not. McEvoy is right. Athy has been let down by it's civic leaders and nowhere is that more apparent than in the failure to properly and speedily deal with the towns traffic problems. The absence of an arts centre in a town which has a tradition of excellence in the dramatic arts is not only regrettable but surely an indictment of our civic leaders as well as of others in our community.

Athy has suffered decades of neglect but in that regard the entire blame should not be laid solely on the shoulders of the Town council. Civic leadership takes many forms and I'm afraid the leadership which one could and should expect from the business men and women of this town has seldom been forthcoming. There are one or two exceptions represented by business men who are always available and always in attendance whenever attempts were made to create a springboard for advancement in the town.

I know that the Town council hosted a meeting last week to recreate a cultural and recreational committee for the town and the hope is that this may lead in the not too distant future to the development an arts centre for the people of Athy. It's a long awaited and a much needed facility and if and when it arrives it will help to secure and boost the multi-talented artistic skills of young and old alike.

In the meantime the members of the town council will no doubt take umbrage at McEvoy's description of our town as they probably will of my comments and claims as regards their collective failure to act as governors of our historic town. I can understand the reason for McEvoy's complaints even if his descriptions of Athy are somewhat unkind and undeserved. However his article can serve to prompt us to look again at what we are doing, and more importantly what we have not been doing, to help to steer this town of ours through what the economists might call “the recovery period”.

Let me conclude with a little bit of history to justify the “Eye In The Past” title which appears at the top of this article. Last week a silver cup presented in April 1909 by E. Higginson to Athy Golf Club for a competition amongst it's lady members was returned from England by Honor McCullagh whose aunt Nora Duncan last won the cup. I haven't had an opportunity to check back through newspaper files but I suspect she won it in or around 1913. Incidentally I gather Higginson was a jeweller who carried on business in the premises now occupied by the Permanent TSB in Duke Street.

Eye on the Past 734

2010-03-18T12:43:00.001Z

Memories and memoirs. How the very words trigger a response in all of us. There is, after all, in most of us a need to constantly keep in touch with the persons and events of our time. A touchstone by which we can guage how we ourselves are doing and a measure of reassurance in the frantic world of work and travel, disappointment and expectations. More than anyone else perhaps I have constantly delved into the past, always seeking out the forgotten events and the men and women whose stories might hold an interest for all of us. Local history by its very nature has an ephemeral quality, and if it's not collected and collated in time, will disappear, thereby reducing the quality and indeed the quantity of local knowledge without which our past can never be properly understood.

The local historians work is generally centered on the tape recorder, the note book and pen, all brought into operation when faced with a willing interviewee. Less often arises the opportunity of encouraging someone to write a memoir, no matter how long or short, and the pleasure of reading the results on the written page.

Some months ago while attending a funeral in the Parish Church I met a man whom I had not seen for some time. Maurice Shortt spent eleven years in Athy after arriving here as a Garda Sergeant on transfer from Birr in May 1963. Retired for many years from the Garda Siochana with the rank of Inspector he served his last years in the Dublin Metropolitan area. Maurice, as befitting a man who was a G.A.A. player in his young days and a referee after that, retains the trim athleticism of a younger man. As we talked briefly on the way into the church I wondered if he ever felt inclined to record his memories of Athy in the 1960's. It is a suggestion I have often made at different times to different people, hoping that the seed might bear fruit and produce some interesting stories which might appeal to the present generation. Imagine my pleasure when last week the postman delivered some neatly typed pages of script from the typewriter of the retired Garda Inspector Maurice Shortt. I am giving over the rest of this weeks Eye on the Past to extracts from Maurice's memoirs of Athy of 40 years ago.

“Athy was a tremendous business town with full employment and a rich well farmed hinterland. Saturday night with the late opening of shops to 9 p.m. was a revelation, never experienced before or since. The town used to be thronged with people from far and near and had a festive atmosphere. I used enjoy patrolling the streets as I was meeting new people and making contacts all the time. I would say it was the best town in Leinster in those days. Market day was a particularly busy time, especially coming up to Christmas. I remember one District Court held during Christmas week when District Justice Sweetman had to abandon his car at the G.A.A. Grounds and walk the rest of the way. The Courts were very busy and often ran on to five and six o'clock .....

At harvest time often on a Sunday evening when on patrol in the town a car would pull up asking was there any hope of getting someone from Duthie Larges to provide a part for a broken down combine harvester. I remember drivers coming from Wexford, Laois and Tipperary. Kevin Bowden often took them out of trouble .....

My patrols often took me to the Canal bank, across from St. Vincents Hospital. Arthur McDonagh and his large family spent most of the year in a caravan and a few “bender” tents. Mrs. McDonagh was a lovely person. She had 23 children “alive” as she said herself. Indeed she had grandchildren older than some of her children. In my subsequent travels I discovered that a large percentage of “travellers” were born in A-athy as they put it. Sister Dominic told me the women were model patients, never complaining but appreciating the few days rest in comfort and the kindness and care provided by the nuns and staff .....

One year coming up to Christmas I got word that poitin was available in the town. I investigated and traced the poitin to a family living in the country. I bided my time until I met the principal in town one day. I told him what I knew and lectured him on the dangers of poitin. I related an incident, which occurred in my home country of a man arriving home a few nights before Christmas, out of his mind after drinking poitin. He had a row with his wife, which was out of character with the man. One word borrowed another and he took out his rifle and shot his wife dead. He was arrested and remanded in custody to Limerick Prison, where he hanged himself in his cell. I negotiated with the Athy poitin maker to surrender his equipment at a designated place and let me know when and that would be the end of it. He agreed and there was an amicable end to a potentially dangerous situation .....

In the early seventies there was a spate of “bomb scares” in Athy. Each report had to be acted upon promptly and thoroughly investigated. Major disruption was experienced by traders, shoppers and motorists passing through the town. The scares were mainly centred in the Duke Street area. All were found to be hoaxes. One afternoon I answered the phone in the public office of the Garda Station. It was a report of another bomb scare in Duke Street with no elaboration. I recognised the voice before the phone was put down and I rang the persons number immediately. I said – addressing my suspect by first name - “please give me details of the bomb you reported in Duke Street.” I hung up. That was the last report of bombs in Athy for the rest of my time there. It was an unorthodox though effective response to the situation.”

Maurice Shortt remembers with great fondness the people of Athy. He made some great friends in the town which he cherishes to this day. As he says himself if he is ever called “Sergeant” by anyone he meets he knows immediately that that person is from Athy. Athy people remember Maurice, for not only did he serve the people of Athy with distinction for eleven years, but he was also involved, while out of uniform, with the local community. He convened the local meeting which resulted in the setting up of a branch of KARE in Athy. It would become in time one of the most vibrant KARE branches in County Kildare. He served as Chairman of the county wide organisation on four occasions and is still actively involved with the wide range of facilities including schools, adult training and enterprise centre operated by the County Kildare Association of Parents and Friends of Handicapped People.

My thanks to Maurice Shortt for sharing his memories of Athy with me and the readers of this weeks Eye on the Past.

Just over two years ago I welcomed to this world a new family member who because she was my first grandchild holds a special place in my affection. Now I can proudly announce the arrival of her sister Eva, making this “auld fellow” a grandfather for the second time.

Eye on the Past 735

2010-03-18T12:40:00.001Z

The late Brendán Breathnach defined traditional music as essentially the art of solo performance for which the musician or singer devotes a lifetimes apprenticeship to learning the great traditional songs and airs of Ireland. Breathnach, a Dublin civil servant who died 21 years ago, had a passion for Irish traditional music. He published during his lifetime many scholarly works, amongst which were the three volume collection of traditional music, “Ceol Rince na hEireann”. Na Piobairí Uilleann was founded in 1968 by Breathnach and others to promote the playing of the uilleann pipes and it was to its Henrietta Street premises in Dublin that a young Brian Hughes travelled from Athy for many years to attend piping classes. I was reminded of this when re-reading an article which Breathnach wrote for the 1984 edition of his Irish music journal “Ceol”. Headlined “The Man and his Music – Liam O'Floinn”, the article opened with the line, “Kildare does not spring to mind immediately when piping is mentioned. Yet the great pipe maker Maurice Coyne came from that county and in olden times it was said 300 pipers used to frequent the fair of Carbery. From that county also comes Liam O'Floinn, probably the most widely known piper nowadays”.

The Kildare piping tradition carried on today by the undoubted master Liam O'Floinn and by several others, including our own Brian Hughes, follows in the wake of Kildare men such as Captain William Kelly, John Hicks and Michael Flanagan, all of whom in their time were fine exponents of the uilleann or “elbow” pipes. Kelly, who was born in New Abbey in the last quarter of the 18th century and lived until 1858, kept racing stables at Maddenstown and apart from his musical accomplishments achieved fame as the trainer of the legendary pugilist Dan Donnelly. However, what interests us here was his familiarity with the chanter, drones and regulators which required years of practice to enable him to master the uilleann pipes. And master them he must surely have done for prior to the visit to Ireland of King George IV Kelly who was to play for him, was gifted a set of pipes – ebony, silver mounted – which after his death were given by his widow to Mrs. Bailey of Newtown, Bert, Athy. Her son, Sam Bailey, who was also a famous piper played them until he died in 1895 after which they were either purchased by or presented to the Duke of Leinster. Their present whereabouts are unknown.

John Hicks was a prodigy of Kellys. Born in or about 1825 near the Curragh, Hicks even as a young man earned for himself great popularity as an uilleann piper, so much so that he was encouraged to cross the Atlantic and try his fortunes in America. Known in America as “the Kildare Piper” he achieved a measure of fame denied to many other pipers. A performance of his in Chicago in 1880 prompted a press report which claimed: “No piper of our acquaintance is so popular with a mixed or American audience as John Hicks”. Two years later Hicks was murdered on the Jersey side of the Hudson River as he was on his way home to New York city. The last of the notable trio of Kildare pipers of old was Michael Flanagan who was born in Carbery in or about 1850. He joined the British Army and served in India. His later years were I believe spent in Ireland but I have been unable to trace any further reference to him.

Nowadays we have Brian Hughes, a native of Athy, who encouraged at a very young age by his grandfather Christy Bracken took up the uilleann pipes. As a youngster he was regularly brought to the Henrietta Street Headquarters of the Pipers Club where he learned from the great exponents of Irish piping tradition. I am told that he favours the flowing legato style of piping, commonly known as the “travellers” style. It's a style which found its finest expression in the playing of Johnny Doran who died at the County Home in Athy in January 1950. Doran, who was only 43 years of age when he died, was related to the legendary Wicklow piper John Cash. He played the uilleann pipes at all sorts of open air public gatherings and his style of playing in a standing position with one leg placed on a T-shape rest was a familiar sight in every county from Wicklow to Clare. His legato open style of piping can be heard in the tunes he recorded for Kevin Danaher of the Folklore Commission in 1946. Nowadays the Dublin piper Paddy Keenan keeps alive the dance tunes and the Doran styles of piping in such classic pieces as “Rakish Paddy”, “The Copper and Brass” and “Colonel Fraser”.

Brian Hughes who is also a noted whistle player has recently produced his second album which I understand will be launched in the Clanard Hotel on Friday night, 1st December at 8.00 p.m. Looking through the track notes on the new CD I was struck by the links to past masters of Irish traditional music. Brian is obviously an avid collector of old tunes and his CD shows the extent of his repertoire with tunes from many different regions and eras resting alongside a small number of recent compositions.

Musical associations with such greats as the Sligo fiddle masters Paddy Killoran and Michael Coleman whose fiddle playing energised the New York Irish traditional music scene in the 1920's and later, are recalled in a number of jigs and reels played by Brian on the whistle. The musicians of Sliabh Luachra in West Cork are brought to mind with a number of polkas normally associated with fiddle and accordion playing and particularly the playing of Padraig O'Keeffe and the man who was his pupil, Terry Teahan. The last named was in later years a stalwart of Irish traditional music in Chicago. Irish American musicians were a ready source of material for Brian's CD, with Tuohys Reels named after the Loughrea, County Galway man who toured the American music halls with his wife Mary at the turn of the last century with a show which combined uilleann piping with a vaudeville act. It is said that the stage Irishness of Patsy Tuohys vaudeville antics made John McCormack leave the United States, but then again, McCormack himself was perhaps guilty of stage Irishness with some of the songs he selected for his concerts.

Many of the tunes included in Brian's new CD are to be found in Francis O'Neill's “The Music of Ireland” which was published in 1903. O'Neill was an extraordinary man who was born in West Cork in the famine year 1848. When he was 20 years of age he arrived in America having spent four years as a sea man. He eventually ended up in Chicago at a time when the Irish emigrants were a powerful force in that city and by 1901 he had become Chief Superintendent of Police in Chicago. He was an avid collector of Irish traditional music and he spent over 20 years collecting tunes for his first book, “The Music of Ireland” which consisted of 1,850 airs, reels and jigs. Four years later he published “The Dance Music of Ireland” and both books have remained in print ever since.

Brian Hughes has brought together a wonderful collection of music displaying his mastery of the whistle, accompanied on some of the tracks by Garry O'Briain, Brendan O'Regan, Donnchadh Gough, Nollaig Casey, James Blennerhassett and Bruno Stachelin. The CD will be formally launched by Clem Ryan of Kildare FM in the Clanard Hotel on Friday. I gather it is an open event, no invitations being needed, and admission is free. A traditional music session will follow featuring Brian with Garry O'Briain and Donnchadh Gough.

When dealing with matters musical I should also mention two other CD's which have just been launched. “Ceol Galore” is a recording of traditional music by County Kildare musicians, including our own Roddy Geoghegan and is currently in the shops. My neighbour, Jim O'Keeffe, has also produced a CD to follow on two previous releases which I thought were excellent. His latest CD is called “Yeah, What the Hell” and features 14 of his own compositions which I gather have been getting airtime on a number of continental stations.

Plenty of Christmas stocking fillings for you all in the three CD's mentioned this week. Whatever you do don't forget Brian Hughes launch on Friday night. Come along and support a local talent of which we can be immeasurably proud.

Eye on the Past 736

2010-03-18T12:36:00.001Z

“Dublin Jack” was a name I came across on a few occasions, especially when talking to those who were born or lived in the Castlemitchell area. So far as I can find out “Dublin Jack” died in or around 1945. An intelligent man, he was well known in the Castlemitchell area where he worked and lived for most of the year, travelling around and working when he could find work, for local farmers. With the name “Dublin Jack” his birth place was readily identifiable, even if it couldn't be recognised from his accent or the strange language he used. For “Dublin Jack” had a language which owed little to the Queen's english. The Bleeding Horse, a well known hostelry was a favourite haunt of “Dublin Jack” and the story has come down through the generations of the night the Gardai cycled out from Athy to raid the country pub. The luckless late night patrons, including “Dublin Jack” were duly summoned to appear at the local District Court when the man from the capital addressed the presiding Judge. In explaining his presence on the premises after hours “Dublin Jack” claimed: “Every night before I hit the long jump I take in a long journey and I was only down to the church windows when the copper knocked to let him come in”. Some of the locals who were well accustomed to listening to “Dublin Jack” and understood his language were called upon to explain to the Court what he had said and the translation involved explaining that “the long jump” meant “bed” and “a long journey” meant “a pint of porter” and “the church window” was “the bottom of a pint glass”. It goes without saying that the colourful character is believed to have had the charge against him dismissed.

“Dublin Jack” spent most of the year in the Castlemitchell/Churchtown area and the Bleeding Horse, or more correctly one of its many outhouses, provided the sleeping quarters for the knight of the road. He wasn't in the ordinary sense one of the many men who travelled the Irish countryside in the 1930's, moving from one place to another in search of work, all the time sleeping rough and generally returning to the same places at different times of the year. “Dublin Jack” spent most of the year in the Castlemitchell area and while he usually disappeared for the winter months he was always expected to return with the Spring to his favourite haunts near the Laois border.

“Dublin Jack” was believed to have been a nephew of James Carey, a leading member of the Invincibles who were involved in the Phoenix Park Murders. The Invincibles were a breakaway group of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and five of its members were hanged for the murder in the Phoenix Park on 6th May 1882 of Lord Cavendish, Chief Secretary of Ireland and his Under Secretary Thomas Burke. Carey, who was a Dublin bricklayer, turned informer and in return he was sent to South Africa to start a new life. However, he was shot dead on the boat bringing him and his family to that country while the boat was lying off the coast of Capetown.

The extended Carey family left behind in Dublin, although innocent of any complicity in the work of James Carey, found it necessary to move out of the city. “Dublin Jack” took to the road, while his brother who was a baker ended up in Celbridge in the north of the county. There may be some persons who remember “Dublin Jack” who died over 60 years ago and if so I would be pleased to hear from them.

Anyone interested in the Invincibles should read “The Irish National Invincibles and their Times” by P.J.P. Tynan who was their leader. He died in New York in November 1936, aged 94 years, and the Irish Independent of 20th November of that year in announcing his death referred to him as “the man who at one time was well known in England as a loyal member of a select London volunteer regiment and was one of the Guard of Honour to Queen Victoria when she opened the new law courts in London.” Another interesting London link with the Phoenix Park Murders was announced in the Freemans Journal of 22nd June 1883 when the following report appeared. “On Wednesday by the midday boat (London and Northwestern Route) from the North Wall the authorities consigned to the Messrs Tussaud Wax Works Exhibition, the car used by Kavanagh in the Phoenix Park murder of Mr. Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish, also the mare who was on that day yoked to the car together with Kavanagh's whip and the identical clothes worn by him on that occasion.”

In the past I have made brief references to Seamus Malone, a teacher, who so far as I can find out taught in the local Christian Brothers School sometime in the early 1920's. Seamus who was a teacher of Irish and history spent approximately four years in Athy and during that time he was responsible for reviving the local G.A.A. Club. At the same time he was very much involved in the Republican Movement and it was this involvement which would eventually cause him to leave the Christian Brothers school. Two of his children, Sheila and Una, were born in Athy and the Malone family lived in Stanhope Street on the same side as Winkles newsagents. Seamus was a good friend of Paddy Gibbons, a local journalist who lived in Woodstock Street, and both shared strong Republican affiliations. Thomas Malone left Athy to take up a teaching post in Kilrush in County Clare and later taught in Newtown Quaker school in Waterford before ending his teaching career in a Jewish school in Dublin. Seamus and his brother Tom Malone were very involved in the Irish War of Independence, Tom being a Commandant in the East Limerick Flying Column. Tom Malone wrote of his experiences in the I.R.A. in a book published in 2000 under the title “Alias Sean Forde”, while his brother Seamus wrote of his I.R.A. involvement in a book published by Sairseal and Dill in 1958 called “Bfiu an Braon Fola” which Fr. Patrick Twohig, Parish Priest of Churchtown in County Cork translated and published as “Blood on the Flag” ten years ago. I am sure there is no one around who remembers Seamus Malone, but perhaps somewhere there may be a reference to, or a photograph of, the man who spent four years amongst the Athy people. Again if you can help in my research surrounding Seamus Malone I would be delighted to hear from you.

Elections to Athy Urban District Council were held on 15th January 1920, even as the War of Independence was entering its second year. One of the Sinn Fein councillors elected at that time was Thomas O'Rourke of William Street who coincidentally was joined on the Urban Council by Joseph O'Rourke, also of William Street. Were they related I wonder? Three months later Thomas O'Rourke and three of his sons were arrested by a group of Black and Tans and R.I.C. in a roundup of local I.R.A. sympathisers. How long they were detained I cannot say but twelve months later Thomas O'Rourke and John Hayden, another Athy man, were reported in the local papers as having been used as hostages on an army lorry which passed through Athy. John Hayden who was captain of the local I.R.A. company was a teacher in the Christian Brothers school in Athy. John lived with his brother Paddy, who was also involved in the I.R.A. at no. 7 Offaly Street. He would again be interned during the subsequent Civil War and would, like many who opposed the Treaty, emigrate to America. He returned to Ireland in 1934 and died 31 years later. Thomas O'Rourke and his three sons remain somewhat of a mystery insofar as I have never been able to satisfactorily identify them. If you think you can help me in that regard I would welcome hearing from you.