Athy Photographic Society's Calendar 2024

For a historian there are many windows into the past. Sources such as letters, diaries, and newspapers give us good records of our predecessors, but for me photography can give a vivid and intimate link to the past that is difficult to replicate anywhere else. A simple image, whether in black and white or colour, gives us a direct connection to people or events long past. I was reminded of this with the recent opening of the exhibition ‘Here Comes Everybody’ at Arthouse which is described as an art gallery and exhibition space in 42a Leinster Street. It is part of an ongoing initiative as part of the Creative Places programme running in Athy. Though small, the exhibition was well presented with some fine reproductions of photographs of people and places in Athy over the last 80-100 years. Peering out from the photographs were faces of many people I had known in my youth who are now long gone, but their memory lives on in the photographic images which survive then. There was one thing lacking from the exhibition which I think could add to its interest. None of the images that I viewed were captioned and while I could happily identify many people and places from the photographs, from a historian’s point of view it would add immeasurably to the exhibition if there was some guide or captions to the images on display. It’s a worthwhile endeavour and the exhibition itself will run until the middle of January. It is intended that the venue will host further exhibitions and events throughout 2025. Athy Photographic Society, which from my reckoning is now running for almost forty years, has released their annual photographic calendar. The 2025 edition is an interesting digression from previous calendars as rather than just simply featuring images of the town and locality this year, rather imaginatively, the society have used local images to recreate twelve iconic music album covers. It was nice to see the juxtaposition between local people and local places paying homage to classic music albums. My musical heritage is grounded in the music of the ‘50s and ‘60s and so many of the album covers featured meant little to me but I particularly enjoyed the recreation of the British rock band Jethro Tull’s album cover, ‘Songs from the Woods’. One of the more curiously titled bands, their name derives from a pioneering English agriculturalist Jethro Tull who developed the horsedrawn seed drill in the early 18th century that revolutionised agriculture in providing farmers with a modern and economic method of sowing seeds in neat rows for tillage purposes. His master work on the subject ‘The New Horse Houghing Husbandry: or, An essay on the principles of tillage and vegetation’ was published in Dublin in 1731 and it was one of the earliest works on agriculture published in Ireland at the time. This invention had a huge impact on both the economic life and landscape of South Kildare surrounded as Athy is by some of the best tillage land in the country. This is reflected in a detailed report on the agriculture of Athy and district published in the Leinster Leader on 26th March 1898. Athy’s agricultural economy was prospering and it seemed to have avoided the agricultural depression which dogged much of the country at the time. The article focused on the mills run by Messrs H. Hannon and Sons. The reporter interviewed the manager of the mills, a Mr. Price, who treated the journalist to a detailed description of the milling process from the arrival of the raw product by barge on the Grand Canal to the final process of manufacturing. Mr Price paid particular tribute to the managing clerk, a Mr. Dobbin and mentioned that twenty men were employed in the three mills. The mills in Ardreigh and Prumplestown were focused on the manufacturing of flour, while the Athy Mills were solely devoted to the manufacture of Indian meal. Much of the land around the town at that time was devoted to the wheat growing industry. In 1897 the Prumplestown Mill produced 9,338 barrels of wheat which were manufactured into flour while the Ardreigh Mill produced 8,500 barrels of wheat which were manufactured into flours of various qualities with titles such as ‘Acme’, ‘Champion’, Rollo First’, ‘XL’, etc. The market for the produce was local and would have been sold in Carlow, Tullow, Baltinglass, Castledermot, Stradbally, Castlecomer, Monasterevin, Portarlington and Edenderry. Wheat from both mills was sold at one shilling and six pence per barrel. That price was apparently very good from a local farmers’ perspective insofar as it encouraged them to treble the area for wheat production the following year. Sadly this prosperity was not to last as by the early 1920’s imports of cheaper grain from the United States devastated the Irish grain industry to the point where none of the Hannon mills were operating by the late 1920s.

Boom town runs risk of losing community spirit

With a population of 8,256 or thereabouts, the highest figure attained in its 800-year history, Athy has extended its boundaries into countryside which not so many years ago was farmed, ploughed and grazed. The once-compact market town - compact despite its medieval linear-type road pattern, which gave us a long, narrow high street extending from one side of the town to its furthest point - has been extended and reshaped almost beyond recognition. Housing estates have gone up, some with names that have no resonance with the ancient place names of South Kildare, making many of us strangers in our own place. I was embarrassingly made aware of this when, just before Christmas, a visitor to the town asked me for directions to a hitherto-unknown housing estate. I did not know where it was, whether east or west of the Barrow, that permanent watermark which once informed our sense of direction in a locality which we had grown to know so well. Not anymore. The Barrow, translated as ‘the dumb water’, meanders (or more correctly, given last week’s floods, rushes) between river banks that no longer have a close connection with every part of the township of Athy. Like ourselves, the river has lost contact with the newly-developed parts of the town and you know, as a community, we are all the poorer for that.

As the influx of new residents brings the town population figure to heights never before reached, many old and not-so-old bearers of family names which graced community life in Athy for decades have passed on. A month ago, Jack Brogan, whose father Bill came to Athy many years ago to work in his uncle’s forge, died at a relatively young age. John, who had retired as a prison officer, was a nephew of Tom Brogan, who is still remembered by the older generation and whose name is frequently referred to when people reminisce of Athy of 50 years ago and more. Brogan’s forge was an important part of the community life of Athy until it disappeared, as did all the other local forges, with the advent of the motor car.

Jack Brogan was a member of the Athy Photographic Society and the 2007 Calendar produced by the society had a very evocative photograph of Offaly Street by him.

MP Kelly of Booleigh House died last week at 88 years of age. His very active involvement in the local golf club saw him fill various officerships of the club which celebrated its centenary last year. MP was club president in 1978 and 1979 and two years later was elected captain of Athy Golf Club.

Another old Athy family to suffer a bereavement within the last week or so was the Bergin family. The late Agnes Bergin was the daughter of Joe Bergin, formerly of Greenhills House, which, as the name indicates, once stood in the middle of farmland that is now given over to the Woodstock Housing Estates. Joe was land steward for the Sisters of Mercy and the lands at Greenhills had passed to the Sisters on the death of their owner in the mid-19th century. Part of the lands were subsequently donated to the Christian Brothers for the building of the Brothers’ monastery and school in 1862. A further land donation provided the site for St Patrick’s Primary School built in the late 1960s, while Athy UDC and Kildare County Council purchased more of the land for the building of the vast housing estates which emerged from 1969 onwards. These estates included 28 houses in Townparks, completed in 1971, a further 32 houses built in the same area the following year, to be followed by 72 houses now known as Castle Park in 1973 and two years later 50 houses in Greenhills built by the National Building Agency.

The Blanchfield family are another old Athy family, one of whose members passed away last week. Réiltín, who was married to the late Cecil Treacy of Fontstown, a marriage blessed with 12 children, was herself the sixth member of the Blanchfield family which totalled 15 in all. Her funeral to Kilmeade Church on Monday night was attended by a huge number of sympathisers. St Ita’s Church, reputed to have been built in the year of the Rebellion of 1798, could not cater for all those attending, but the arrangements put in place by the local church members were extraordinarily good. Traffic was admirably marshalled by the local men and one could not but be highly impressed by the organisational input of the lay members of the Kilmeade Church.

I noticed a plaque to the side of the main door of the church unveiled during the bicentenary of the church in 1998. I wonder, however, how accurate it is to put the building of the church at 1798, a time when Catholic churches were more likely to be burned to the ground as happened in Castledermot and Athy. It would represent an unusual and perhaps a unique contribution to Irish Catholic Church history to find a church built in the South Kildare area in 1798, which at that time was regarded by civil authorities as a hot bed of rebellious activity.

The site for the church was given by the Kenna family of Kilmeade, who were connected by marriage with Paul Cullen, the first Cardinal of the Irish Catholic Church. The Kennas were substantial land owners in the Kilmeade area, holding over 234 acres of land around the time Catholic Emancipation was granted in 1829.

When I was about 13 or 14 years of age, along with a number of school mates including Frank English, Pat Flinter and Brendan Webb, I travelled to Kildare Town in Tosh Doyle’s hackney car for two or maybe three days to sit examinations for a Kildare County Council scholarship. With us on those trips were Teresa Delaney and Réiltín Blanchfield. I was reminded of this by Frank English an hour or so after Réiltín’s remains were removed to St Ita’s Church and recalled with a jolt that both Teresa and Réiltín from that small group are now dead.

Just over two weeks ago, Réiltín called to give me some much appreciated historical background information. It was not her first time to do so, as Réiltín shared with me an interest in the history of the locality and was always willing to share her knowledge in that regard.

I was in Dublin on Thursday morning when I got word of the death of Josh Hendy whose funeral to Ballintubbert took place that same morning. Josh, like Réiltín, had a great interest in the people and places of South Kildare and indeed Josh featured in a previous Eye on the Past (Eye no 706). He was a wonderfully friendly man who throughout his life participated fully in the sporting and social affairs of his locality. He played Gaelic football with Castlemitchell in his younger days and in later years assisted in the development of the Castlemitchell Hall. Josh was a great friend of Eye on Athy and I was indebted to him for the many occasions on which he shared his knowledge and reminiscences of times past in Athy and Castlemitchell. I extend my sympathies to the families of all the above deceased members of our community.

The passing of so many with names familiar to the older generation at a time when the town’s population is increasing at a rate never before witnessed is a sober reminder to us of the everchanging face of our town. Athy will witness even greater physical changes over the next few years with the construction of an outer relief road and the building of town centre shopping malls. The 800-year-old town, which developed around the second-century river crossing, will be hugely reshaped and changed by these new developments. It is hoped that the community spirit which was always a feature of life in the smaller compact town of Athy of yesteryear will continue to be a noticeable part of provincial life in the expanded and still expanding town of the future.