Athy#s Historical Society and Seamus Hughes' dissertation on the Grant Canal

The recently formed Athy Historical Society has arranged a spring lecture series to commence with a lecture on Thursday 8^th February.  The lectures will be held in the Heritage Centre on the second Thursday of each month at 7.30 p.m.  Admission to all lectures is free. 

 

The first lecture in the series will be given by Marc Guernon under the title ‘No field is innocent’ - the hidden archaeology of South Kildare’.  Marc was part of the archaeological team which excavated the medieval village of Ardreigh prior to the re-alignment of the Carlow Road some years ago.  The second lecture which will take place on Thursday 8^th March will deal with ‘Athy and the Great War’.  The lecturer, Clem Roche, published his book ‘Athy and District World War I Roll of Honour 1914-1918’ last year and copies are for sale in the Heritage Centre.  The final lecture scheduled for Thursday 12^th April will feature Colm Flynn whose talk under the title ‘Where are you coming from and where are you going?’ will give a detailed exposition of the old roads of South Kildare.  Colm’s book ‘A Tie to the Land’ is available for sale in the Gem.

 

The developing interest in local history and family history has witnessed the release of an ever-increasing list of publications on the subjects, while regretfully much research at local level remains largely unpublished.  I was particularly pleased to receive some time ago a copy of a dissertation researched and written by local man, Seamus Hughes, as part of his studies in Carlow College.  His subject was the Grand Canal which is of particular relevance to someone bearing the Hughes name as several generations of that family were bargemen on the Grand Canal and the Barrow Line over the years.

 

Seamus noted that work on the construction of the canal between Monasterevin and Athy commenced in 1789.  The canal from Dublin to Monasterevin had been completed in 1785 and the intention was to enter the River Barrow at Monasterevin and continue the journey downstream towards Athy and beyond.  However, the river between the two south Kildare towns proved to be shallow at various points and the decision was taken to extend the canal to Athy.  Work on the new stretch of the canal was undertaken by a number of private contractors, all of whom were allocated sections of approximately one mile in length to work on.  The engineer in charge was Richard Evans, assisted by William Rhodes, James Oates and Archibold Miller.  Evans’s involvement with other projects which he was reluctant to give up led to him being relieved of his duties and his three assistants took over responsibility for overseeing the work of the various contractors.  By April 1790 Archibold Miller had taken on the role of head engineer to the Grand Canal Company.

 

Seamus discloses that in April 1790 3,944 men were working on the canal construction works between Monasterevin and Athy.  By March of the following year the canal was open to trade and passenger boats as far as Athy, although final work on the canal locks was still being undertaken. 

 

The extension of the canal to Athy brought the possibility of huge changes to the south Kildare town.  Canal transport offered tremendous commercial opportunities which were to some extent hampered or delayed by the 1798 rebellion.  The uprising in and around Athy was the subject of local man Patrick O’Kelly’s book on 1798 and the savagery with which the rebels attempt to secure religious and parliamentary freedom was met militated against the possibility of maximising the commercial benefits which should have flowed from the new canal transport system.  In the post 1798 period the country remained unsettled and while the Grand Canal company operated a passenger boat service linking Athy and Dublin it could not hope to compete with the railway company when the railway line was extended to Athy in 1847.  Passenger boat services on the Grand Canal ceased in 1852, while the transport of commercial cargo continued fitfully until 1960.  Seamus Hughes concluded his study by acknowledging that the Grand Canal was of vital importance in the commercialisation of towns, including Athy, which were connected to Dublin by the work of 18^th century labourers.

 

Today the Grand Canal and the Barrow line have taken on a different role.  Passenger traffic and the transport of cargo have been replaced by leisure boating.  Athy’s town centre harbour is now home to a variety of boats bringing life back to the ancient river which had not seen much activity for decades past.  The proposed development of the Barrow Blueway between Lowtown and St. Mullins with a possible waterway hub in Athy offers huge potential for Athy similar in many ways to that which followed the coming of the Grand Canal in 1791 and the arrival of the railway in 1847.

Grand Canal / Barrow Navigation

The passing of a few decades brings huge changes in the life of any community.  I was reminded of this fact when preparing a speech for Graduate’s Night in Scoil Eoin, my own alma mater, which I had left in 1960.  Comparisons between the class size of 42 years ago and today, the differences in job opportunities then and now and the optimism of today compared with the pessimism which then hung like a dark cloud over our lives brought proof of the changes in the intervening years. 

Nowhere are those changes in society more marked than in the way we now use that great transport corridor built by thousands of Irish labourers over 200 years ago.  I am referring to the Grand Canal, again in the local news with the holding of the Water Festival in Athy at the weekend.  Once an important link with the outside world, the Canal soon after its inauguration gave way to the railway which would remain the dominant partner in the transport network of this country for the following 100 years.  However, the railway went the way of the Canal when giving way to the motor vehicles and tarmacadamed public roads.  This left the railway underused in much the same way as the Canal suffered when “the iron roads” first came into use. 

Nowadays the Canals, once the workhorse of transport in Ireland, are coming back into use as leisure facilities.  Athy Water Festival celebrates the history of the Canal and brought home to us the continuing importance of the inland waterways in the life of our town.  In history, Athy has always been known as a garrison town, an acknowledgement of the importance of our town in the defence of those living within the Pale.  The town’s defensive role was confirmed with the building of a military barracks in the early years of the 18^th century and up to the time of the Crimean War a garrison of troops were always stationed here.  With the extension of the Grand Canal to Athy in 1791 Athy could and should lay claim to the title of Waterways Town given its important position at the merging of the Grand Canal and the Barrow Navigation. 

Twice in its history Athy has been benefited from its location in the Barrow Valley where it is surrounded on all sides by rich farmland.  The first was when the Grand Canal Company wanted to link up the new Canal with the Barrow Navigation which they had originally intended to do at Monasterevin.  However, navigating the Barrow between Athy and Monasterevin proved too troublesome and so the Canal was extended into Athy.  This gave a tremendous boost to the local economy and reinforced Athy’s importance as a market town.  Local employment was generated not only on the Canal barges but also in the myriad of services required by a transport system which flourished during the first 50 years of its life.  

The next occasion when Athy’s location again stood to its advantage was when the Great Southern and Western Railway was opened from Dublin to Carlow.  Again Athy was to benefit and when the railway line opened in 1847 it marked another step in the forward advancement of one of Leinster’s busiest market towns.

Employment on the Grand Canal and the Barrow Navigation was an important contributor to the commercial life of Athy from 1791 onwards.  Over the years as the inland waterways declined, its importance and the employment it offered became less and less significant.  Despite that generations of Athy families depended on the Barrow and the Canal for their livelihood and family names such as Hughes, Rowan, Carey, O’Rourke, Maher and Dunne come to mind.

Working on the waterways was a hard demanding job.  The boats that plied on the Canal were either Canal company boats or “B”  boats known as by traders or hack boats which were owned by private individuals.  These latter boats were licensed by the Canal Company and travelled up and down the Barrow and the Canal carrying malt, sugar and cement.  The boat men on the Canal system worked 24 hours a day with crews of four working in shifts of six hours a time, with two men on duty at any one time.  That at least is how the Canal barges worked, crewed as they were by a Master, an engine man, a deck hand and a “Greaser” .  The last named was usually a youngster to whom fell the menial jobs and who attended on the other men.  The by traders boats were not similarly crewed and sometimes they were worked by two men only.

A little known piece of information concerning the Cargo’s transported on the Canal is that Monasterevin was the loading point for perhaps the most unusual cargo transported on the Irish Inland Waterways.  Bantam Fighting Cocks were for many years bred and trained in the parish of Nurney which became known as the fighting cock centre of Leinster.  This had developed in days before cock fighting became illegal, but even the enactment of the Cruelty to Animals Act in 1849 did not immediately deter the efforts of those involved in the Nurney Parish in breeding fighting cocks.  The business continued, although now they were simply breeding “Bantam Cocks which seemed to have a propensity to fight among themselves.”  The cocks were sold and supplied from Nurney and distributed to all corners of Ireland via the Grand Canal at Monasterevin. 

The Canal barge men who worked 24 hours a day unlike their Barrow Navigation colleagues who worked from dawn to dusk were granted a reduction in their working hours in 1946.  The Canal Company agreed that the barge men would only work 16 hours a day, but in return crew members were reduced to three, with the loss of the junior barge man known as “The Greaser”.  This change came just shortly before the Grand Canal Company was nationalised and in 1950 the Canal Operation came under the control of C.I.E.  Within ten years the Canals were no longer used to carry freight.  The glorious days of the Canal and those who worked the barges was finished.

Now the Canal and the Barrow Navigation have taken on a new lease of life and last weekends Water Festival was a celebration of what the Inland Waterways means to the people of Athy and a re-affirmation of its future role as a leisure facility to be enjoyed by all. 

Stephen Bolger - Canal Boatmen

I spent an enjoyable few hours last week talking and listening to Stephen Bolger, an octogenarian heading into his 89th year. He has been a patient in St. Vincent's Hospital for a number of years but his memory retains a sharpness in relation to events of previous decades which prompts admiration and a slight little regret that I had not previously interviewed this grand old man.

Born on the 31st of August, 1905 Stephen may well lay claim to have been one of the few Athy people caught up in the Easter Rebellion in Dublin in 1916. He was then a young boy working on Jack Rooney's canal boat. Jack lived in Woodstock Street where Danny Kane's shop is now located. Stephen was one of three people on Rooney's boat that fateful week. Rooney, the skipper, steered the boat while another local man and Stephen took turns in leading the two horses which traced together, pulled the boat on the journey from Athy to Dublin. Passing through Vicarstown, Monasterevin, Rathangan, Robertstown, Hazelhatch and Clondalkin the boat was scheduled to berth at James's Street Harbour near the centre of the city.

The opening of hostilities on Easter Monday coincided with the arrival of Jack Rooney's boat in Inchicore and so it was that eleven year old Stephen Bolger found himself trapped in Dublin when the guns of rebellion blazed across the city sky. His memories are of the wild rumours which abounded with talk of killings in the city centre to rival the worst excesses of the 1798 rebellion. He did on occasions hear gunfire but he and his workmates were not allowed to move on from Inchicore and so Jack Rooney's boat and its cargo and crew spent almost a week there.

Stephen and his colleagues had to depend on the hospitality of some local Inchicore people during their enforced stay as they had rations only for the three days which they would normally expect to take for the return trip to Athy.

His memories of life and work on the Grand Canal is tinged with sadness as he recalled those Athy men who over the years died tragically while working on the waterways. Jack Rowan, brother of Mick Rowan presently living in Woodstock Street and son of Paddy Rowan, a noted Grand Canal boatman in his day, died at St. Mullins after falling into the twelfth lock. Jimmy Carey of Shrewleen Lane drowned at Levitstown on a trip from Carlow to Athy. Indeed the Grand Canal's boatmen were always somewhat wary of the rough waters of the Barrow navigation which they tended to avoid as much as possible as they did the Shannon navigation for the same reason. Their fears in this regard can be understood from the fact that the relatively smooth waters of the canal required only one horse to pull a canal boat while the Barrow navigation between Athy and Carlow might require four horses to pull a boat, especially when the river was in flood.
Corn and malt were some of the principal exports to Dublin from South Kildare while bricks from the local brick factory were also another common cargo of the day. On the return trip from Dublin barrels of Guinness were sure to be on board.

The horses used were what Stephen describes as "good heavy horses", Irish draught mares being particularly favoured. Each horse had a nose bag from which it could feed while walking on the canal tow path. It was extremely hard on the horses pulling boats, sometimes laden with 46 tonnes of cargo. Because of this each horse was fitted with a special collar which was "bridged", that is with a stitched hollow to keep it off the animals breast.

Stephen Bolger recalls many horses pulled into the Barrow by the sheer weight of the cargo combined with the force of the waters when the river was in flood. The Horse Bridge in Athy saw several horses pulled over the parapet as they made their way across the bridge to join the Grand Canal. Another danger point was the weir below the present Railway Bridge. The building of the Bridge in 1917 altered the position of the weir but prior to then many a horse was dragged over the weir by the sheer force of the rushing waters.

Stephen Bolger is a delightful man to listen to as he reminisces about life on the canal boats almost 80 years ago. The clarity with which he recalls the events of yesteryear is a testimony to a life of hard work and to times when "honest sweat and toil" was a badge of honour amongst working folk on the Grand Canal.