Quakers and the Quaker Meeting House in Athy

This year we celebrate the centenary of the establishment of the civic guards later named the Garda Siochana. The new Irish police force was founded following the disbandment of the Royal Irish Constabulary and in its early years by and large followed the RIC organisational structure. Like the RIC the early civic guards were armed. On the 17th of August 1922 the last RIC men left Dublin Castle to be replaced by civic guards. The first recruits to the civic guards were paid three pounds and three shillings per week and even as they entered the service they were regarded with suspicion by the anti treaty side. Indeed Austin Stack, the former minister for home affairs stated that the setting up of the force was not calculated to promote order but rather suspicion, discontent and disorder. Recruits to the civic guards had to have specific height and chest measurements and most significantly had to have a reference from a clergy man. This latter requirement must have continued for some years as my father, a farmers son from north County Longford when he joined the gardai in 1925 did so on foot of a reference given by his Parish priest, Fr. . By 1924 they were 6,300 members of the force which by virtue of the Garda Siochana (temporary provisions) Act 1923 were now officially called “Garda Siochana”. When the first contingent of the newly appointed civic guards arrived in Athy was until recent times uncertain. The late Sergeant John Shaw who joined the civic guards on the 17th of August 1922 wrote to me from Portarlington in September 1980. In that letter he wrote that on the 15th of August 1922 civic guards were sent to Portarlington, Monasterevin, Rathanagan and as far as he knew Athy in order to protect the railway lines and the canal routes to Dublin. He also referenced an incident in Athy on the 26th of August of that year when armed civil guards disarmed C.I.D. men in the town. Another piece of information he passed on to me in that letter was that Sergeant Duggan, who was then the local Sergeant charged three men in a special Court on the 23rd of September. The nature of the offence was not stated but it may have arisen as a result of an armed attack on the premises which was then occupied by the civic guards. I also have a copy letter written by the same Sergeant William Duggan in 1950 which confirms that the civic guards took up duty in Athy on the 15th of August 1922 but he also explains that prior to that a party of 16 armed civic guards were stationed at a protection post in Bert. This I assume resulted from ongoing land disputes in the area resulting from evictions on the versicle estate. Sergeant Duggan’s letter names the 16 men as Michael O’Connor, Peter Curley, Thomas Concannon, Joseph Walton, John Kelly, Joseph McNamara, John Ryan, Michael Summers, Patrick Fitzgerald, John O’Neill, James Dwyer, John Hanley, Peter Tracey, Thomas Kirwan, Michael Hassett and Sergeant William Duggan. The police records once retained at divisional level at An Garda Siochana showed that the first Sergeant in Athy was Coriolanus Lillis who was replaced by Sergeant Ed. O’Loughlin on the 1st of May 1924 who in turn was replaced by Sergeant William Duggan (the letter writer) on the 1st of August 1924. When the civic guards first arrived in Athy they were accommodated in the Town Hall before transferring to the old RIC barracks off in Barrack Lane after it was vacated by the free state army. When the barracks was attacked and damaged during the civil war the police men moved to a hotel in Leinster Street. Sergeant Duggan claimed that it was the Leinster Arms Hotel. However I have a note of being informed many years ago that the hotel in question was the Hibernian Hotel which is now Bradbury’s premises. This year the centenary of the founding of An Garda Siochana is being marked by various events throughout the country. Athy’s Art Centre will be the venue for a lecture on the history of An Garda Siochana with particular reference to Athy as part of a history lecture series which starts on Tuesday, 20th September. Details of that lecture will be published later. The first lecture on the 20th of September will be given by Nessa O’Mara Cardiff on the Barrowhouse ambush in which James Connor and William Lacey lost their lives. This lecture and all the future lectures are free and will be held in the Arts Centre at Woodstock Street.

The Quakers in Athy

A recent report in the Kildare Nationalist confirmed that what was referred to as the former Quaker Meeting House in Athy was to become a coffee shop/drop in centre for young people. Over 25 years ago I first did some research on the Quakers in Athy and found myself in the Friends Central Library, then housed in Eustace Street in Dublin. Shortly before then I became aware for the very first time of the existence of a Quaker community in Athy, which however had long before died out. The information available on the local members of the Society of Friends, to give them their proper name, was scanty indeed, although I was delighted to come across details of the building of the Quaker Meeting House in Athy in 1780.

The first Quakers in Athy may have been Thomas Weston and his wife who in 1657 ‘received the truth’ from Thomas Loe, an English preacher, who was visiting some friends in County Carlow. They were soon joined by the Bonnett family, the first Quaker family to settle in Carlow. The Bonnetts stayed in Athy for a short while after leaving Carlow before taking up residence at Ardreigh on the banks of the River Barrow. A Quaker meeting was settled in Athy by 1671, the year in which Athy was included in the list of towns where the Leinster Province Meeting was held. The local Quakers met for worship once a week on the 4th day (Wednesday), and every month a district meeting was held in Carlow to transact church business. Athy, as part of the Carlow district, also sent delegates to the Province’s quarterly meetings.

One of the earliest extant records of the Athy Friends relates to a Province Meeting held at Richard Boye’s house in Athy on 20th May 1706. Some of the Quaker families in Athy during the 18th century were the Westons, the Jessops, the Shellys, the Doyles, the Hudsons, the Rushworths, the Bakers, the Thompsons and the Haughtons of Rheban.

A recent book published by the Irish Friends Historical Committee titled ‘The Quaker Meeting Houses of Ireland’ and compiled by David Butler has given us some additional information on the Quakers in Athy. Butler writes:-

‘In 1671 a Province Meeting was held at Athy, at the house of Thomas Weston. The year before, that meeting had encouraged Friends there to build “a convenient meeting house”. Some time later, in 1704, it recorded: “it being under consideration of this meeting that there being a new meeting house built at Athy ..... to pretty general satisfaction, and that it being built at the charge of some particular Friends, and many Friends suggest it better it should be at province charge”. The sum of £50 was raised for it, and the building was conveyed from individual Friends to trustees of Province Meeting. Only four years later it had to be repaired, done at Province expense. The lease of the site was for a very short term, it expired in 1713 and then “as we have two good meetings next it [at Carlow and Castledermot] and that Athy being in a damp place, and not very convenient” it was given up, though not all Friends were happy to let it go. Province Meeting kept a grip on its property: in 1716 “there being several forms that belong to Friends of this Province at Athy Meeting and there being a new Meeting House built at Ballinakill, it is desired that Thomas Weston let Friends have 28 of them”. The Meeting was laid down in 1716 soon, after the lease ended.’


The next reference I found to Quakers in Athy was in an agreement dated December 1732 when Weston undertook to ‘set Friends a large meeting room and a stable for £3 a year and to keep them in repair’. At the Carlow Province quarterly Meeting held on 4th February 1767 it was suggested that ‘Friends of Athy be recommended to conclude among themselves about a convenient place to erect a meeting place.’ An application was subsequently made to the Duke of Leinster for a suitable plot of ground, but nothing further was done to construct a Meeting House. In the meantime the premises rented by the Athy Meeting continued to be used. Compared to the meetings which were then being held at Carlow and Ballitore the Meeting in Athy was quite small. The minutes of the Carlow Province Meeting for 23rd March 1774 noted, ‘Friends of Athy Meeting having for a long time past discontinued collecting with the other Meetings for the relief of the poor on account alleged that they have the rent of their Meeting House annually to pay, it is judged by this Meeting not convenient that said Meeting of Athy should not join in support of that branch or Christian discipline the relief of the poor, therefore this Meeting desires the Friends of Athy will confer among themselves and make report to the next Meeting how much they are willing individually to collect on condition that they be provided with a Meeting place by this Meeting’. The May Meeting recorded that the Athy Friends returned an account of what they were willing to collect monthly for the poor, whereupon the Carlow Province Meeting agreed to provide Athy with a Meeting place at it’s own expense. Thereafter the rent for the Athy Meeting House was paid from Carlow, which by 1776 was £4 per year and in 1778 was payable to John Chandlee of Athy.

In February 1775 Thomas Chandlee who had moved from Dublin to Athy attended his first quarterly Meeting in Athy. A linen draper in Duke Street, Athy, Chandlee prospered in the town and in November 1780 he married Deborah, daughter of Richard and Elizabeth Shackleton of Ballitore.

In 1779 the Duke of Leinster gave a plot of ground to the local Society of Friends in Athy. Steps were immediately taken to erect a Meeting House on the site. Work started in 1779, financed by the Carlow Province, which in turn was funded by the subscriptions of the local Meetings affiliated to the Province. Some concern was expressed at the Province Meeting in December 1779 at the delay in receiving subscriptions for their new building from the Athy Friends. Following further delay the Province Meeting appointed a delegation to visit the Athy Meeting on 13th February 1780. The purpose of the visit was to impress upon the Athy Friends the embarrassing position posed by the local’s failure to respond speedily and adequately to the request for funds for their new Meeting House. The reception received by the delegation was obviously not to their liking for the March 1780 Minutes of the Province Meeting recorded ‘considering their dishonourable dealing (the Meeting) judges it improper to accept of their subscriptions for building the Meeting House there and as the sum of £50 is still wanting towards completing the work, each Meeting is desired to raise such proportion as they can towards it.’ The final cost of the Athy Meeting House completed in 1780 came to £129.5.10 of which the Athy Friends contributed the sum of £52.13.1. A shortfall of £5.2.2 was advanced by the Athy trader Thomas Chandlee and was later repaid to him by the Carlowmen’s Meeting. The breakdown of the final expenditure on the building shows that £56.9.0 was paid to masons for building the Meeting House and the wall around part of the grounds it stood upon. The building had a gallery as the sum of £4.10.0 was paid for timber for the floor and gallery and the same building account mentions three windows, although the present building only has two windows.

The original Quaker Meeting House ran east to west, with an entrance doorway in the west wall approached by a driveway running straight in from the laneway. On the south side of the building was a lawn separating the building from the laneway. Both the lawn and the original entrance are no longer, the former having been lost partially to road widening and partially to the concrete yard which fronts the present entrance. The original building had a gallery and clearly was a higher building than the present structure.

The erection of the Meeting House did not make any appreciable change in the strength of Quakerism in Athy. A public meeting called in 1804 recorded by Mary Dudley found ‘very few of our name in Athy’. Thomas Shillito writing of a visit in 1808 referred to the Athy Quaker Meeting House as ‘the most deplorable Meeting House I have ever sat in, a few months after our sitting with Friends here the whole of the roof fell in’. By 1811 Athy Meeting House was recorded as a very small Meeting and the building itself was in such bad repair that it was considered unsafe to use. The Quaker Meeting House finally ceased to be used as a Meeting House sometime around 1811 but soon thereafter it was taken over by the local Methodists who repaired and re-roofed the building and in doing so possibly reduced the height of the walls.

The last Quaker family in the Athy area were the Hewsons who were shop keepers in the town. Margaret Hewson born in 1838 and Mary Hewson born in 1839 were the last Quaker children born in the town. Nevertheless Alexander Duncan, shop keeper, Methodist and member of the local Town Commissioners writing in 1886 referred to Athy area as having ‘an odd antique of a Quaker’. It is not clear whether the name Meeting House Lane, or as we know it today Meeting Lane, refers to the original Quaker Meeting House or to the Methodist’s use of the building.

Interestingly, Butler in his book refers to the possibility of a burial ground adjoining the Quaker Meeting House, which he thinks might well have been situated in the now empty plot of ground behind the houses lining Meeting Lane. A path apparently formerly led from the Meeting House forecourt past the Meeting House entrance on the west side to a gateway in the wall which enclosed this plot of ground. Quakers usually retained the burial ground when they disposed of a Meeting House but this particular burial ground, if it did exist behind the Athy Meeting House, may have been lost in the absence of an active Meeting or as Butler states ‘by neglect of renewing trustees’.

Methodist Church

Some weeks ago I wrote of St. Michael's Parish Church on the Carlow Road and its near neighbour across the River Barrow St. Dominic's Church. I had intended to deal in time with all the local Churches, both existing and those now gone and give the readers an appreciation of the rich diversity of our religious heritage. Other matters and events since intervened so that it is only now that I have an opportunity to deal with the story of the Methodist Church in Woodstock Street.

The Methodist movement originally began as an evangelising movement within the Church of England in the 18th century. Three Ministers of the Church of England brought about the Methodist revival in the early years, John Wesley, his brother Charles and George Whitfield, although it is John Wesley who is usually regarded as the founder of Methodism.

The first Methodist preacher to come to Ireland was Thomas Williams in 1747. A Methodist Minister was first appointed to Athy in 1790. In the absence of their own separate Church the local Methodists were initially closely associated with the Church of Ireland in Athy for religious observances. It was the break up of the local Quaker community in the second decade of the 19th century which led to the Methodist taking a lease of the former Quaker Meeting House in Meeting Lane. Located on the site of the present Dispensary, the Meeting House had originally been built in 1780 with the active support of Duke Street linen draper Thomas Chandlee who had arrived in Athy from Dublin in 1775. Married to Deborah Shackleton, daughter of Richard and Elizabeth Shackleton of Ballytore, and sister of Mary Leadbetter of Ballytore Annals fame, Thomas Chandlee’s presence in the town lead to a revival of the Quaker community which was not however to last.

In the 1827 map of Athy prepared by the Duke of Leinster by Clarges Greene the building in Meeting Lane was still described as a Quaker Meeting House. Ten years later the Ordinance Survey map of the town described the same building as "a small house of worship formerly belonging to the Quakers and now to the Methodists." Around that time Athy was part of the Carlow Methodist Circuit and was to remain so until 1970 when it was included in the Portlaoise and Tullamore Circuits.

The success which accompanied the missionary works of itinerant Methodist preachers throughout the midlands during the 19th century led to the growth of Methodism in Athy. The former Quaker Meeting House by 1860 was no longer large enough for the members attending Sunday services and Sunday school. In 1867 Alexander Duncan, then in his second term as Chairman of Athy Town Commissioners and a resident of Tonlegee House, purchased a site for a new Church in Woodstock Street. The foundation stone was laid on the 12th of June, 1872 by his wife. Two years later on Friday the 12th of June, 1874 the new Church and Sunday School which cost £2,200 to construct was dedicated. The first Sunday service was held in the new Church two days later when Rev. G.T. Perks, President of the British Methodist Conference preached the sermon.

The Church is a stone building in the Gothic style with a tower. On either side of the Communion Table are two memorial tablets inserted in the east wall of the Church. One tablet commemorates Alexander Duncan who died on the 30th of September, 1887 while the other memorial is to his widow who died in 1907.

During the 1870's Sunday Service was attended by an average of 120 persons. Today the congregation has fallen dramatically in numbers and the once strong Methodist tradition in South Kildare, which developed after John Wesley's trip through the area in April 1789 is now on the wane.

For those in the Methodist Church following in the steps of John Wesley their continued separate existence in Athy is uncertain. Whatever the future may hold they can look back on an honourable past of men and women working in the service of God amongst the community in South Kildare.