Keeping the flag flying Down Under

Michael Moran came from Ballyhaunis in County Mayo, a town well known to my mother who, as Kathleen Regan, lived a few miles away near the village of Cloonfad. A painter for 44 years of his working life, Michael is now retired and living in Sydney, Australia, to where he emigrated courtesy of the £10 assisted passage scheme 50 years ago. He spends a lot of his time as a volunteer in Sydney’s Gaelic Club, which today is home to the Padraig Pearse branch of the Irish Nationalist Association of Australasia. Founded in 1915, the association works for the development of Irish Australian cultural activities and the welfare of Irish people in Australia.

The Gaelic Club is on the first floor of the Irish National Association’s fine premises in Devonshire Street, Sydney, which was opened in 1955 by the Irish charge d’affairs. Today, the Gaelic Club is approached by a stairs, the walls of which are adorned by GAA colours of all the Irish counties. The last framed jersey next to the club entrance shows the Lilywhite colours which were presented by Sue Lomansey, whom, I believe, is the Asian-born chairperson of the Kildare Association in Sydney.

Membership of the Gaelic Club, which started in 1974, has declined in recent years. Thirty years ago, the club boasted a membership of over 1,000, but last year had little more than 250 members, almost 70% of which are over 75 years of age. I saw notices for Irish classes held each week on the premises as well as advance publicity for St Patrick’s Night festivities which, regretfully, I was unable to attend. An intriguing advertisement for ‘Sult at the Gaelic Club’ held on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month promised sessions of music, poetry and the spoken word followed by ‘informal acoustic sessions’.

On the evening I called, the premises were quiet and Michael Moran, who appeared to manage the place with the assistance of a barman, had the opportunity to show me around the club’s library.

Bemoaning the loss of many of its books which had ‘disappeared’ in recent years, Michael nevertheless was able to show me quite a substantial holding of Irish history books, all of which would appear to indicate a purchasing policy which had lapsed some years past.

The club is located in the Surrey Hill area of Sydney, which up to the 1980s was an ‘Irish area’. This changed when the Australian Housing Commission started to renew the area, following which the Irish families moved to the city suburbs, leaving behind the club premises to which they no longer enjoyed easy access. The Gaelic Club continues, offering classes in the Irish language and providing a focal point for the city-based Gaelic teams that play in the New South Wales Championship and the Australian Championship.

The standard of play in the Australian Gaelic games, I’m told, is of a lesser standard than that to be found in New York, that other great bastion of overseas Gaelic games.

It was in Brisbane that I came across another Irish club, this time in Elizabeth Street and not far from St Stephen’s Cathedral, built by Bishop James Quinn, whose brother Andrew Quinn was parish priest of Athy in the 1850s. The Brisbane Irish community would appear to be more active than their Sydney compatriots, the club boasting a membership of almost 7,500, comprised, I’m told, of full members and associate members. To be a full member of what in Brisbane is called a national member, you have to be Irish or of Irish descent. The origin of the Brisbane Club lies in a disagreement which followed the replacement of an Irish commander of the Queensland Irish Volunteer Rifles by a British Army officer. This happened in the centenary year of the 1798 rebellion and the disaffected Irishmen set up the Queensland Irish Association, which moved to the Elizabeth Street premises in 1921.

Brisbane’s Irish Society organises the annual St Patrick’s Day parade, which this year was brought into the city business district starting at the corner of George’s and Elizabeth Street with the salute being taken out-side the Irish Club premises before ending up at the city’s Botanic Gardens. The night before, a gala dinner was held in which more than 500 took part to celebrate the feast day of the Englishman who, strangely enough, is the most iconic representative figure of ancient Ireland.

Australia, which gave a home to several generations of Irish men and women, whether convicts, political prisoners, orphans or free settlers, is not without its contradictions. Racism, which found its most regrettable expression in the white people’s treatment of the aboriginal people, is still a source of concern for observers of the monarchist state which has yet to embrace republican democracy.

Aboriginal Australia of early centuries was a culturally impoverished country compared to the richness of the medieval culture to be found in Ireland of the time. I was reminded of this on reading the programme of events for the South Kildare Medieval Festival planned for Sunday 20 April. From 12.30pm onwards, the centre of Athy will host a variety of talks and outdoor events highlighting the medievalist contribution to Irish life. The idea for the festival arose out of the important archaeological dig which has been ongoing at Ardreigh for the last number of years. The artefacts discovered at Ardreigh and the unfolding story of Ardreigh’s medieval village afford an opportunity to provide a forum for discussion, where the archaeologists can share their knowledge with the local people. It promises to be an enjoyable day and all will be happening between 12.30pm and 4.30pm in the Heritage Centre and outside in Emily Square on Sunday 20 April.

Last week’s photograph of the Ardscull Tug of War Team has evoked great interest and my thanks goes to Peter Kelly of Geraldine who allowed me the opportunity to reproduce it. If you have any information on the members of the Ardscull team, I would be delighted to hear from you.

Of Victory Crosses And Tug Of Wars

Two photographs this week, one of the Ardscull Tug of War team of 1928, the other of a grave in the Cornelian Bay Cemetery in Hobart, Tasmania. The grave is that of members of the Tasmanian branch of the Holland family, a family which had it’s origins here in Athy. I was in Cornelian Bay Cemetery recently to visit the grave of John Vincent Holland, formerly of Athy, who was awarded a Victoria Cross for bravery in the 1914-18 War. I have written previously of Holland and the local Heritage Centre has a display devoted to the man who returned from Argentina to join the British Army in 1914. His gallantry at Guillemont during the Battle of the Somme earned for him a civic reception from Athy U.D.C. and a presentation from members of Kildare County Council. Holland’s grave is but one of the many connections which exist between Ireland and the former Van Diemen’s Land, noted in history for the Irish convicts sent there in the early part of the 19th century.

The second photograph depicts the Moat of Ardscull Tug of War team which defeated the Dublin Metropolitan Police team in the Tailteann Games of 1928. It includes four Dempsey brothers from Kilmead, Paddy, Andy, Mick and Johnny. From left to right at the back the team photograph includes Major Tynan of Monasterevin who trained the team, Willie Owens, Jimmy O’Brien of Nurney, Paddy Dempsey, Peter Hanlon of Booleigh, Andy Dempsey and six foot eight inches tall Joe Beirne whom I believe lived near the Seven Stars. The front row from left has Casey Bell of Kilmead, Paddy O’Brien of Nurney, Tommy Ryan of Ballindrum, Mick Dempsey and Johnny Dempsey.

I have been unable to verify the information given to me about the team’s win in the 1928 Tailteann Games but that year was a triumphant one for Kildare county. The Sam Maguire was presented to that year’s All Ireland champions and the recipient was Squires Gannon, Captain of the Lilywhites. I believe that the Ardscull Tug of War team, like the footballers, wore white jerseys.

I would like to get more background information on the Ardscull team and the men whose photograph was taken 80 years ago.

The passing of Dr. Joe O’Neill

I was in Sydney Australia when I received a brief text message on my mobile phone, ‘Dr. Joe is dead’. Nothing further was needed to identify the man who since he took over the medical practice of his father, Dr. Jeremiah O’Neill, was known simply throughout South Kildare and further afield as ‘Dr. Joe’. I was visiting the grave of Michael Dwyer, the Wicklow-born patriot of the 1798 Rebellion in Waverely Cemetery in Bondi, Sydney when the news of Dr. O’Neill’s death reached me. The patriotism of both men was unquestionable. Dwyer was a revolutionary patriot of another era while Dr. Joe, devoted to the medical care of the people of this area over many decades, directed his skills to the public welfare and in so doing can rightly be called a patriot of our community.

I had good reason to be especially grateful for the diagnostic skills of Dr. Joe when aged 25 years he diagnosed me as suffering from appendicitis. I was dispatched to Naas Hospital, still then under the control of Kildare County Council as the Health Authority and managed by a member of the Sisters of Mercy. Jack Gibson performed the operation, taking the opportunity to use his skill as a hypnotist to dispense with anaesthetics in some of my post-operative treatment. Sixteen years later Dr. Joe saved the life of my youngest son in circumstances which underlined his skill and his devotion as a doctor. My son Francis, then in primary school, complained one morning of feeling unwell which parents are always wary of hearing from school shy pupils. However, not being one given to making such complaints he was allowed to stay home from school and spend the day in bed.

Late in the evening he called his mother, not in any distress but merely to say that he had heard something ‘pop’ in his stomach. There was no great accompanying pain but fortunately Dr. Joe was called and on examining the youngster diagnosed a burst appendix. He was immediately removed to Temple Street Hospital in Dublin where he underwent surgery that night. Dr. O’Neill’s quick response and his skilful diagnosis of the young fellow’s condition undoubtedly helped save my son’s life.

It is on occasions such as this that the importance of a 24 hour local medical service is highlighted. What I wonder would have happened if the K-Doc system was then in operation? I shudder to think of the possible consequences.

Dr. O’Neill was the third generation medical doctor in the O’Neill family. The first was his grandfather, Dr. P.L. O’Neill who was appointed as medical officer to the local Workhouse in 1874 to succeed Dr. Thomas Kynsey. He had his own private practice prior to this but nevertheless the appointment to the local institution was an important acknowledgement of his standing in the community and his skill as a medical practitioner. Dr. P.L. O’Neill in common with what we would now regard as the educated class of the time was involved in local and national politics. The 1880’s and beyond was an exciting time in Irish political life, what with the Land League Campaign and the developing demand for Home Rule. Men like Dr. P.L. O’Neill and his peers took an active part in the issues of the day, leading the local community as did the local Parish Priest Fr. John Lawler and the local Rector Rev. Henry Bristow, both of whom contested elections to Athy Town Commissioners in 1847. Given their unique positions within the community it was imperative that both the Rector and the Parish Priest would not be embarrassed at the polls and indeed they were not. Both men polled well with the Parish Priest getting 105 votes, tying for top of the poll position with local mill owner Henry Hannon. Interestingly three local doctors, Dr. Kynsey, Dr. Irving and Dr. Ferris also stood for election and were duly elected to what was the first local authority established in Athy following the disbandment of the now elected and unrepresentative Borough Council seven years previously.

Dr. P.L. O’Neill was President of the local branch of the Irish National League until his resignation in November 1885 following a disagreement with Martin Doyle, another member of the League. He continued as medical officer to the Workhouse until 1897 when he was replaced by his son Dr. Jeremiah O’Neill who held the position for the next 51 years. Like his father, Dr. Jeremiah was involved in local politics and served as Chairman of Athy U.D.C. for three years from 1912. He died in 1954 aged 81 years old and was replaced as medical officer in what was by then called the County Home by his son Dr. Joe.

Dr. Joe O’Neill was a dedicated and gifted doctor whose pleasant gentle manner made him a favourite with his patients. He shunned the political arena which his father and grandfather before him had adorned and instead concentrated on his successful medical career which was distinguished by his kindness and thoughtfulness. Dr. Joe continued as medical officer to the County Home until 1991 when his son Dr. Giles O’Neill was appointed as the fourth member of the O’Neill family to that institution which by then was re-named St. Vincents Hospital. Aged 91 years when he passed away Dr. Joe will be sadly missed by all who knew him.

Last week Michael Harris was laid to rest at an age which fell short of the biblical three score and ten. Michael during his life made a huge contribution to the less well off members of the society, having instigated and operated for some years past an annual aid convoy to Romanian orphanages. Michael was in recent years a member of the local Lions Club which is part of the world’s largest charitable service organisation. He organised a number of events to raise funds for Lions charities, the last of which was a very successful concert in the Clanard Court Hotel featuring the soprano Virginia Kerr. A quiet man who made a huge impact within the many charitable causes with which he was associated, Michael will be sadly missed by the wider South Kildare community. His death at a comparatively young age is a further blow to the Harris family who suffered the tragic loss of two family members just over two years ago.

Tragic and sudden deaths are regrettably part of modern life and the recent death of Mary Clare Collins of Ballintubbert while holidaying in Rome brings home to us yet again the uncertainty of life. The loss of a child is a parent’s worst fear and the deaths of Mary Clare and her friend while enjoying a few days in the Eternal City cast a sorrow shadow over communities in Athy and Limerick.

With the deaths of Dr. Joe O’Neill, Michael Harris and Mary Clare Collins our own community has suffered the loss of a wonderful doctor, an exceptional charity worker and a young girl who was part of the generation of young people for whom the future held so much promise. For their families the personal losses are keenly felt and to the O’Neill, Harris and Collins families goes our sympathies at these sad times.

Sharpe practices in the Napoleonic Wars

The Duke of Wellington, or Arthur Wellesley, as he was known to his family, is perhaps the most famous Irish soldier of all time. He is credited with the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo and securing peace for Europe for the succeeding 50 years. Wellington’s Irishness was a source of embarrassment to him and he played down his Irish origins throughout much of his life. To him is attributed the quote, which is possibly apocryphal, that ‘being born in a stable does not make one a horse’.

Notwithstanding the discomfort that his Irish connections caused Wellington, he had cause to be thankful for his birth place in the service that its soldiers rendered to the Crown in the Napoleonic Wars. In the period preceding the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, somewhere between one fifth and one quarter of the British Army was composed of Irish soldiers.

After Napoleon’s defeat and his final exile to St Helena, there was an explosion in the publication of literature relating to the wars. Particularly prominent were the officers who served under Wellington. This was not to be unexpected as literacy levels among the private soldiers of the time would have been very low. I wrote some years ago of William Grattan, a relation of the great Irish orator and statesman, Henry Grattan, who wrote a series of books about his service in the Connaught Rangers during the Napoleonic wars and who retired to Kilcullen after his military service was over and was buried in Old St Michael’s Cemetery, Athy, Co Kildare.

Notwithstanding that tens of thousands of Irish men served in the ranks of Wellington’s armies, very few of them published accounts of their service and to the best of my knowledge no Athy man ever put pen to paper to record his wartime experiences. However, a young Laois man by the name of Edward ‘Ned’ Costello did, publishing in 1841 Adventures of a Soldier and following up with a revised edition of this book in 1852. Costello was born in Mountmellick on 26 October 1788. He spent his formative years in the town, but at the age of seven, his father moved to Dublin, where he secured an appointment in Dublin Port with the Custom Services. His father was a ‘tidewaiter’, this being an officer empowered and employed by the Customs Service to board ships entering into the port to examine their cargo to ensure there were no attempts by the merchants of the day to evade customs duty. At a young age, Costello himself was apprenticed to a cabinet maker in William Street in Dublin. He was restless and did not stay at this employment long and soon went to live with his uncle, who was a shoemaker. It seems while working with his uncle, he came across an old soldier who had fought in Egypt in 1801, losing a leg.

Fired up by stories of martial endeavour, he enlisted in the Dublin Militia in 1806 and in the following year his regiment was stationed in Derry. There, he volunteered to join the 95th Rifles, being a regular regiment in the British Army. He adapted quickly to the army life and in the summer of 1809 found himself with his regiment in Portugal, where Wellington’s armies were fighting prolonged campaigns against the invading French forces. Life on campaign was very tough. Troops at the time had to endure excessive heat, poor food and disease. Costello was in the thick of the fighting when his regiment stormed the French citadel at Ciudad Rodrigo. Although the battle lasted less than half an hour, the fighting was intense and uncompromising. In the aftermath of the battle, through which Costello emerged unscathed, he went to inspect that portion of citadel in which a mine had been exploded prior to the commencement of the assault. He wrote:

“The sight was heart-rendering in the extreme. The dead lay in heaps, numbers of them stripped. They displayed the most ghastly wounds. Here and there, half buried under the blackened fragments of the wall, or reeking on the surface of the ruin, lay those who had been blown up in the explosion, the remains dreadfully mangled and discoloured. Strewed about were dissevered arms and legs. The 88th Connaught Rangers had suffered most severely at this spot and I observed a number of poor Irish women hopelessly endeavouring to distinguish the burned features of their husbands.”

William Grattan, then a junior officer in the Connaught Rangers, wrote about the battle as follows:

“The smell from the still-burning houses, the groups of dead and wounded, and the broken fragments of different weapons, marked strongly the character of the preceding night’s dispute; and even at this late hour, there were many drunken marauders endeavouring to regain, by some fresh act of atrocity, an equivalent for the plunder their brutal state of intoxication had caused them to lose by the hands of their own companions, who robbed indiscriminately man, woman or child, friend or foe, the dead or the dying!”

Costello, like many soldiers of the time, was not above helping himself to the spoils of war. In the aftermath of the Battle of Vittoria, he came across a Spaniard serving in the French Army carrying a heavy case. In Costello’s own words:

“I compelled him to lay it down, which he did, but only after I had given him a few whacks on the ribs with my rifle. On inspection, I found the portmanteau contained several small bags filled with gold and silver in dublons and dollars. Although I never knew the exact amount, I should think it was not less than £1,000. As I had contributed most towards its capture, I took it as booty and with my comrades gone in another direction, I had no-one to claim a portion of it.”

Costello retired from the Army in 1819. His soldiering did not end there. He returned to Spain in 1819, joining the British Legion to fight in the Carlist wars, essentially a war fought between competing factions in the Spanish monarchy over succession to the throne of Spain. By 1838, he had retired from active service and was appointed a yeoman warder of the Tower of London by the Duke of Wellington, who himself had been appointed the Constable of the Tower in 1826. With his soldiering now behind him, it allowed him to sit down and compose his memoirs. He remained at the Tower for the rest of his life and died there on 27 July 1869.

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’.

The fate of the Leinster Arms

Apart from White’s Castle, the Leinster Arms Hotel was once the most visible landmark in the town of Athy. The ongoing reconstruction of the building and it’s conversion into a number of outlets brings an end to the century’s old history of providing food and shelter for travellers in this one time coaching inn. For a long time the Leinster Arms was the premier inn in Athy, where other smaller establishments such as the Hibernian Hotel and the Railway Hotel, both on Leinster Street, competed for the travellers’ business. Named after the Anglo Norman family which once owned a substantial part of the property which made up the town, the Leinster Arms has been owned by many different people over the years. The last people to operate the premises as a hotel providing accommodation were the business men who employed Miss Darcy as manager of the premises during the 1950’s. Thereafter the increasing popularity of motor traffic led to a fall off in bed occupancy by commercial travellers who up to then formed the bulk of the hotel’s business. The fate of the Leinster Arms as a hotel was determined both by the rise of the motor car and the subsequent fall off in the commercial trade, as well as the raising of hotel standards by the Irish Tourist Board. It’s time had passed and sadly the hotel which we had all come to know so well had to close it’s doors for the last time.
The photo this week shows the Leinster Arms, I suspect sometime in the 1940’s. The absence of motor traffic probably suggests a time during the 2nd World War when petrol shortages kept the few cars in private ownership by and large off the roads.
The 2nd photo is of three men on a local street against the backdrop of a local shop. I haven’t been able to identify the location but the men are well remembered as Jimmy Leonard of Plewman’s Terrace, Peter Germaine, known as ‘Zeter’, and his brother ‘Golly’ Germaine. ‘Golly’ was known by no other name and his proper first name is not known to me. These men will be remembered by everyone who lived in Athy up to the late 1960’s.

Athy’s musical and theatrical tradition

Athy, for so long now without a theatre space, was at one time the centre of a strong musical and theatrical tradition. The Athy Social Club players of the ‘40’s and ‘50’s were one of the finest amateur dramatic groups in this region. Their period of excellence extended for a decade or two but alas did not survive long beyond the swinging sixties. The earliest musical society, also based in Athy, came into being sometime in the late 1930’s and enjoyed its heyday in the 1940’s. It was succeeded after a break of a few years by another musical society which in turn died off after a short while. The third and most recent musical revival ended a few years ago when lack of interest and support led to the effective demise of the Athy Musical and Dramatic Society.

It’s rather a pity, with the recent growth in the town’s population, that efforts are not being made to renew Athy’s musical and theatrical tradition. No doubt the task of doing so is rendered so much more difficult by the absence of a local theatre and Arts Centre, but despite the resource deficiency hopefully the revival of interest in the theatre can be encouraged in other ways.Looking through some photos during the week I came on a large number of them showing the casts of plays and shows which were once put on in the town. The first of those shows a line up of seven local men dressed and blackened up as minstrels in the 1945 musical ‘White Bread and Apple Sauce’ which was put on in the Town Hall. The performers from left to right were:- Kevin Meany, Mick Kelly, Barney Davis, Peter McNulty, Tim White, Gerry Flynn and Jim Dargan. What great troubadours they must have been.
The second photo shows members of the Social Club Players who were cast members of the play ‘The Righteous are Bold’ with the Fr. Matthew Cup won by them in the Drama Feis Dublin. A few weeks ago I showed a photo of another Social Club cast which won the same cup in April 1958. Common to both photos are Tommy Walsh, Ken Reynolds, Jo Lawler and Joe Martin and the photo now reproduced I believe dates from the late 1940’s. The cast includes at the back from left to right :- Pat Mulhall, Tommy Walsh, Ken Reynolds, Liam Ryan, Tadhg Brennan, and in the front D.S. Walsh, Freddie Moore, May Fenelon, Jo Lawler, Claire Moore, Maureen Walsh and Joe Martin.

I wonder if we could ever hope to revive the stage traditions of the past which were once such an important part of the social fabric of our town. The task of doing so would, I believe, be all the easier if we could again have a dedicated theatre space in Athy.

Bert House

I read in the papers recently that Bert House, that magnificent mansion just off the main Athy/Monasterevin Road, is for sale at a price in excess of €3 million. In my young days Bert House was owned and lived in by ‘the Lady Geoghegans’. Lady Geoghegan and her sister were long time residents of Bert House, having moved in around 1909 and it was sometime in the mid 1960’s, after one of them died, that the survivor moved out to live in a new bungalow in the locality. I don’t know anything about the family background of the elderly ladies whom the locals always referred to as ‘the Lady Geoghegans’. In any event Bert House was sold off for the first time almost 60 years ago when in 1968 or thereabouts Joe Kelly, a racing driver, purchased it from the last of it’s long time residents. I gather Kelly did a considerable amount of work on refurbishing the house, although he never lived there. It was subsequently sold and since then has passed through a succession of new owners, none of whom have ever equalled ‘the Lady Geoghegans’’ length of residence in what is the largest mansion in South Kildare.

Bert House was built between 1720 and 1730 for Captain William Burgh who was Comptroller and Accountant General for Ireland to a design prepared by his brother Thomas Burgh of Oldtown. Thomas was Barrack Overseer in Ireland, a position to which he was appointed in 1701 and was responsible for the building of Trinity College Library, Dr. Steevens Hospital, Dublin and Collins Barracks in Dublin. The latter building is now part of the National Museum of Ireland. The original Bert House consisted of a central block of seven bays, three storey high over a basement. The overlapping side wings were added early in the 19th century. It’s a house steeped in history and the people who lived in Bert House figured prominently in Irish history at various times.

Captain William Burgh, the first owner of the house, was born in 1667, son of Ulysses Burgh of Dromkeen, Co. Leitrim. He was succeeded by his only son Thomas Burgh whose sister Elizabeth was married in 1734 to Chief Baron Anthony Foster. Their son, John Foster, was to be the last Speaker in the Irish House of Commons. Thomas Burgh was born in 1696 and while he sat in Parliament as Member for Lanesboro in Co. Longford he never represented Athy in that capacity. He was however a freeman of Athy Borough and served as Sovereign of Athy Borough Council in 1755. He married Ann Downes, daughter of the Bishop of Cork and Ross whose wife was Catherine, sister of Robert, 19th Earl of Kildare. His wife’s brother Robert Downes was later to sit as a Member of Parliament for Kildare and was appointed Sovereign of Athy Borough Council in 1749. Thomas Burgh, while resident at Bert House, was the owner of extensive tracts of land in and around South Kildare. The present house has approximately 165 acres of land surrounding it.

When Thomas Burgh died in 1758 he was succeeded by his eldest son, William, who was just 17 years of age. William was the first Burgh of Bert House to represent Athy in Parliament which he did between 1768 and 1776. He later lived in England and he died in York in 1808. A monument to his memory by the famous sculptor Sir Richard Westmacott is to be found in York Minster.

When William left Bert House his younger brother Thomas succeeded him as Member of Parliament for Athy and he continued to do so until 1790. Thomas, who had previously resided in Chapelizod, Co. Dublin succeeded to the Bert House estate in 1808 but was to die just two years later.

The Parliamentary connection was maintained by Thomas Burgh’s sister Anne who in 1767 married Walter Hussey. Born in Donore, Co. Kildare, Hussey who was regarded as the finest Orator of his day represented Athy Borough Council in the Irish House of Commons between 1769 and 1776.

On the death of Thomas Burgh of Bert in 1810 he was succeeded by his only son, Ulysses. Born in 1788, Ulysses married Maria Bagenal of Bagnelstown in 1815. He was a member of the Borough Council of Athy until it’s disbandment in 1840 and served as Sovereign of Athy in 1834 and again in 1840. In that latter year he was succeeded as Athy’s Town Sovereign by Rev. F.S. Trench, the local Church of England Rector, who held that position when the Borough Council was abolished.

Ulysses Burgh succeeded to the title of Lord Downes in 1826 on the death of his cousin William Downes who had been appointed Lord Chief Justice in 1803 following the assassination of Lord Kilwarden during the Robert Emmet Rebellion. William Downes, son of the former Sovereign of Athy Robert Downes, had been created Lord Downes in 1822 on his retirement as Chief Justice. Dying without male issue the title passed to his cousin Ulysses Burgh of Bert. It was Ulysses Burgh who as Lord Downes presented a clock to the people of Athy in 1846 which is presently on the front wall of the Town Hall.

When Lord Downes of Bert died in 1863 he was succeeded by his eldest daughter, Charlotte who had married Lt. General James Colborne in 1851. Colborne was the son of John Colborne who led the 52nd Light Infantry in the decisive manoeuvre which secured the English victory of Waterloo. He was later Commander in charge of the British Army in Ireland and was raised to the title of Lord Seaton in 1839. Charlotte’s husband, James Colborne, succeeded to his father’s title in 1863 and it was as Lord and Lady Seaton that James and Charlotte came to live in Bert House following the death of Lord Downes. The house remained in their ownership until 1909 when it was sold to ‘the Lady Geoghegans’.

Bert House is not only the largest mansion in this area, but also retains an enormous amount of links with the history of South Kildare and Ireland generally. It is hoped that whoever buys it, Bert House will once again become an integral part of the social and economic life of Athy and the surrounding areas.

Into every life a little rain must fall!

The weather is an everyday topic of conversation in Ireland. Whether it has the same topicality in other countries, I don’t know, but here in what the visitors call the Emerald Isle we have a particular fascination with anything climatical. It is not so much a topic of conversation as an integral part of a common place greeting, such as ‘lovely weather today’ or more usually ‘more rain on the way’, which are put to those we meet without any preliminary remarks or greetings.

The fascination with the weather in Ireland must surely be related in some way or other to the country’s long-standing dependence on agriculture. The importance of weather in lives devoted to agriculture can be appreciated when one considers that in the years before industrialisation bad weather meant no work and no work meant no pay, the result being hunger within the average family. No wonder, then, that the man in the street became somewhat fixated in what was happening or was expected to happen weather-wise as the working day dawned.

The gathering of weather-related information goes back a long time. How far back, I don’t know, but here in Athy there is a history of involvement in compiling weather data extending back at least 80 years. From 1929 until 1943, a rainfall station operated at Crom a Boo bridge. That same bridge, the work of James Delahunty, ‘Knight of the Trowel’ and completed just two years before the 1798 Rebellion, has been a silent witness to many events and occurrences over the centuries. Decapitated heads have hung from the bridge as a warning to local United Irishmen of the punishment awaiting those who sought to overturn the government of the day. While still in its infancy, the bridge provided safe passage over the River Barrow for Nicholas Grey of Rockfield House and his companion as they started out on their journey to Dublin to join in Emmet’s uprising.

But in 1929 Crom a Boo bridge provided a base for a more practical purpose, when a rainfall station was located there. The modern device for measuring rainfall is a simple enough one consisting of a copper cylinder with a glass bottle inside. The collected rainfall is decanted into a graduated cylinder, giving readings in millimetres. A daily record is kept of the rainfall measured and the information collected is forwarded each month to Met Eireann. Who looked after the rainfall station at Crom a Boo bridge up to 1943 I have been unable to discover and, indeed, I cannot identify exactly where the station was located vis à vis the bridge itself.

The local rainfall station in Athy was relocated to the Vocational School on the Carlow Road in 1943. St Brigid’s School had been opened in 1930 by the then minister for education Thomas Derrig and the late Tony Byrne of St Joseph’s Terrace was in charge of the station in the latter years of his period as school caretaker. I assume that his predecessors in that position were also involved in operating the rainfall station at the school.

Tony Byrne continued operating the rainfall station when in 1980 it was moved to his house at St Joseph’s Terrace, where it remained until Tony’s death in 2003. At the same time, a second station operated at Minch Nortons from 1981 to 2004. Following Tony Byrne’s death, his widow continued to supply rainfall measurements to the Met Office and a member of the Byrne family, I believe, still operates a rainfall station at nearby Levitstown.

Today at Chanterlands, Seosamh May operates a weather recording station on behalf of the Met Office. In addition to rainfall measurement, Seosamh records on a daily basis air temperature, humidity and soil temperatures. His is one of approximately 70 climate stations in Ireland where comprehensive data is compiled each day and forwarded monthly to Dublin. The climate station was previously located at Kilberry from about 1950 until 1993, when it was relocated to Chanterlands from where it has operated on a daily basis for the last 15 years.

I visited the station recently and courtesy of Seosamh May saw at first hand the compact yet seemingly complicated operation which gives the daily weather readings for Athy. The readings are taken at 9am Greenwich Mean Time every day, which means, of course, that during Irish summertime they are taken an hour later at 10am.

The main components of the weather station are a Stevenson’s Screen, a grass minimum thermometer, a rainfall gauge and three soil thermometers. The Stevenson’s Screen was designed originally by Thomas Stevenson, who was the father of the famous author Robert Louis Stevenson. It is a double-louvered box with four thermometers inside. A dry bulb thermometer gives the current air temperature at the time of reading, while a wet bulb thermometer records the temperature of evaporation. Both readings give the relative humidity at reading time. The air maximum thermometer records the highest temperature in a 24-hour period. The air minimum thermometer gives the lowest temperature for the same period. The first three of these thermometers are mercury instruments and the fourth is an alcohol instrument.

On the ground there is a grass minimum thermometer which is also alcohol based, which rests on two ‘Y’ shaped pegs at a 2º slant, with it’s bulb touching grass blade tips. It records the lowest ground temperature during the previous night. The rainfall gauge is similar to that previously described and the rainfall is recorded every day, as are all the other weather measurements.

About a year ago, three soil thermometers were added to the weather station at Chanterlands. These are right-angled instruments and are inserted into the bare soil to depths of 50mms, 100mms and 200mms to give the soil temperature at these respective levels. The information gathered in relation to soil temperature is of benefit to agriculturalists and horticulturalists, for when the soil temperature at 100mms depth reaches 6º C and upwards the grass starts to grow.

Cloud cover is also measured at the Athy weather station and is measured on a scale of 0 Okta, which indicates no cloud, to 9 Okta, which indicates total cloud cover. Visibility is measured and recorded up to 40 meters, 40 meters beyond and less than 20 meters. The state of the ground is recorded on a scale of 0-9 and any special type of weather in a 24-hour period is recorded using code numbers, for example, 2 indicates slow/sleet, 3 hail, 4 thunder, 6 gale and 7 fog.

Keeping daily weather records requires enormous dedication and Seosamh May has successfully under-taken this onerous task for the last 15 years. As an aside, he told me of the difference between a ‘rain day’ and a ‘wet day’. Rain days have rainfall of 0.2mms or above, while wet days have rainfall of 1.0mm or more. Last January, we had 23 rain days and 21 wet days, while the highest temperature recorded this year was on 23 January with almost 14.5º Celsius. The highest temperature recorded at the Athy weather station since 1993 was 31.3º Celsius on 18 July 2006. The heaviest rainfall in any 36-hour period was slightly above 3.5 inches, commencing on 15 May 2000. On the following day just over three inches of rainfall fell. In case you thought that January of this year was bad in terms of rainfall, the wettest month since 1993 was September 1999 when over eight inches of rain fell. This January we had five inches of rain, at a time when the town water supply was cut off, but unfortunately we were unable to avail of either source of water.

Thanks to Seosamh May for showing me around Athy’s weather station and for explaining the intricacies of the system, and thanks also to Joe Lyons of the Met Office in Dublin who supplied most of the information about climatic recordings in the past.

Tallaght-fornia dreamin’ for MacKenna’s Corner Boys

Last week I travelled to the Civic Theatre in the heart of the new township of Tallaght for the first night of John MacKenna’s latest play, ‘Corner Boys’. The theatre, part of the complex of buildings which were built up around the Tallaght Square shopping development is a cultural oasis. In an incongruous setting it stands almost as a beacon of light, reflecting well on the community which however seems to make greater use of the nearby cinema complex than it does of the theatre itself. I journeyed up the motorway somewhat apprehensively, wondering as to whether our local writer who has given us some wonderful literary works could once again provide a memorable night of entertainment. John MacKenna’s previous play, ‘Who By Fire’, received enthusiastic responses from his audiences last year, but less than favourable comments from the critics who seem more perplexed than enlightened by what they saw.

‘Corner Boys’, the writer tells us, is a play of laughter, love, missed opportunity and tragedy. Clearly the whole gamut of human emotion seems to have found a voice and a setting in his play, if the advance publicity is to be believed. It’s a play about the lives of ordinary people and people certainly did not come any more ordinary than the corner boys which once populated the street corners of provincial Ireland of past years.

If you are of an age which started out in the decades before television captured the minds and eyes of the Irish people you will have seen the corner boys. MacKenna’s play is located on a street corner in nearby Castledermot, but here in Athy we had two prime street corners where our local corner boys congregated each day without fail. Carolan’s Corner and O’Rourke-Glynn’s Corner were the focal points for the men who, no matter what age they were, and some were quite old, were always referred to and readily identified as corner boys. They stood there, apparently motionless, their backs to the wall, watching, observing, recognising, and where recognition did not come, enquiring amongst themselves. Their world was encompassed within the horizons of their vision, their eyes looking up and down the street, seldom moving, seldom missing, always recording, even if not always understanding.

Their commentary on the comings and goings in the street passed for conversation. They were for the most part quiet, seldom if ever garrulous as they stood with hands in trousers pockets, removed only to retrieve a cigarette from the mouth, sometimes balancing on one leg with the other leg extended behind and resting against the wall.

Traffic movement in the days of the corner boys was unlike the continuous cavalcade we have come to know today. The sparse traffic moved slowly, allowing time for those passing to be identified and the strangers to be noted. Comments were the life blood of the community of corner boys. Their minds no doubt struggled to maintain a balance between observing, commenting and ruminating and in this way the day passed. What I wondered would the fertile imagination of the former teacher from Castledermot come up with in a play centered on the dialogue of men who spent their days hanging around the corners of small towns and villages.

It was the famous theatrical critic of the 1940’s, James Agate, who described the essence of theatre as ‘excitement shared in company and moreover excitement packed into something under three hours.’ After the 1½ hour performance, with a 15 min. interval of ‘Corner Boys’, I could not but admit that John MacKenna had by Agate’s definition captured the essence of theatre with his latest play. This was a play punctuated during it’s first half particularly, by raucous laughter as the audience reacted, at least most of them did, at the ribaldry of the three corner boys, and occasionally the antics of the two girls acting out their roles as shop assistants. The second half of the play swung the audience’s emotions the other way as the reality of the disappointed lives of the young people unfolded in scenes which were tense and devoid of the frivolity and merriment of the play’s opening.

The play’s theme is difficult to define. That in some strange way is one of the strength’s of MacKenna’s work. The interpretation of what you see and hear allows for different conclusions. Is it the questionable struggle of the genders which shows in the character of Alice the indomitable strength of the female contrasting with the weakness of the corner boys? Is it a story of love and jealously amongst a small group within a provincial town, or a story of hopelessness emphasised in the words of one of the actors who complains that ‘poverty is a life sentence – the only way to get time off is to die young’.

‘Corner Boys’ is a fine piece of work which one must see in its entirety to appreciate. The opening scenes, if seen in isolation, might lead one to conclude that it was nothing more than a vehicle for a few old male jokes and less than savoury male-type behaviour. The truth however, is that John MacKenna has written a fine piece for the theatre and happily the players under the direction of Marian Brophy have done his work justice. The one scene, which coming in the middle of the first act, seemed not to fit in as well as the rest of the play was the Parish Priest’s sermon in which he tells his parishioners how they should live their lives. This for me was the only part of the play which did not come across as well as the director and the author might have hoped.

A good play, with excellent direction by Marian Brophy of Carlow, was further enhanced by strong acting by Cora Fenton playing the part of Alice Dungan, and Charlie Hughes playing her brother Billy. Cora Fenton was exceptionally good and John MacKenna, himself a fine actor, gave a performance which was overshadowed by his two colleagues. Noel Lambe gave one of his best performances to date and newcomer Teresa Cahill can be well pleased on her debut role with the ‘Water to Wine Theatre Company’.

A well written play, with good performances by the five actors and excellent direction by Marian Brophy should ensure a successful tour for ‘Corner Boys’. It will come to the Town Hall Athy for three nights commencing on 3rd March, Dunamaise Theatre Portlaoise on Thursday 14th February, Eire Óg Hall Carlow on 8th March, finishing in the Moate Club Naas on 14th and 15th March. A total of 22 venues will be toured by the company between 6th February and 15th March, with what promises to be a very successful play for the Castledermot-born writer. You should go and see it at a venue near you.

From the Shamrock Shore to Van Diemen’s Land

In 2001, Peter Carey’s book on The History of the Kelly Gang was published to critical acclaim and won for its Australian author the Booker Prize. What I had found interesting in Carey’s account of Ned Kelly was the knowledge displayed by the writer of little-known events which occurred in provincial Ireland during the 1798 period. Here is an extract from his book.
‘At Beveridge Catholic School, we learned the traitors better than the saints so at 5 yr of age I could recite the names John Cockayne Edward Abby even poor Anthony Perry who finally betrayed the rebels after the English set his head alight with pitch and gunpowder. Likewise but contrary I knew the names of the Athy blacksmiths Tom Murray and Owen Finn they would not betray the rebels though they was flogged and tortured the whole town echoing with their screams.’

Clearly news of what had occurred in Athy in ’98 had crossed the world and in particular to Australia, in all probability courtesy of some unfortu-nate convict from this area deported down under after conviction at the local assizes and after a spell spent in the local jail awaiting transfer to a waiting hulk in Queenstown or Dublin.

Students of Irish history will be familiar with Australian place names such as Botany Bay and Van Diemen’s Land, the first the bay into which convict ships sailed and the latter, now renamed Tasmania, where the unfortunate Irish, English, Welsh and Scottish convicts, male and female, were to serve out their sentences. How many men and women from South Kildare were deported it is unclear, but among the numbers were undoubtedly many of our townspeople who after serving their sentences made a new life for themselves in Australia.

Added to their numbers were the young girls who as part of the Orphan Emigration Scheme which followed the Great Famine left the workhouse in Athy and other Irish workhouses on the long journey which ended in Australia. The first group of girls from South Kildare went out in 1849. The Emigration Scheme was stated to be a voluntary scheme, which presupposes that the Board of Guardians cooperated, but I wonder to what extent the young girls or their parents, where known, were consulted or volunteered to emigrate to the far side of the world.

What happened to these young girls after their arrival in Botany Bay is the subject of continuing research, but it can be expected that their descendents are now part of the wider population of Australia and perhaps even Tasmania, the island state which received its last convict from the old world in 1852. Four years later, the island’s name was changed from Van Diemen’s Land to Tasmania in honour of the man who had discovered it over 200 years previously.

Australia has always had a strong Irish connection and the influence of Irish settlers is evident in the country’s heritage of song and literature. The most popular Australian ballad, insofar as the Irish are concerned, must surely be The Wild Colonial Boy.

The exploits of Jack Duggan, ‘born and reared in Castlemaine’, was immortalised in a song which perhaps reflected his fellow country-men’s affection for Irish outlaws and a dislike for authority born and nurtured out of decades of state oppression in their homeland.

The literary output of Irish emigrants, despite their contribution to Australian literary heritage, may not have been as strong as might be expected, given that by 1891 more than 23% of the Australian population consisted of Irish-born men or women. This is understandable, given that the majority of Irish emigrants were relatively uneducated. The Irish Australian writings which have come down to us include the works of Charles Gavin Duffy, Peter Lalor and Dunbrin-born James Malone. Lalor from County Laois, brother of the Irish patriot James Fintan Lalor, was the leader of the gold miners who, in blockading the Eureka Stockade in 1854, struck a blow for democracy, creating what is generally acknowledged to be one of the great symbolic events in Australian labour history. The famous American writer Mark Twain later wrote of the events at Eureka Stockade, where the gold diggers rebelled against oppressive laws and corrupt officials, as “the finest thing in Australian history. It was a revolution - small in size but politically it was a strike for liberty, a struggle for a principle, a stand against injustice and oppression”.

Peter Lalor who had emigrated from County Laois just two years previously was 27 years of age when he took charge of the rebel miners at Eureka, and by the time government troops had regained control 14 miners were dead and another eight were later to die of their wounds. Among the wounded was Peter Lalor himself. Most of those involved were Irish and the ‘failed’ revolt led to the democratisation of the Australian State of Victoria.

Almost 38 years later, Fr James Malone, a native of Dunbrin, Athy left Ireland for Australia where he would remain a Parish Priest in various Australian parishes until his death in 1948. A man of exceptional literary taste, he wrote several books and contributed many articles to Australian magazines during his lifetime. The Purple Dust published in 1910 was his account of a tour through Egypt and Palestine, originally written for an Australian magazine Austral Light and serialised in that magazine over a two-year period. The trip started in February 1907 and ended in Athy, where Fr Malone was visiting his family and relatives for the first time since emigrating in 1892. He was a lecturer and writer on English literature and poetry and published in 1915 his lectures which he titled Talks about Poets and Poetry, having published some years previously a work titled The Australian Poet. Of particular interest to Athy readers is his own book of poetry Wild Briar and Wattle-Blossom, published in Melbourne in 1914, in which a number of photographs appeared. The captions accompanying the photographs were A Home on the Barrow, A Scene on the Barrow and The Old Whitewashed Schoolhouse in Shanganamore. The poems, some of which were Australian in content, were reflections of an Irishman’s memories of his home place, the most well-known of which was The Old Whitewashed Schoolhouse of Shanganamore, the opening lines of which read: Through the bogs of Dunbrin, leaping pool after pool, ‘Up and follow the leader’s the law of the school; A plunge at the stile with the risk of a spill, For the best bunch of cowslips on green

Cowsey’s hill - A race for the rath through the long meadow grass, Through the boldest heart quakes at the dread “fairy pass” - A leap for the hazel, a rustling of boughs - Hush! It’s only the gadfly that’s driving the cows.

And ended with the lines: And some day I’ll come back from that South Ocean’s shore To sleep ’neath the shamrocks of Shanganamore.

Fr Malone, so far as I am aware, never did return to Ireland and when he died on 16 July 1948, he was buried in the mortuary chapel at Geelong, Australia.

The crisis facing the Catholic Church, as numbers fall

Bishop Eamon Walsh, when addressing the customary small attendance at 12 noon Mass last Sunday in St Michael’s Parish Church, spoke of parochial priests of the Dublin Diocese being reduced by one third of their current number in nine years’ time. Even more alarming was his claim that the already-elderly priests in Ireland’s largest diocese will be less than half their present numbers in 12 years’ time.

Adding to the difficulties facing the Irish Catholic Church into the future is the certainty that those priests who remain at the helm of local parishes in 2020 will almost entirely consist of elderly men. Bishop Walsh spoke of the possible amalgamation of parishes and the employment of lay people in roles unspecified, but presumably roles that are presently occupied by Catholic clergy.

Unquestionably, the Catholic Church in Ireland is facing into an evolving crisis and one which will not easily be resolved. The fall-off in Sunday church attendances has been noticeable for some years past, coinciding with a fall-off in vocations for the priesthood and religious orders.

We have seen the departure of the Christian Brothers from Athy and the closure of the local Convent of Mercy, all due to the failure to secure new entrants for those religious orders.

The possibility is that missionary countries to which Irish priests, nuns and brothers once brought the message of the Gospel may in the future be required to provide religious personnel for the Irish Church.

There is as much need today for missionary work among the Irish people as there was in darkest Africa a few generations ago. One gets the impression that the role of the Catholic Church in Ireland has remained unchanged for hundreds of years.

An obedient people born and reared in the Catholic faith had in the past little need for the work of missionaries. The Church marshalled and directed, while the people obeyed, and the nature of the Church’s role remained the same for generations. The unquestioning obedience that once marked the Irish people’s attitude to religion is now gone, yet the Church appears not to have adapted to the change in society.

In our parish, more and more parishioners fail to attend Sunday Mass in the parish church which was built just over 40 years ago with the hard-earned pounds, shillings and pence of once loyal local families. The children of those families are now by and large staying away from the church, the building of which their parents and grandparents worked so hard to finance.

The answer in the short term will undoubtedly give us amalgamated parishes, repeating the experiences of the Church of Ireland in the years following the founding of the Irish Free State. The long-term solution lies with the likes of the relatively youthful Fr Joe McDonald and his peers. The ability to reach out beyond the dwindling congregation at Sunday Masses is the challenge.

Fr Joe’s Sunday sermons have brought a new dimension to church attendances in St Michael’s. In the week following the Christmas holidays, I listened to him give a homily at 12 o’clock Mass which perhaps was the most stimulating and thought-provoking sermon I had ever heard delivered in the parish church. It was a wonderful occasion and many who were at that Mass have commented to me since in similar terms. Our new curate deserves a bigger audience and the hope is that he will get it in St Michael’s rather than elsewhere. After all, the parish church of St Michael’s in Athy holds the unique distinction of having hosted over 160 years ago the first mission held in an Irish parish. Maybe the resurgence of the Irish Catholic Church will start in the town where the Order of the Black Friars have had a presence for the past 750 years.

One man who, like those of his generation, always remained faithful to the church of his birth was Freddie Farrell. He passed away last week aged 78 years. Freddie was a daily Mass-goer who served Mass in the Dominican Church on the very morning that he suffered a stroke from which he would die days later.

A Laois man, Freddie was proud of his county of birth and despite having lived all of his adult life in Athy never lost affection for the O’Moore county. In his younger days Freddie, with his sister Mona, was a champion Irish dancer. Friends of the legendary Rory O’Connor, Freddie and his sister won innumerable feisanna in the 1940s and for a time he taught Irish dancing in the town hall. After attending the Christian Brothers School in Athy, he worked with his father John who had a haulage business and when his father retired in 1961 Freddie took over the business. Ten years previously, Freddie married Betty Blanchfield of St Patrick’s Avenue and they celebrated 55 years of married life in May of last year.

The love of Irish dancing was passed on to his daughter Marie, who currently operates the Farrell Caffrey School of Dancing. Marie was brought to Dublin each week by her father to take lessons from Ireland’s premier Irish dance master, Rory O’Connor.

Freddie also provided transport in the 1960s for the variety group of which Marie was a member and which toured extensively throughout Ireland for almost ten years. Included in that group were the legendary Casey Dempsey and Tom Farrell.

I recall Freddie operating what was previously Dowling’s and later Kehoe’s public house in Offaly Street for a few years in the late 1960s. He operated the haulage business at the same time, extending his business interests into minibus hire and I believe that he may have been the first minibus operator in this area.

A very likeable man, Freddie continued working up to two years ago. Fr Ross McCauley of the Dominican Friary spoke of Freddie when receiving his remains in the parish church as “a man who was always willing to go that extra mile”.

Those who knew Freddie recognised only too well how appropriate it was to describe him in that way. He went out of his way on so many occasions to help others that it could truly be said of him that he was generous to a fault.

Freddie Farrell, champion hornpipe dancer in his younger days, was a very honourable and likeable man and on his passing we extend sympathy to his wife Betty and his family.

On Wednesday 6 February, the Water to Wine Theatre Company will take to the stage in the Civic Theatre, Tallaght for four nights with a production of John MacKenna’s new play Corner Boys. The play is a tragic/comic story of three corner boys and two women set in a small Irish village in 1963 during President Kennedy’s visit to Ireland and his subsequent assassination. The play has a cast of five, including the playwright himself, and the director is Marian Brophy of Carlow.

Corner Boys will go on tour following the run in Tallaght, taking in 20 provincial theatres including three nights in the town hall, Athy, on 3, 4 and 5 March. John MacKenna is one of our most prolific writers, bringing his writing talents to novels, short stories and plays and proving adept at each of these literary genres.

The play Corner Boys will bring back memories for those of us over 50 years of age who will remember Carolan’s corner and O’Rourke Glynn’s corner as the local ‘seats of wisdom’.

A list of theatres across the country where Corner Boys will play can be obtained by e-mailing watertowinetheatre@hotm ail.com.

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.

Athy’s links to the premier’s office in Australia

Athy can lay claim to many important and historical figures from the past, some by birth, many more by association or links stretching back through the generations. One such connection, tenuous as it may seem, linked the Anglo-Norman town with the only British prime minister ever to be assassinated. The luckless individual was Sydney Perceval, who was fatally wounded in the House of Commons by an embittered failed businessman in 1812. The prime minister’s niece, Maria, was the wife of Reverend Frederick Trench, then curate of St Michael’s Parish Church but later to become its rector. Trench was the last elected Sovereign of Athy Borough, which was abolished in 1840 and he was to die 20 years later when his carriage, travelling from his home at Kilmoroney House, collided with the medieval town gate at the bottom of Offaly Street. Following the accident, Preston’s Gate, as it was known, was demolished. Another prime minister with links to Athy was Joseph Aloysius Lyons, who held the premier political post in Australia for seven years from 1932. The Australian prime minister, born in Stanley, Tasmania in 1879, was the fourth child of Ellen Carroll, formerly of Forest, Athy. Ellen was the daughter of John Carroll of Forest and she emigrated to Australia in or about

1850. Clearly, she was a very young girl when she left Athy so perhaps she emigrated with her parents and the other members of the Carroll family. This was the post-famine period when Athy and South Kildare generally experienced a very large reduction in population due to emigration, which was generally centered on Britain and America.

To travel to Australia in the 1850s was the prerogative of convicts, who did so courtesy of the state, or reasonably well-off families who could afford to pay for their own passage to the Southern hemisphere. We know that Ellen Carroll’s sisters Hetty and Mary were also in Australia, for when the future prime minister was 12 years of age he lived with his two aunts in Stanley. The presence of three Carroll sisters in Tasmania would tend to support the belief that the Carroll’s had emigrated to Australia as a family.

Interestingly, I find that upwards of 37 young girls from the Athy area travelled to Australia between 1849 and 1850 as part of an Orphan Emigration Scheme. They were girls sent out from the local workhouse and included in their numbers was Ann Carroll who arrived in Sydney on the ship Lady Peel on 3 July 1849. However, there is nothing to connect her to the Carroll family of Forest.

Joseph Aloysius Lyons’ parents were Michael Lyons and Ellen Carroll, both of whom had Irish backgrounds. Michael was actually born in Tasmania of Irish parents just ten days after they had arrived as Irish immigrants in Tasmania. Joseph’s father initially ran a small farm, but dabbling in business ventures he lost his savings and continuing ill health brought the Lyons family into financial difficulties. This forced his nine-year-old son Joseph to leave the Catholic school at Ulverstone and take up odd jobs to help the family situation. Three years later his mother’s sisters, Hetty and Mary, took him in hand and he was able to return to school. He qualified as a teacher in 1901 and taught for a number of years in various country schools. Allegedly influenced by the Irish radicalism of his mother and his sisters, he became actively involved with the Australian Labour Party in Tasmania. This brought him into conflict with his employers, the Tasmanian Education Department, and resigning from his teaching post in 1909 he stood as a candidate for the Tasmanian assembly. Elected to the assembly, he later became president of the state’s Labour Party and in time minister for education for Tasmania. He was responsible for the building of the first high schools in Hobart and Launceston, two Tasmanian towns with high numbers of Irish immigrants.

Following the Easter Rebellion of 1916, he became vice-president of the Hobart United Irish League and during the conscription controversy which raged throughout 1917, not only in Ireland but also in Australia, he consistently campaigned against the British government’s attempts to increase the intake of troops for the war in France and Flanders.

He became leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party in November 1916 and four years later premier of Tasmania. In May 1928, Lyons resigned from the Tasmanian parliament to contest elections for the Australian federal government. He was duly elected and would be reelected at three further national government elections in the 1930s.

Dissatisfied with some individuals within the Australian Labour Party, Lyons resigned from that party in 1931 and became one of the founders and eventual leader of the United Australia Party, which won the Australian general election some months later. The son of the young girl from Athy became prime minister of Australia on 6 January 1932.

Australia, like every other country in the world, suffered during the Great Depression of the 1930s. However, Lyons’ management of the country’s affairs in the years leading up to the Second World War prompted fellow parliamentarian Robert Menzies, himself to be a future prime minister of Australia, to describe Lyons as “the best parliamentarian I have ever known”.

Joseph Lyons travelled to London in 1935 as representative of the Australian government to attend the king’s jubilee celebrations. I have been unable to find out if he took the opportunity to visit Ireland that year, or indeed if he ever visited his moth-er’s homeland. I have also drawn a blank in my attempts to trace the Carroll family of Forest and particularly John Carroll, father of Ellen, Hetty and Mary, the Carroll sisters whom I believe emigrated to Australia in the 1850s.

The Australian prime minister of Irish extraction, and more important-ly from our point of view with a family background centered in South Kildare, died while holding the highest political office in Australia in

1939. He had been in failing health from the previous year and passed away following a heart attack on 7 April 1939. He was buried in Devonport, Tasmania after a memorial service in Sydney and the Australian capital of Canberra.

Joseph Lyons was survived by his wife Enid, whom he had married in 1915 and by 11 of the 12 children of their marriage. Four years after her husband’s death Enid Lyons stood as a candidate for Darwin in the federal general elections and became the first female member of the Australian House of Representatives. She successfully contested three further general elections and on the election of Robert Menzies’ government in 1949 she became the first female cabinet member in Australia. She resigned from parliament two years later and died in 1981.

I would be interested in hearing from anyone who may know anything of the Carroll family of Forest, Athy. Perhaps some members of the prime minister’s family have visited the South Kildare area in the past, or alternatively made enquiries about their ancestors from Forest. If anyone can throw light on the Carroll family, I would welcome hearing from them.

You take the high road, I’ll take the low road

WHEN 2007 finally ran out, two men long associated with the town of Athy had also reached the end of their life spans. Frank Anderson, the bearer of a noble clan name from Scotland, was indeed a descendant of a Scottish immigrant family from Perthshire.

The Andersons, with the Frasers, Duthies, Duncans, Campbells, Hosies, Neills, Pennycooks and nine other Scottish families, came to Ireland in or around 1851 on the invitation of the Duke of Leinster to take up vacant farms in South Kildare. An interesting tradition associated with the Duncans, Campbells, Hosies and the Andersons related to me some years ago by Frank Anderson, had the four families drawing lots to decide on which side of the River Barrow they would settle. The Duncans and Campbells remained on the East Side, their fellow Scotsmen crossed the River Barrow.

Frank Anderson was for many years a member and an officer of Athy’s Rugby Club and carried on an Anderson family tradition when he became club captain in 1949/50. The club was founded in the 1880s and among the founding members was R Anderson, who I believe was Robert Anderson of Castlemitchell, an ancestor of the late Frank. Indeed, the Anderson family has figured large in the annals of Athy Rugby Club, with Frank’s father Robert H Anderson as club captain from 1929 to 1931 and Frank as club president in 1967/68.

His brother Leslie occupied the same presidential position on several occasions from 1972 onwards. The Anderson family connection with the club was cemented with the presentation of the Anderson Cup in 1970 for competition between provincial third teams. Frank Anderson, who played junior inter-provincial rugby with Leinster, helped compile with the late Des McHugh, the centenary history of Athy Rugby Club, which for reasons not yet made clear was celebrated in 1980. Frank, who was a member of the dwindling Presbyterian community in Athy, will be sadly missed by all who knew him.

On Christmas Eve, my school friend Noel Scully died after a short illness. Noel, a well-liked figure in the town, was the subject of an Eye in this series early in the year (Eye on the Past no 747). Noel recalled the hardships of the early 1950s and the difficulties he had to overcome to become apprenticed to the butchers’ trade.

He had left school even before the school leaving age of 14 years had been reached and endured hardship and many disappointments before he overcame the disadvantages of economically depressed times to succeed in business. He took great pride in his trade and enjoyment in the pursuit of success on the dogracing track. And success did come his way courtesy of a wonderful greyhound named ‘Dilly don’t Dally’, who gave Noel many important wins as a dog breeder and owner.

I had left the town council before Noel was elected as an urban councillor so had no first-hand experience of dealing with him across the council chamber. However, it was clear from his public utterances that he worked assiduously to promote the town and nowhere was this seen to better effect than in the town twinning ceremony which he presided over during his year as chairman of Athy Town Council. A modest quiet man, Noel was universally liked, not only by his own townspeople but also by those with whom he came in contact, as was evidenced by the impressive attendance of Labour Party national politicians at his funeral. Our sympathies go to Noel’s widow and family and to the family of the late Frank Anderson.

Christmas is a time for giving and receiving and this year there was a huge Taaffe family surprise with the unexpected arrival home for the holidays of my youngest daughter Carol. She travelled from China to spend a few days in Athy and it was a smashing surprise and undoubtedly the finest gift I could have expected this Christmas.

One other surprise that gave me enormous pleasure was the unexpected gift of papers given to me by Catherine Harrington in the car park of Pettitt’s over the Christmas holidays. It contained a photo of the Athy Social Club Players in April 1958 with the Fr Matthew Cup. The young lady sitting second from the right on the front row was tragically to die in a road traffic accident the following year. Mary Harrington with her friend Breda Kennedy were killed while walking on the Dublin Road near Geraldine Park. Also in that envelope were a number of programmes of the Athy Social Club Players dating from 1953, several of which were signed “Mary Harrington, PO House”.

They were obviously Mary’s own copies of some of the plays in which she took part, the earliest of which was the 1953 production of The Barretts of Wimpole Street. This coincidentally was the very first play I saw and it was the 1953 production in the town hall to which my brother Jack brought me over 50 years ago. The next year Mary Harrington featured in The Righteous are Bold, followed in 1955 with a part in Mary Mullan’s play The Clock Ticks Dusk. Later in the same year Mary played Trixie Trevelyn in John McCann’s play Twenty Years A-Wooing.

The final programme for 1956 was for My Wife’s Family, where Mary Harrington again joined on stage a host of Social Club Players, including my secondary school teacher Paddy O’Riordan.

The photograph which was given to me I am reproducing without naming the actors/actresses other than Mary Harrington as there are three persons in the group whom I cannot positively identify. A copy of volume 3 of Eye on Athy’s Past to the first person to give me all the correct names of the Social Club Players of 1958, together with the name of the play which won for them the Fr Matthew Cup that year. A happy New Year to all my readers.

Town was last frontier of Kildare

Athy was quite a new settlement when an Act of Parliament of 1297 noted the various assaults by the Irish on the colonists living within the Marches of Kildare and recognised the need for defensive measures. Certainly the defence of the then village of Athy would have been uppermost in the minds of its inhabitants after the village was burned in 1308. It would be burned four more times in the following 70 years which gives some indication of the vulnerability of the village, located as it was on the dividing line between the Anglo Normans and the native Irish.

The continual harassment of Anglo-Norman settlements had induced a policy of retrenchment by the middle of the 14th century. The policy of withdrawal from more hostile areas to the more easily defended Eastern countryside focused attention on Athy as a settle-ment of strategic importance. Athy consequently became a frontier post in the Marches of Kildare. As a result from the late 14th century onwards the defence of Athy was an important consideration for those who governed it. The frequency of the attacks on the town arising from its geographical location makes it highly likely that Athy was a walled town.

In 1431 expenses of 100 sovereigns were granted to the town for its defence. A further murage reference was noted in 1448 when it is stated that tolls were only to be charged on goods sold within the town of Athy and not those carried through. These references demonstrate that some measures existed for the provision of town defences and although no definite evidence can be found as to the nature of these defences the assumption must be that some form of town defences were in place. The vagueness of the information available to us presents problems in ascertaining the extent and nature of the town’s defences prior to the town charter of 1515. This charter granted by King Henry VIII is the clearest record with regard to town walling in Athy. Throughout this document there are frequent references to the walling of the town. Obviously the wall and its construction were integral not only to the defence but to the civic dignity of Athy. Under the charter authority was given to the inhabitants of the town to raise tolls

.....that they may erect construct build and strengthen the same town with fosses and walls of stone and lime; and provision was also made for financing the maintenance of these walls.

The reason for the provisions for the town wall as stated in the charter was

.....in opposition to the malice of our Irish enemies.....

The town charter is of utmost importance to any examination of the history of the medieval walls as it constitutes the only definite documentary evidence we have on the matter. However, no further reference can be found to its construction. Neither the subsequent charters of 1613 or of 1688 refer to the walling of Athy. Apart from Mercator’s map of 1568 we are uncertain as to the state of completion it ever reached.

In 1532 Ossory, in a communication with Thomas Cromwell the Lord Privy Seal referred to the

.....gates of the Earls (Kildare) town of Athye.....

There lies a difficulty in interpreting early documents not only in ascertaining the veracity of details but also the degree of bias inherent in them. When a town is described as being burnt and plundered certain doubts must be entertained as to the degree of destruction. What some writers might represent as a raid others may portray as a scene of rapine, plunder and slaughter. Likewise references to the walling are compromised not only by their scarcity but also by their lack of detail.

However, it is clear that whatever defences were built following the 1515 charter they did not afford sufficient protection against the Irish. In 1546 O’More of Laois attacked Athy burning the town and the Dominican Monastery. The plantation of Laois and Offaly in the mid 16th century put renewed emphasis on the importance of Athy as a military stronghold. The defence of Athy was integral to the success of the Plantation as the town on the Barrow became a vital supply link for the beleaguered English settlers of Laois/Offaly.

Although the military importance of the settlement continues into the 17th century it is interesting to note that writers such as John Dymok in his ‘Treatise on Ireland’ in 1600 gives a description of Athy with no reference to walling.

Athie is divided into two partes by the river of Barrow over the which lyeth a stone bridge, and upon it a castle occupied by James Fitzpierce, ...the bridge of the castle... being the onelye waye which leadeth into the Queene’s county.

Dymok further described a town which because of the wars initiated by the rise of the O’Neills had been beggared low. In the advance of Essex’s army of 1599 he mentions Athy as

A great market towne, but brought by these late wars into thestateofapore village.

However in 1598 an anonymous writer referred to Castledermot and Athy as the: ‘only important towns of Kildare, walled and now ruined’ (Hogan 1878).

Perhaps the frequency of attacks on the town may have reduced Athy to an impoverished state and may also account for the town walls never acquiring a completed state rendering them effective for defective purposes. On the other hand medieval walling, no matter how strong, could always fall to a determined and aggressive attacker. One could further conclude that the west bank of the town, as portrayed in Mercators map, may never have been walled. The bridge at Athy acted as the passage into Laois and that bridge could be more easily held and defended if only the eastern bank of the river was walled. A force concentrated on one bank of the river would be more practical than one having to straddle both banks of the River Barrow. The existence of the towerhouse at Woodstock would have functioned to cover the western approach to the town while the castles at Ardreigh and Grangemellon to the south and at Rheban to the north of Woodstock and the town may have formed a loose chain of defence for the frontier town.

The evidence that Athy was a walled town can be regarded as inconclusive and we may have to await the results of an archaeological ‘dig’ before the issue is decided one way or the other. However, the best evidence available to us would indicate that the settlement on the west bank of the River Barrow was enclosed within walls and the gate on Offaly Street removed in 1860 was in all probability the last remaining part of that enclosure.