Athy family connection with War of Independence

Recently I wrote of the local members of the old I.R.A. who were noted as members of the A Coy of the 5th Battalion Carlow Kildare brigade following the truce of July 1921. There were many family ties between members of the I.R.A. of 1921 and the Cumann na mBan members of that time. Amongst those named were Michael Dooley and John Bradley, the first named a shop keeper of Duke Street, the latter a resident of Offaly Street. The Dooley and Bradley families were connected by marriage as John Bradley’s sister Julia was married to the aforesaid Michael Dooley who was chairman of the Sinn Fein club in Athy. The two members of the Bradley family were joined by several members of the Dooley family in promoting the Irish Republican cause during the Irish War of Independence. The former Julia Bradley, by then married to Michael Dooley, was a member of the Athy branch of Cumann na mBan. Her three daughters were also actively involved in the Republican movement. Kathleen Dooley married Eamon Malone who was for a time Officer Commander of the Carlow Kildare I.R.A. brigade. Her sister Gypsy, who married Bill O’Neill of Newbridge, son of a former station master in Athy, was also a member of the Cumann na mBan. Another sister Hester married local man Joe May who following his arrest by crown forces in November 1920 was incarcerated in Ballykinlar prison camp for almost a year. Hester Dooley before her marriage to Joe May worked in Dublin as secretary to Piaras Beaslai and later General Ginger O’Connell. Joe May’s mother was Mrs. Margaret May of Woodstock Street who was another member of Athy’s Cumann na mBan. Another local family whose members, both male and female, were very actively involved in the Republican Movement was the Lambe family of Upper William Street. Alice Lambe was a member of Cumann na mBan, while her brothers Peter and Frank were active members of the I.R.A. 5th Battalion. Mrs. Julia Dooley, after whose husband Michael the 1934 Council housing estate Dooley’s Terrace was named, was the mother of Paddy Dooley who was first elected to the Dail as a Fianna Fail T.D. for County Kildare in 1959. The Dooley family, extending back over several generations, had possibly the greatest record of involvement in Athy’s municipal affairs than any other family in Athy. That involvement continues to this day with Brian Dooley’s recent appointment as a County Councillor for Athy’s municipal district. Patrick Dooley, brother of Michael Dooley, the Sinn Fein Chairman, was for many years chairman of Athy Urban District Council. It was a position also held by Michael’s son Paddy Dooley, later T.D., and his grandnephew Kieran Dooley. The current County Councillor Brian Dooley’s grandfather Michael was a son of Michael and Julia Dooley. Julia Dooley (nee Bradley) died at her home in St. Michael’s Terrace in August 1957 aged 89 years. Her story and that of the Dooley family as well as that of the Lambes, O’Rourkes, Mays, Bradleys and many other local families, some yet to be identified, is a story of commitment to the cause of Irish freedom in the face of constant harassment by crown forces in the years pre-dating the truce of July 1921. Those families whose members were involved in the I.R.A. or the Cumann na mBan underwent constant unwanted attention by R.I.C., the Black and Tans and the military. The lists of I.R.A. members and Cumann na mBan members included in Eye in the Past No. 1363 were compiled at the end of the truce by or for I.R.A. headquarters in Dublin. One could expect these records to be complete and accurate, but unfortunately they are not. Two omissions I mentioned in that article were the names of Sean Hayden and Eamon Malone. Another omission was that of James O’Keeffe of Ardreigh who later joined the Garda Siochana. He played an active part in the I.R.A. campaign which was later officially recognised, but yet his name is missing from the 1921 list. There may be many others overlooked and my research continues to record as accurately as possible the men and women who were part of the local republican movement of 1919-1921. I am anxious to get background information on Kathleen McDonnell and Rose McDonnell who were listed as Cumann na mBan members in 1921. I would welcome hearing from anyone who can give me information on the McDonnells, or indeed any of those men or women listed as members of the Old I.R.A. or Cumann na mBan in July 1921.

Pat Doyle, Peter Smith and Pat Flood

During the past week Athy has lost two men who in years past carried on business in Leinster Street. Pat Doyle, a Wexford man, came to Athy in 1972 when after many years of retailing experience gained while working for various businesses in the south east opened his own drapery shop at No. 28 Leinster Street. Athy’s main street, known in earlier times as High Street, was also the location of Pat Flood’s business which the Monaghan man opened in 1963. That same street in the 1920s and later was home to two of the largest and busiest commercial firms in the town. Duthie Larges and Jacksons provided a range of services and employment opportunities which unfortunately came to an end with the closure of Duthie Larges and the liquidation of the Jackson company. Jacksons extensive premises were sold off in two lots. Chapman & Timoney acquired Jacksons garage which occupied what is now Perrys supermarket, while Pat Flood with two business associates purchased that part of the Jackson premises from where Quinn & Co. subsequently traded. Nine years after Pat Flood’s arrival in Athy Pat Doyle opened his shop in what was previously Charlie Prendergast’s electrical shop. The neighbouring businesses 37 years ago included Des Noonan’s pub, the fashion shop owned by Misses Farrell and Mulhall, Darlings former barber shop (but by then a private residence) and nearby Hannah Nolan’s drapery shop. The changes in the street since then are quite apparent as all those listed businesses have been replaced not only by new owners but also different types of businesses. It’s a very noticeable feature of life in Athy, and possibly of every town in Ireland, that the constant movement of people both in and out of the town provides an everchanging business format on our main streets. The physical streetscape remains unchanged, but the business names change and at times the business models also change. This latter change comes about almost unnoticed but becomes apparent when one reflects on the number of public houses which once lined the streets of Athy supported by a population less than half of its current size. But it is not only the pubs which have closed and re-opened with new businesses. Long established businesses changed hands and new arrivals, such as Pat Flood in the 1960s and Pat Doyle in the 1970s, renewed or created business models to help regenerate the commercial life of the town. Both Pats retired from their business operations some years ago and they did so with the good wishes of the people of Athy. It was a sad coincidence which saw Pat Doyle and Pat Flood die within days of each other. Both were gentlemen of the highest integrity and well liked within the local community. Both Pats endeared themselves to everyone they came in contact with and both extended courtesy and good humour to all throughout their involvement in various aspects of the town’s life. Pat Doyle’s association with the Credit Union and Pat Flood as a founder member of the Lions Club showed commitment and a willingness to work for the community they both joined when setting up business on the south Kildare town’s main street. Another death noticed as I write this Eye was that of Peter Smith, son of Andy Smith, a shopkeeper of Leinster Street many years ago. Peter after retiring from the ambulance service went to live in Wexford and relatively recently returned to this area. His father, Andy Smith, like Pat Doyle and Pat Flood came to Athy to set up business on Leinster Street. He did so in the early part of the last century and during his years in Athy Andy Smith was a stalwart supporter and member of the local GAA club. Indeed, Smiths of Leinster Street was the ‘eating house’ for county teams involved in matches in Geraldine Park during the 1940s and 1950s. The sadness felt by family members and friends when loved ones die is tempered somewhat when the deceased are elderly, as was the case with Pat Doyle, Peter Flood and Peter Smith. The sudden tragic death of Marian Reid following a road traffic accident at Duke Street on Wednesday afternoon brings in its wake untold sadness and a huge sense of loss for her family and friends. This was the third tragedy I can recall in recent years involving the death of a female pedestrian on our main streets. In each case I believe the vehicle involved was a truck which highlights the need to get heavy duty traffic out of the town and onto a bypass road. The loss when loved ones die is in many ways immeasurable and our sympathies go to the families of all those who have died during the past week.

Athy and the War of Independence

Athy Heritage Company is currently preparing an exhibition to be opened in May dealing with the Irish War of Independence and the part played in that struggle by men and women from Athy and district. I have been researching that local involvement ever since I first interviewed the late Patrick Keogh of Churchtown in July 1985. During that interview I was given the names of those men recalled by Patrick as members of the old I.R.A. over 65 years previously. Over the years I have added to and corrected the list, but even now the definitive list of old I.R.A. members from this area awaits further work. The A Company of the 5th Battalion Carlow Kildare I.R.A. Brigade was centred around Athy. The highest rank accorded to a local man was that held by Eamon Malone of Dunbrin who for a time prior to the truce of July 1921 was Commander of the 5th Battalion and later Officer Commander of the Carlow Kildare Brigade. He was arrested in November 1919 and imprisoned in Mountjoy Jail where he was elected leader of the I.R.A. prisoners and lead the hunger strike of April/May 1920. Patrick Kane of Kilkenny in his statement to the Military History Bureau referred to Eamon Malone as having a difficult assignment when he was appointed Officer Commander of the Carlow/Kildare Brigade. He had much rebuilding to do, according to Kane, while at the same time the police and the military had orders to shoot him on sight. Eamon Malone was described as a small wiry, courageous man, but rather delicate as he suffered from asthma. He married Kathleen Dooley, eldest daughter of Michael Dooley of Duke Street, after whom the council housing estate opened in 1932 was named. His sister Hesther married another local I.R.A. man, Joe May, who like Malone was arrested by the British military authorities on 22nd November 1920. He was subsequently imprisoned for almost a year in Ballykilnar camp where fellow prisoners included Bapty Maher and Richard Murphy. Eamon Malone had to emigrate to England after the establishment of the Irish Free State and while at home in Dublin for Christmas 1937 he contracted pneumonia and died. Eamon Malone is buried in Barrowhouse. The small local authority housing scheme opened in the early 1990s at Woodstock Street and which adjoins the site of the former military barracks was named Malone Terrace in his honour. Following the truce of 11th July 1921 the A Company of the 5th Battalion included the following members: Michael O’Rourke Peter Lambe Frank Lambe Patrick Hayden William Brown Daniel Maher Thomas O’Rourke James O’Rourke Michael Kehoe Patrick Flanagan Philip Murphy J.B. Maher James Davis Joseph Ratchford John Bradley Frank Canning John Dooley James O’Brien Michael Curtis James McNamara Michael Dooley Michael Dooley Daniel Murphy Joseph Donnelly Leo Davis John Delaney Thomas Germaine William Hoare John Hoare Patrick Day This was also an official list compiled for I.R.A. headquarters following the truce but does not include the names of Eamon Malone or Sean Hayden whom I know were active members of the local I.R.A. There was also an active Cumann na mBan branch in Athy attached to the 5th Battalion and the following were the members in July 1921: Julia Whelan, Kilmoroney Kathleen McDonnell Rose McDonnell Mary E. Malone Mrs. Julia Dooley, St. Michael’s Tce. Mrs. May, Woodstock St. Mrs. O’Neill, Newbridge Alice Lambe, Upper William St. Mrs. John Whelan, Ballylinan Miss Murphy, Maganey Christina Malone I would like to hear from anyone who can give me any information on any old I.R.A. member or Cumann na mBan member, whether or not included in the above lists, bearing in mind that honouring the men and women of this area who were involved in the War of Independence is the responsibility of all of us who today enjoy the freedom they achieved. The A Company based in Athy comprised the 5th Battalion with the B Company in Barrowhouse, C Company in Moone, the D Company in Ballylinan, the E Company in the Moate and the F Company, Castledermot. Information on any of the I.R.A. members in any of those companies would also be most welcome.

Spanish Flu

During November 1918 more persons, young and old from the town of Athy and the nearby district of Castledermot died of the Spanish flu than at any other time during the flu pandemic of 1918/1919. In Athy 49 persons died during the second last month of the year including three young Blanchfield children of Leinster Street and two even younger Eston children of Meeting Lane. In the nearby rural area of Castledermot there were 18 influenza deaths in November 1918. The first occurred on the third day of the month with the death of David Byrne, a 25 year old labourer from Graney. From then until the 24th of November there was a regular death roll call. John Walsh aged 35 of Castledermot, a baker and Elizabeth Birney aged 71 of Crophill died on the 4th of November. Two days later Catherine Hayden aged 74 a single woman of Levitstown passed away. On November 7th William Finn a 1 year old child of Gurteen, died. Robert Lawler aged 27 of Castledermot, a boot maker died on the 9th of November. Was he I wonder a brother of the Lawler brothers John, Patrick and Peter who had enlisted to fight overseas during World War 1. Robert was a cousin of Ellen Dempsey and Robert Dempsey, brother and sister of Woodlands, Castledermot, both of whom would die from influenza within five days of each other in November. Other Woodland residents to die that November were 26 year old Mary Kelly and 4 year old Lucy Hickey who died on the 10th and 12th of the month. On November, 13th three more locals died. Joseph Cash aged 48 of St. John’s, Joseph Forrestal 19 years old of Skenagan and James McDonald a farmer aged 83 years of Hoberstown. Those few days either side of the armistice day, 11th of November 1918, were the deadlist period of the influenza pandemic in the Castledermot area. Six deaths were recorded in the days immediately before and after the church bells rang out to celebrate the ending of WWI. On November 15th Edward Foster aged 2 of Castleroe and Ellen Dempsey aged 37 of Woodlands died. The next day Andrew Byrne aged 27 of Tankardstown and Mary Halligan aged 73 of Kilkea died. The 19th day of the month saw the passing of William Hegarty a 48 year old land steward from Kilkea followed the next day by the death of Robert Dempsey, a farmer aged 33 years from Woodlands. The last influenza related death recorded in November 1918 was that of Ellen Deegan, a 34 year old single woman from Hallahoise. Influenza related deaths in the Castledermot area during the flu pandemic totalled 30 compared to 65 deaths in Athy. During the pandemic the highest death rate per one thousand of the Irish population was in the 25-35 age group and a similar finding was confirmed in relation to the Castledermot area. The over 65 age group recorded the second highest death rate in that rural area with children under 5 years recording the third highest death rate. The youngest victim of the flu pandemic in Castledermot was five week old Michael Kinsella of Hobartstown who died on the 29th of March 1919 while the oldest victim was 88 years old, Edward Wall described in the death register as a blacksmith. The Foster family of Castleroe lost two young children, the earlier mentioned Edward and his brother Patrick who died on the 2nd of December 1918, while the Dempsey family of Woodland lost an adult son and daughter. When the census of 1926 was taken the population of Castledermot village had fallen to 247, the lowest figure recorded for the village where the population in 1841 was 1,416. Ten years later and following the Great Famine the village population had fallen by 53% to 666 and would continue to fall reaching its lowest population figure of 247 seven years after the flu pandemic. It was not until 2016 that the population of Castledermot again reached its pre-famine level with a recorded population of 1,475. The flu pandemic started in the last year of the Great War during which war 23 young men from the Castledermot area were killed. The lost of life’s from these two catastrophic events cast a shadow over the South Kildare area and the local families who were about to face into a guerrilla war of independence and a brutal civil war.

1918 General Election and the first Dail

Last Wednesday Kildare County Councils Decade of Commemorations Committee organised an event in Naas to mark the first meeting of Dail Eireann held in the Mansion House, Dublin on the 21st January 1919. That meeting of the “Assembly of Ireland” followed a remarkable electoral triumph by the Sinn Fein Party which was helped hugely by the changes brought about by The Representation of The People Act 1918. That Act which broke the link between property ownership and voting rights gave the parliamentary vote to men over 21 years and to certain women over 30 years of age. This increased the Irish Electorate from approximately 700,000 to just under two million. Given what happened in Ireland in 1918, it was no surprise to find that the Sinn Fein party candidates got the majority of support. The rise of the Sinn Fein Clubs and the Volunteer movement owed much to the conscription crisis of April 1918. The Sinn Fein party’s popularity was further enhanced by the “German Plot” of the following month when many of its leaders and Volunteer organisers were arrested and interned. The British Governments decision to proclaim these two organisations in addition to Cumann na mBan and the Gaelic League added further impetus to the wave of Irish Nationalism which gripped the Country in the months prior to the General Election of December 1918. 105 Members of Parliament were elected in December 1918 of which 73 were Sinn Fein and 26 Unionists with the once powerful Parliamentary Party returning only 6 members. Many of the Sinn Fein members elected were either in Prison or on the run and that first Dail sitting consisted of only 28 Sinn Fein members. Representing the County of Kildare was Domhnall Ua Buachalla and Art O’Connor. Ua Buachalla from Maynooth, a veteran of the 1916 Rising represented North Kildare while here in the South, Art O’Connor, an Engineer with Kildare County Council had defeated the sitting M.P., Denis Kilbride. O’Connor was one of the many Sinn Fein candidates interned at the time of the election and so missed the first Dail sitting. The Parliamentary success enjoyed by Sinn Fein was added to with the holding of local elections in 1920. They were the first nationwide elections held under the proportional representational system which was intended to support minority groups. The result was an overwhelming victory for Sinn Fein candidates. Irish local authorities subsequently acknowledged the authority of Dail Eireann. In the meantime, the British House of Commons had passed legislation providing for parliaments in the six counties and twenty six counties. On the 24th May 1921, elections were held to return members to the two parliaments. The two sitting TD’s for County Kildare were returned without a contest. The following day, the I.R.A. attacked and burned the Dublin’s Custom House, an action intended to destroy British government files and so reinforce the Irish claim to self government. The truce came into effect on the 11th July 1921 and on the 7th January 1922 the terms of the Treaty was agreed leading many on the anti-treaty side to claim it was an act of betrayal. Seven days later the “Parliament of Southern Ireland” was convened and was attended only by the pro-treaty members of Dail Eireann. Neither of the Kildare members attended. On the 14th April 1922, anti-treaty forces took over the Four Courts in Dublin, an action which is generally regarded at the start of the Civil War. Michael Collins and Eamon DeValera in an attempt at making peace later agreed to put forward candidates for a further general election. Collins later repudiated the agreement in the face of continuing guerilla warfare but it was clear that the pro-treaty side had the support of the majority of the Irish people. The election held on the 16th June 1922 saw Ua Buachalla and O’Connor lose their seats while another unsuccessful candidate was Athy man JJ Bergin standing for the Farmers Union. The Civil War which was marked with brutality and atrocities ended in May 1923. Regrettably the anti-treaty irregulars were not accorded an amnesty and many had to leave the country or go on the run to evade arrest. The first general election under the new Free State Constitution was held on the 27th August 1923. Ua Buachalla and O’Connor lost again. In the June 1927 General Election, O’Connor was unsuccessful but Ua Buachalla was elected and re-elected in the election call for the September of the same year. The June election saw two unsuccessful candidates from the Athy area JJ Bergin and George Henderson both representing Independent Farmers. The Irish State which emerged from the Treaty negotiations acquired a maturity and stability, the start of which was that first Dail meeting of the 21st January 1919. Kildare County Council’s celebration was a worthy event which regrettably was attended by only four of the forty County Councillors who represent this county.

Memories of Eddie Roycroft, Olive Smyth and Aidan Stafford

Within the last two weeks old treasured connections with Offaly Street were severed with the deaths of Eddie Roycroft, Olive Smyth and Aidan Stafford. Eddie was the eldest son of the Roycroft family who lived behind Offaly Street in Janeville Lane next to the Doody family. It was a time when the Urban District Council had not completed the housing programme first commenced in the mid-1930s to rid the town of its unfit housing stock. The small houses accessed by the lane which ran between No. 3 and No. 4 Offaly Street and which backed on to the Abbey, then Dr. O’Neill’s residence, were small two roomed dwellings built in the 1870s. The builder was local man, Thomas Cross, who had also constructed similar sized houses in Connolly’s Lane off Meeting House Lane. The latter houses were demolished by the time I was able to take cognisance of my surroundings and indeed they may well have been demolished during the construction of the Councils first housing scheme in 1913 which saw new council houses erected in Meeting House Lane, St. Michael’s Terrace and St. Martin’s Terrace. Eddie Roycroft was the eldest son of the late Jimmy and Teresa Roycroft. Jimmy was from Sligo and while serving in the army and stationed in the Curragh he met and married Teresa Cummins of Athy. They lived for some years in Sligo where Eddie was born before coming to Athy in 1954. Living firstly in Shrewleen Lane the Roycroft family later moved to Janeville Lane where they and their neighbours, the Doody family, brought a welcome musicality to the neighbourhood with the wonderful ballad singing of Teresa Roycroft and the musicianship of Paddy Doody and his siblings. Olive Smyth was the youngest of six brothers and sisters who lived in No. 2 Offaly Street which in earlier times was called Preston’s Gate. The medieval gate was removed in 1860 following the accidental death of the local rector, Rev. Frederick Trench, but the name Preston’s Gate lingered on for a time until replaced with yet another Leinster family name. The Smyth family were part of a close-knit Offaly Street community at a time when the street was alive with youngsters. It was a street where those of us who lived there enjoyed companionship and friendships which endured even after we left the area. Memories of Pattie Websters, Miss Sylvesters, Dowlings, later Kehoe’s pub and Moores nearby, recall a street full of activity where young families shared experiences and life in good times and difficult times. One of those difficult times was when the scourge of TB ravished the country. Families in Offaly Street lost loved ones, as did many other families in this part of south Kildare. Olive Smyth and Eddie Roycroft were part of that local community who in their time helped create the memories which have carried forward over the decades. Aidan Stafford was part of the wider Athy community but back a generation there was an Offaly Street connection. His father John once lived in Offaly Street and it was from there that four of John’s older brothers, Edward, Thomas, Frank and Peter joined the Dublin Fusiliers during World War I. Edward and Thomas died in that war and their nephew Aidan was one of those who attended the annual Remembrance Day ceremonies in St. Michael’s cemetery from the time they were started almost 20 years ago. Aidan’s father John was an officer in the LDF during the Second World War continuing, but in a different uniform, the military tradition of the Stafford family established by the Stafford Brothers in 1914-18. Another Offaly Street connection with the Staffords was provided by John Stafford’s sister Judy who married Tipperary born Andy Cleary, both of whom lived in Janeville opposite St. Michael’s Church for many years. The Roycroft, Smyth and Stafford families were part of the rich tapestry of life in Athy stretching back several generations. The passing of these family members reawakens treasured memories of times past. The Decade of Centenaries Commemoration continues with a commemoration of the first Dail meeting in 1919 which will be held in the Osprey Hotel in Naas on Wednesday, 23rd January at 8.00 p.m. Castledermot Historical Society will host a talk given by yours truly on ‘Castledermot and the Spanish Flu 1918’ on Tuesday, 29th January. Athy’s Historical Society lecture series for 2019 recommences with a talk by James Durney at 8.00 p.m. on Tuesday 12th February on ‘County Kildare and the First Dail’.

Soloheadbeg and later incidents in the War of Independence

Polling in the General Election of 1918 took place on 14th December and the count and the declaration of the result occurred two weeks later. Twenty-five of the seventy-three successful Sinn Fein candidates were returned unopposed. Arrangements were made for the first meeting of Dáil Éireann to be held on 21st January 1919. That meeting would adopt a provisional constitution for the Dáil and make a formal Declaration of Independence for the Irish Republic. On the same day eight men, members of the south Tipperary Volunteers, waited at Soloheadbeg to ambush a convoy consisting of two workmen conveying gelignite in a horse and cart, accompanied by two local RIC men. The ambushers were led by Seamus Robinson, but subsequent accounts relegated Robinson to a minor role, while promoting both Dan Breen and Sean Treacy to more prominent positions. The first written account of the ambush was published in 1924 under Dan Breen’s name where he claimed: ‘again and again we called on them to put up their hands ….. their fingers were on the triggers ….. another appeal on our side would be useless ….. quick and sure our volleys rang out ….. the two policemen were dead.’ The two R.I.C. men, the first killed since the 1916 Rising, were county Mayo born James McDonnell, a 57-year-old widower with five children and 36-year-old Patrick O’Connell, a single man from Cork. They were Irish men, whose killing marked what is generally claimed to be the start of the Irish War of Independence. It is a claim which is difficult to sustain, given that it did not result in the start of any sustained military activity over the following months. Indeed, the Kerry volunteers could well claim that their attack on the R.I.C. barracks at Gortatlea, Co. Kerry on 13th April 1918 when two of the volunteers, John Browne and Richard Laide, died could well claim to be the start of the War of Independence. Whatever the merits of the often-repeated claim that the Soloheadbeg ambush marked the start of the War of Independence, the action of the Tipperary men certainly upstaged the first Dáil sitting of 21st January. It was according to Todd Andrews ‘an operation that went wrong’ while the Volunteers Chief of Staff Richard Mulcahy would claim ‘this episode has on the one hand being outrageously propagandised as a leading episode in waking up the country ….. it had many regrettable and unwarranted features ….. bloodshed should have been unnecessary in the light of the type of episode it was.’ The maverick nature of the Soloheadbeg action was not to the liking of the Volunteer’s headquarters staff and indeed was condemned by church dignatories of the time. The War of Independence would eventually end with the truce of 11th July 1921 by which time 432 R.I.C. men, for the most part Irishmen, had died at the hands of the Volunteers. By the time the R.I.C. was disbanded a further 65 constables would be killed. As students of Irish history, we have grown up on stories of the Black and Tans. Less well known are the actions of the Volunteers, many of whom fought the good fight, while others sadly tarnished the good name of freedom fighters by actions which even after the elapse of almost 100 years cannot be justified or condoned. The assassinations of unarmed constables as they attended church services were appalling actions. The killing of two R.I.C. sergeants in Galway on 15th March 1922, long after the truce was in place, was particularly repugnant. The two men were patients in St. Bridget’s Hospital, Galway, Tobius Gibbons, a 44-year-old single man from County Mayo having been admitted three weeks previously, while John Gilmartin, a 50-year-old married man from County Leitrim had been admitted on 9th March. Four masked men entered the hospital and shot the two bedridden R.I.C. men. This coming week the community of Soloheadbeg will commemorate the centenary of the ambush and in doing so will honour not only the ambush party but also the two Irish R.I.C. men who lost their lives on that fateful day. The commemoration will be in keeping with the views of the expert advisory group set up by the Government to advise on commemorating the decade of centenaries. The expert group stated: ‘the State’s task is to encourage an effective and conciliatory tone that recognises that neither side has the monopoly of either atrocity or virtue.’ Many of the events of the Irish War of Independence require detailed critical reflection if we are to have a better understanding of how our country achieved its long-sought independence.

Michael Conry, Carlow Author

The 2019 edition of Carloviana, the journal of the Carlow Historical and Archaeological Society, has been published. It is a fine publication, with a range of well researched articles relating to County Carlow and persons from that county which even non Carlovians will find of interest. The society which started life as the Old Carlow Society in 1946 published its first journal in January of the following year. This year’s Carloviana brings to 67 the number of journals produced in the intervening years. Carlow has seen a number of excellent publications in recent years, from the pens of writers as diverse as Alan Stanley, Gerard Murphy and Dr. Michael Conry. The latter’s published output is extremely impressive, having first reached out to the general public with his book ‘Culm Crushers’ in 1999. Since then Michael Conry has written seven other books, all of them dealing with different aspects of Ireland’s rural folk life. A native of County Roscommon Michael, who is now retired, spent many years working for An Foras Taluntais in Oakpark, Carlow. He was awarded a Ph D by Trinity College where he studied under the guidance of the legendary George Mitchell, one of Ireland’s foremost environmentalists. No doubt influenced by Professor Mitchell, Michael set about the study of various aspects of Ireland’s cultural heritage. Over a period of 17 years ending with his last book in 2016 Michael Conry has published a veritable library unique in its scope and subject range. His first book published was ‘Culm Crushers’. It describes the history and folklore of an almost forgotten aspect of Ireland’s industrial archaeology – that of grinding stones for tempering culm, as well as grinding corn, bones, chalk, mortar and rendering. As Michael explained in the book’s foreword: ‘in times when money was scarce ….. culm (anthracite slack) provided an excellent and cheap source of fuel ….. dancing the culm and yellow clay with a pair of brogues was an laborious and time consuming task ….. its not surprising that man developed the simple technology of tempering the culm and yellow clay with culm crushers’. That first small paperback was followed the next year by ‘The Carlow Fence’, a book devoted to a unique feature of the County Carlow landscape. County Carlow, two thirds of which is underlain by granite bedrock, had stone masons who over the years learned to use the natural granite to create granite slab fences and the two-tiered granite fences unique to the county. It was a book which awakened interest in what was a forgotten feature of the Carlow landscape. Michael Conry’s third book in three years was a masterful account of culm as a domestic and industrial fuel in Ireland. Under the title ‘Dancing the Culm’ Michael traced the history of burning the culm as a domestic fuel, the techniques used to make the culm balls and the various methods of cooking on the culm fire in different parts of the country. Dr. William Nolan in the books foreword described how the culm was mixed with dry yellow clay in the ratio of 7:1, with some water on the flagstones before the mixture was worked by tramping the bed of culm with a pair of old boots. It was, he noted, a monotonous hard ‘dance’, but a necessary one for so many households for whom coal was an expensive commodity. How right William Nolan was when he declared that in ‘Dancing the Culm’ Michael Conry ‘had struck a rich vein that shone with the lustre of peacock coal.’ Next up after a lapse of three years was the book ‘Cornstacks on Stilts’ which dealt with the use of building stacks of corn stands, a practice which died out long before the author began to research the topic. Two years later ‘Carlow Granite – years of history written in stone’ appeared in the bookshops. This latest tome drew attention to the importance of granite stone in the lives of Irish people and in the economy of the country. It detailed how Carlow people learned to use granite so extensively that it today forms an integral part of the architectural heritage of the county. Michael Conry’s research and publications on various aspects of rural life gave us two other remarkable publications ‘Picking Bilberries, Fraochans and Whorts in Ireland’ published in 2011 and five years later ‘The Rabbit Industry in Ireland’. Both books unveil for its readers a view of Irish life of the recent past. Both are important studies recording in print a way of life which was once quite common but is today unknown to a people for whom the country life is viewed, if at all, as a cultural wasteland. Michael Conry through his books has shown that the store of cultural heritage to be found in the Irish countryside provides a richness of history and folklife which tells the story of a now largely disappeared rural life.

St. Michael's Medieval Church

‘St. Michael’s is one of the most ancient of the many ruined churches in the parish of Athy’, so wrote a former Athy curate, Rev. James Carroll, with reference to the church in St. Michael’s cemetery in an article in the second issue of the Kildare Archaeological journal published in 1893. He claimed that the church was built in the 14th century but the Urban Archaeology Survey led by the late John Bradley in the mid-1980s noted ‘the Church of St. Michael’s was in existence by 1297’. Athy was one of many Anglo-Norman settlements in this area and by the mid-13th century had developed into a sizeable settlement as evidenced by the presence of two religious houses. The Crutched Friars, the name commonly given to the Canon Regulars of the Holy Cross, were invited to come to Athy by Richard de St. Michael, Baron of Rheban and Lord of the Manor of Woodstock. They were followed some years later by the Dominicans who chose a site for their priory on the east bank of the river Barrow. The late Dominican historian, Fr. Hugh Fleming, was unable to determine who invited the Dominicans to this part of the country. The most likely candidate he thought was either a member of the St. Michael family or Maurice Fitzgerald who was owner of Kilkea from 1244. The Crutched Friars, unlike the Dominicans, had parish responsibilities for St. Johns. The Dominicans, as was usual for that religious order, built their priory outside the village settlement. What is perhaps even stranger is that the parish church of St. Michaels was built so far away from the Anglo Norman settlement which had developed around a castle at Woodstock. The Anglo Norman settlers, like the native Irish, shared the same catholic faith and while separated by status and nationality they were also separated by language. French was the language of the settlers, Irish the language of the natives. The small church of St. Michaels was, I believe, built for use by the native Irish inhabitants of this area, while the Crutched Friars and the Dominicans, in the early years at least, catered exclusively for the French speaking settlers. Fr. Carroll, who had transferred from Athy to Baldoyle by the time his article appeared in the archaeological journal, noted that ‘the church’s west gable is nearly perfect and the small “light” above with its oaken lintel yet remains ….. some years ago a portion of the side walls disappeared, as did the eastern end and the vestry on the south.’ Unfortunately in the intervening years further damage has occurred to the ancient structure and for safety reasons it has been closed off with metal barriers for the last 3 or 4 years. I have in previous articles noted that the town’s distinctive heritage comprising historical buildings such as St. Michael’s Church, the Town Hall, Woodstock Castle and Whites Castle, to mention just a few, are key resources in promoting our town. As a community we need to take care of these resources for they give Athy with its other historical assets the town’s unique character. The elevated ground in front of St. Michael’s Church is evidence of its use for burials over many centuries. Some years ago the volunteers who comprised Athy’s cemetery committee while cleaning up St. Michael’s cemetery, attempted to recover grave slabs which over the years had disappeared underground. One grave slab recovered was that of the Daker family which records deaths which occurred from 1739 onwards. The Daker family were proprietors of the large tanyard recorded as operating in Athy in the latter half of the 18th century. The town boasted several tanyards, but Daker’s tanyard at the end of Tanyard Lane which later led to the Dominican Church (now Athy’s library), was by far the largest in the area. Unfortunately the volunteers were unable to locate the grave slab of Robert Pearson which was once recorded with the following inscription: ‘In hope of the happy resurrection here lyeth the body of Robert Pearson Esq. Captain of the 10th Regiment of Foot of Ireland who served under the brave Duke of Marlborough’. The damage to the old Church of St. Michael’s was compounded by the even more regrettable removal of what was once described as a fine old arch which was located between the church and Bothar Bui, now the Dublin Road. Its removal some time during the mid 1800s deprived us of an important medieval structure. There is an urgent need to preserve and maintain St. Michael’s Church, which every native of Athy knows as ‘The Crickeen’. Kildare County Council’s Historic Monuments Committee, in cooperation with Athy’s Cemetery’s Committee should, undertake the necessary work to protect St. Michael’s Medieval Church.

Dolores Nolan and Niamh Hegarty

I was reminded of long lost youth when, during the week, I had an unexpected visit from two friends of my late brother Seamus. Fifty-three years have passed since his tragic death in a road traffic accident on the Dublin road, but memories were quickly revived when ‘walks down the line’ as part of teenage life in Athy of the early 1960s was mentioned by my visitors. Dolores Nolan and Niamh Hegarty have been friends since school days. Both attended the local St. Mary’s Secondary School, Dolores making the morning journey from Duke Street, while Niamh made her way from the Hegarty home at Geraldine Road. Dolores’s parents were Tom and Molly Nolan, her father having come to Athy in 1943 to open a shop at 42 Duke Street. Tom was a native of Newbridge and after his early behind the counter work experience in shops in Castledermot and Carlow came to what was then the thriving market town of Athy to open his own shop. His wife was the former Molly Moore, whose brothers Michael, Eddie and Charlie were already part of the commercial life of the town. Tom Nolan carried on business in Athy until 1971 when he retired to live in Dublin. Dolores who had spent most of her adult life abroad returned to live in Ireland last year. Three years earlier Niamh Hegarty made the return journey to Ireland after spending 35 years in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was there that the school friends from Athy, both living in Johannesburg, were able to renew their friendship. Niamh was the youngest child of Joseph and Teresa Hegarty who came to Athy in 1949 when Joseph took up a position with the Wallboard factory at Tomard. Dolores and Niamh were part of a young group of friends and students from St. Marys and the local Christian Brothers School, many of whom would leave Athy as school years ended. Both remembered with fondness many of their classmates, Carmel Brophy, Katherine Clancy, Noelle O’Connor, Olga Rowan, Stacia Miller, Fidelma Blanchfield, Eilish O’Donnell, Eithne Hughes, Enda McNulty and Finola Moriarty. Between the Christian Brothers School boys and the girls of St. Marys friendships were forged and memories created with never to be forgotten walks ‘down the line’. I well remember my own classmates’ appreciation of the welcoming countryside around Sunnyside and how we all enjoyed meeting there for after school activities, free from the questioning gaze of parents and teachers. Dolores and Niamh were part of school class group which included not only their friends in St. Marys, but also CBS students such as Ger Moriarty, Seamus Taaffe, Kevin McNulty, Terry Dooley, Denis O’Sullivan, Liam Kane, Niall Hegarty and many many more, too numerous to mention. Athy in the late 1950s and early 1960s was in many ways so very different than it is today. This year we have a population in excess of 10,000 persons, whereas 50/60 years ago the busy town pubs catered for a population of a little more than 4,000. It was a small town full of independent shops where men such as Tom Nolan could run a successful business at a time when not a single empty shop premises was to be found in Athy. It was a time when Joe Hegarty could look forward with confidence, as did many other men and women as employment opportunities in the town improved after the economic downturn of post war years. Dolores and Niamh recalled with nostalgia their school days which were spent in the primary school and secondary school of the local Sisters of Mercy. They remembered with fondness Sr. Raphael and Sr. Alphonsus, two of their primary school teachers and their secondary school teachers, Sr. Paul, Sr. Oliver, Sr. Rose, Sr. Zavier and Mother Therése. Having spent a greater part of their lives abroad Dolores and Niamh enjoyed sharing with me their memories of Athy, of friends and of friendships of almost 60 years ago. Those memories were underpinned by a youthful happiness shared with classmates and families, many of whom are now gone from us. Dolores’s mother Molly died in 1977, to be followed months later with the passing of her father Tom in January 1978. Niamh’s parents continued to live in Athy where her father Joseph died in 1984 and her mother Teresa 13 years later. Both are buried in St. Michael’s cemetery. The extended Nolan/Hegarty families are no longer part of the current Athy community but for the one-time Convent of Mercy school girls Athy will always hold a special place in their memories.

Dolores Nolan and Niamh Hegarty

I was reminded of long lost youth when, during the week, I had an unexpected visit from two friends of my late brother Seamus. Fifty-three years have passed since his tragic death in a road traffic accident on the Dublin road, but memories were quickly revived when ‘walks down the line’ as part of teenage life in Athy of the early 1960s was mentioned by my visitors. Dolores Nolan and Niamh Hegarty have been friends since school days. Both attended the local St. Mary’s Secondary School, Dolores making the morning journey from Duke Street, while Niamh made her way from the Hegarty home at Geraldine Road. Dolores’s parents were Tom and Molly Nolan, her father having come to Athy in 1943 to open a shop at 42 Duke Street. Tom was a native of Newbridge and after his early behind the counter work experience in shops in Castledermot and Carlow came to what was then the thriving market town of Athy to open his own shop. His wife was the former Molly Moore, whose brothers Michael, Eddie and Charlie were already part of the commercial life of the town. Tom Nolan carried on business in Athy until 1971 when he retired to live in Dublin. Dolores who had spent most of her adult life abroad returned to live in Ireland last year. Three years earlier Niamh Hegarty made the return journey to Ireland after spending 35 years in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was there that the school friends from Athy, both living in Johannesburg, were able to renew their friendship. Niamh was the youngest child of Joseph and Teresa Hegarty who came to Athy in 1949 when Joseph took up a position with the Wallboard factory at Tomard. Dolores and Niamh were part of a young group of friends and students from St. Marys and the local Christian Brothers School, many of whom would leave Athy as school years ended. Both remembered with fondness many of their classmates, Carmel Brophy, Katherine Clancy, Noelle O’Connor, Olga Rowan, Stacia Miller, Fidelma Blanchfield, Eilish O’Donnell, Eithne Hughes, Enda McNulty and Finola Moriarty. Between the Christian Brothers School boys and the girls of St. Marys friendships were forged and memories created with never to be forgotten walks ‘down the line’. I well remember my own classmates’ appreciation of the welcoming countryside around Sunnyside and how we all enjoyed meeting there for after school activities, free from the questioning gaze of parents and teachers. Dolores and Niamh were part of school class group which included not only their friends in St. Marys, but also CBS students such as Ger Moriarty, Seamus Taaffe, Kevin McNulty, Terry Dooley, Denis O’Sullivan, Liam Kane, Niall Hegarty and many many more, too numerous to mention. Athy in the late 1950s and early 1960s was in many ways so very different than it is today. This year we have a population in excess of 10,000 persons, whereas 50/60 years ago the busy town pubs catered for a population of a little more than 4,000. It was a small town full of independent shops where men such as Tom Nolan could run a successful business at a time when not a single empty shop premises was to be found in Athy. It was a time when Joe Hegarty could look forward with confidence, as did many other men and women as employment opportunities in the town improved after the economic downturn of post war years. Dolores and Niamh recalled with nostalgia their school days which were spent in the primary school and secondary school of the local Sisters of Mercy. They remembered with fondness Sr. Raphael and Sr. Alphonsus, two of their primary school teachers and their secondary school teachers, Sr. Paul, Sr. Oliver, Sr. Rose, Sr. Zavier and Mother Therése. Having spent a greater part of their lives abroad Dolores and Niamh enjoyed sharing with me their memories of Athy, of friends and of friendships of almost 60 years ago. Those memories were underpinned by a youthful happiness shared with classmates and families, many of whom are now gone from us. Dolores’s mother Molly died in 1977, to be followed months later with the passing of her father Tom in January 1978. Niamh’s parents continued to live in Athy where her father Joseph died in 1984 and her mother Teresa 13 years later. Both are buried in St. Michael’s cemetery. The extended Nolan/Hegarty families are no longer part of the current Athy community but for the one-time Convent of Mercy school girls Athy will always hold a special place in their memories.

Castledermot

Driving recently towards Castledermot I passed along a road which in medieval days and earlier was possibly a trackway through thickly wooded countryside. I was prompted to reflect on how the fortunes of the town I had just left and the town I was approaching had changed over the centuries. John MacKenna in what I believe was his first published work ‘Castledermot and Kilkea – a social history’ in the final paragraph wrote ‘The present village of Castledermot is very old …..before Diarmuid established his hermitage on the Lir bank there were people in the area.’ The late Tadgh Hayden, who wrote and prepared the souvenir brochure for Castledermot’s An Tostal in 1953, claimed that Diarmuid, the hermit, came to the area in or about 500 A.D. and built a beehive shaped cell and a small church in the neighbourhood of the present round tower. The book of the Four Masters on the other hand had Diarmuid’s grandfather killed about the year 800 A.D. which prompted John MacKenna to believe that the religious collective which was later to become the Norman town of Tristledermot and finally Castledermot was founded in 823. Whether it is 500 A.D. or 300 years later Diarmuid’s monastery was part of Ireland’s golden age of religious foundations. It’s importance as a religious settlement can be surmised from the fact that the Vikings who normally travelled by water attacked the monastery and in doing so moved so far inland. A hog backed Viking gravestone decorated with crosses, the only such one in Ireland, is all that remains to remind us of the Viking attack on the monastery nearly 1200 years ago. The importance of Diarmuid’s monastery was further affirmed as the place of burial of Cormac O’Cuilleanain, King of Munster and bishop of Cashel, who was killed during the battle of Ballaghmoone in 907. The Anglo Normans who arrived in Ireland in 1169 recognised the importance of the religious settlement in the rural area, which by then included a round tower built for defensive purposes following the earlier Viking raid. Strongbow gave the area around the present Castledermot to de Ridellesford and the area around Kilkea to de Lacy. The subsequent building of Kilkea Castle and the Castle of Tristledermot strengthened the Norman influence in this area and for a time the village of Tristledermot was one of the most important rural settlements in the Norman’s Irish world. It was in Tristledermot, later corrupted to Castledermot by English speaking settlers that the first Irish parliament was held in 1264. Attended by 26 knights the Irish parliament would be held in Tristledermot on ten further occasions between 1269 and 1404. The Tristledermot settlement, like the neighbouring Norman settlement at the Ford of Ae (Athy), attracted not one but two religious houses. The Crouched Friars came in 1210 and the only physical reminder of their time in the area is the present St. John’s tower. The Franciscans founded a monastery in Tristledermot in or around 1300 and the substantial remains of what is today referred to as ‘The Abbey’ is what remains of that monastery. The village of Tristledermot was surrounded by strong defensive walls, the only portion of which remain today are what are called ‘the Carlow gate’. That gate was one of four gates which were in the Norman village walls and through which Edward Bruce and his Scottish troops marched when they attacked and destroyed much of Castledermot in 1316. The Confederate Wars also saw the Cromwellian army attack and destroy Castledermot for the second time in 1615. The village would never again regain the prominent position it had enjoyed in the social and economic life of south Kildare. The subsequent decline of the once powerful settlement of Tristledermot coincided with the emergence of neighbouring Athy as the most prominent urban settlement in south Kildare. The latter’s position on the navigable River Barrow gave it a huge advantage over its near neighbour at a time when travel by road was well nigh impossible. It was an advantage which in the 17th and 18th centuries saw Athy emerge as a developing market town. The opening of the Grand Canal to Athy in 1792 and the extension of the railway line to Carlow through Athy in 1846 copper fastened Athy’s claim to be the leading town in the south of the county. Unlike Athy Castledermot has been the subject of several publications over the years, including those earlier mentioned by Tadgh Hayden and John MacKenna. Reverend Warburton wrote a guide to St. James’s Church in 1968, while Eamon Kane’s book ‘Diseart Diarmada’ published in 2015 deals extensively with the early history of the village of Castledermot. One other interesting book was that published in 1919 under the title of ‘Dysert Diarmada; or Irish place-names’, it’s author being described as ‘an Irish CC’. Can anyone help me to identify the author in question.

Athy Association Football Club

‘Irish soccer is in crisis’. So pronounced the TV newsreader earlier today as news of the resignation of the Irish international team management was made public. The previous day I read in the Kildare Nationalist of Athy Association Football Club’s celebration of its 70th anniversary in the Clanard Court Hotel. The loss of Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane and the recent lack of success of the Irish international team was unlikely, I felt, to diminish the enthusiasm of Athy’s club chairman, Stephen Bolger, and his colleagues in managing one of the most successful sporting clubs in south Kildare. Athy AFC has a proud history which stretches even further back than the 70 years which were recently celebrated. The first note I came across of soccer played in Athy was in the mid-1920s at a time when the Barrow Drainage Scheme headquarters was based in the town. An employee of the Barrow Drainage Company, whose first name is regrettably lost in time, a Mr. Sanford, organised a soccer team in the town. Called the ‘Barrow Rovers’, the team included locals such as Chevit and John Doyle, Ned Ward, Jim Eaton and Cuddy Chanders. Cuddy will be recalled as the man who would feature in later years as goalkeeper for the Kildare County Senior GAA team. ‘Barrow Rovers’ apparently disbanded when the Barrow Drainage Scheme ended. It wasn’t until 1948 when Athy’s hockey club went out of existence that a former hockey club member, Matt Tynan, called a public meeting to set up a soccer club. Matt was manager of the local L&N shop at the corner of Emily Square and Leinster Street and he recognised that the former hockey pitch in the Showgrounds would be an ideal soccer playing pitch. Other local men involved with Matt Tynan in setting up Athy AFC in 1948 included Jimmy O’Donnell and Harry Prole. The emergence of the new club encouraged several locals who up to then played soccer with a Carlow team to transfer to the Athy club. They included Gerry Sullivan, ‘Oney’ Walsh and Tom Kealy. To encourage the development of the game amongst local youngsters Matt Tynan presented a cup in 1952 for a street league competition. Youth teams from Barrack Street, Pairc Bhride, Offaly/Leinster Street and St. Joseph’s Terrace were some of the streets/estates involved in the Tynan Cup competitions. Matt Tynan’s role in the early years of the soccer club was extremely important as events were to prove on his departure from Athy in about 1960 when the club went into decline. This prompted some of the older club members to call a public meeting in December 1964 which the local press reported was attended by ‘members of the Barrow Rovers team of the 1920s and the later club which flourished from 1948-1960.’ Amongst those who took a leading part in reviving Athy’s soccer club were Brendan O’Flaherty, Denis Smyth and Mick McEvoy. I remember some of the players of the 1950s whom I enjoyed watching in those ‘GAA foreign games ban days’ from the other side of the fence as I attended GAA matches in Geraldine Park. Brian O’Hara, Joe Aldridge, Frankie Aldridge, Denis Smyth, Brendan O’Flaherty, Alo Gallagher, Mick Godfrey, Tommy O’Rourke and George Lammon are just a few of the names which come to mind. Athy AFC under the chairmanship of Stephen Bolger has gone from strength to strength and now fields men’s and women’s adult teams as well as a large number of underage teams. A soccer academy and an underage league promotes the game amongst the very young, while the indoor astra park opened in March 2012 gives the club a wonderful facility to help grow the sport. The Athy AFC grounds named Aldridge Park after the late Frankie Aldridge, is located in the Showgrounds alongside the GAA pitch, the rugby pitches and the tennis club. The playing fields of the three major Irish field sports located together in Athy’s showgrounds represent a unique facility and one which owes much to the initiative and foresight of past Athy folk who were involved in acquiring the land for agricultural show purposes at the start of the last century. Athy AFC has a membership in excess of 350 and the club trustees, Joe Foley Snr., Morgan Gray, Frank Whelan, Finbarr Bride and Tom Kearney have all been involved as players and administrators in the club over many years. The continuing growth of the game in Athy is evident in the emergence of soccer teams and soccer pitches in Clonmullin and Woodstock. Whatever about the lack of success at international level soccer is a popular sport here in Athy, due in large measure to the commitment and enthusiasm of the officers and committee members of Athy’s AFC both past and present.

World War 1 Commemorations November 2018

The First World War figured prominently in events held over the last week or so here in Athy and in the county town of Naas. The centenary of the last day of the war which accounted for the loss of almost 10 million lives was marked with a variety of events all of which well attended, attesting to the now widely held belief that the men who enlisted in the British Army during 1914-’18 are a valued part of our Irish history. The commemorations here in Athy started with the Athy Dramatic Society’s presentation of David Walsh’s ‘The Bravest Little Town in the World’. The exaggerated claim in the title did not detract from the very moving tribute in words and song to the men from south Kildare who died in the war. Remembering that those young men, while answering the call to arms of Athy’s parish priest and the chairman of the Urban Council, did so despite the opposition of the local Sinn Fein club, I was pleasantly surprised to see two members of the Dooley family on stage. Michael Dooley was chairman of Athy’s Sinn Fein Club in 1917 and like all non-Redmondite republicans opposed enlistment during the 1914-’18 war. The participation of his great grandson, Brian Dooley, and Brian’s daughter Sara in the show to remember the war sacrifices of south Kildare, was confirmation, if such was needed, that our history extends far beyond our national boundaries. On Saturday 10th November Kildare Archaeological Society organised a seminar to mark the end of the Great War. Held in Kilashee Hotel, it attracted a large audience to hear talks on a variety of war related topics given by eminent academics and historians. The keynote address of the seminar was given by Professor Diarmuid Ferriter of U.C.D. on ‘The Triumphant Sinn Fein in 1918’. The next day Kildare County Council commemorated the County Kildare soldiers of World War I with a ceremony in the grounds of the Council offices which at one time formed part of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers depot. It was from there that those Athy men who joined the Dublin Fusiliers were billeted before they moved overseas. The ceremony brought together many from around the county and on leaving all of us received a copy of the specially printed booklet listing the County Kildare men who died during the 1914-’18 war. ‘Remembrance – the Eleventh Hour 1914-1918’ is an advance publication in anticipation of a more detailed and complete book on County Kildare’s World War 1 dead which the County Council will publish next year. At Athy that Sunday afternoon I was part of the attendance at the largest World War I commemoration event in County Kildare that day. I was quite surprised to see such a big turnout, the largest ever seen at this Remembrance Sunday event which started almost 20 years ago. I remember that very first Remembrance Sunday event in St. Michael’s cemetery. The small group which came together that first occasion largely comprised family members of the organisers, John MacKenna, David Walsh and my own family. The numbers attending increased each year the event was held and it has been an annual event which in this centenary year drew the largest audience ever. In fact, I believe the numbers in St. Michael’s Cemetery on Sunday afternoon exceeded the numbers attending the morning event in Naas and that large attendance demonstrated that Athy ‘the bravest little town in the world’ is justifiably proud of its past. The final tribute to the Athy soldiers of World War I will be held on Sunday (18th November) when Kevin Morrin and his band play at the Clanard Court Hotel. Band member Vincent Crowley penned his song ‘Tomorrow’s Heroes’ which grew out of stories which he heard of times past in Athy and of the men who fought in and returned from the war. ‘Down along through Leinster Street | In the Autumn Rain Come tomorrows heroes | marching to the train October nineteen fourteen | and the “Great” War has begun. “They’ll be home by Christmas | and all the battles won” With pride the army’s gathering our sons New uniforms new boots and shiny Guns’. The singer, Kevin Morrin, will launch the song during the Clanard Court concert on Sunday. The Irish people’s changed attitude to commemorating the dead of World War I is due more than anything else to the writings over many years of Kevin Myers. It is a great shame that the Kildare based writer was not a speaker at the Archaeological Society event or a participant in the County Council commemoration in Naas.

Athy - a Settlers town found3ed by the Anglo Normans

John Dymmor in his treatise on Ireland referred to Athy in May 1599 as ‘a great market town, but brought by these late wars into the state of a poor village’. The wars referred to were those waged by the O’Mores and O’Connors of the Midland septs and the O’Byrnes of west Wicklow against the English settlers. Athy, as a settler’s town inhabited from its foundation by French speaking Anglo Normans, had by the end of the 16th century a population comprised of English settlers and unfree Irish who were descendants of the former Betaghs of the feudal manor of Woodstock. The O’Brynes attacked Ardreigh Castle in 1593 and killed its occupants including Sir Piers Fitzjames, his wife and five others. Ardreigh served as an easy target for the Irish rebels as nearby Athy, then used as a staging post for supplies destined for the English settlers in nearby Laois and Offaly, was heavily garrisoned. However, emboldened by the rise of O’Neill in Ulster and his alliance with O’Donnell the waring Irish in the midlands again attacked the settlers town of Athy. Athy, perhaps better described as a village, had endured numerous attacks by the Irish over the centuries. It was attacked and torched no less than six times between 1308 and 1375. Further misfortune was to befall the settlers when the Black Death claimed many local victims during the three years from 1348. Athy as a frontier town was not a peaceful place in which to live in later medieval times, but despite whatever difficulties it faced the town survived when other Anglo Norman settlements such as Ardreigh, Rheban, Mullaghmast, Ardscull and Moone went into decline and eventually vanished. The defeat of the Irish and the Spanish at the Battle of Kinsale in 1601 brought peace for a time to the midlands. Athy, which had been granted a charter by Henry VIII in 1515, was the beneficiary of a more extensive charter by James I in 1313 which would form the basis of the town’s local government for the next two centuries or more. Little is known of the town’s history during the following 30 years but in 1641 Athy was heavily involved in the Confederate wars. For a period of eight years Athy was the focus of attention involving armies from the Confederates, the Royalists and the Parliamentarians. At different times during that war the town was home of the Confederate leader, Owen Roe O’Neill and Gen. Thomas Preston of the Parliamentary army. It was the arrival of Oliver Cromwell in Ireland in 1649 which marked the end of the Confederate War and the killing in Drogheda of the sub Prior of the Athy Dominicans, Fr. Richard Overton. A few years later his superior, Fr. Raymond Moore, prior of Athy, died in jail. At the end of the war a number of local landowners had their lands forfeited, including Nicholas Wolfe of Oldcourt, Christopher Archbold of Timolin, Gerald Fitzgerald of Castleroe and John Pilsworth of Bert. The Cromwellian plantation, although not as successful as planned, nevertheless brought great changes among the landlord classes in south Kildare. One local property owner who is recorded as surviving the upheaval which followed the Confederate war was Daniel Hutchinson, a prominent follower of Cromwell, who established a cloth manufacturing enterprise in Athy. In 1669 the restored King of England was petitioned by the people of Athy for leave to have two additional fairs in the town. The petition claimed that Athy was ‘an ancient and loyal corporation and seated in the heart of a plentiful country both for corn and cattle.’ It also stressed that many of the town’s inhabitants were English tradesmen and that they had suffered much, ‘both by the recent wars and by two fires which lately destroyed most of their houses.’ Athy in the 1670s was apparently a distressful place in which to live as the Corporation of Drogheda was moved to appoint two alderman ‘to receive the benevolence of the inhabitants of the town for the relief of those of Athy who have suffered greatly in the late wars.’ History tells us that Athy during its 800 year existence experienced several extremely difficult and troubling times. It has always recovered, some past recoveries being identified with the coming of the canal in 1792 and again in 1846 with the opening of the railway line between Dublin and Carlow. Athy is today at a low ebb commercially and industrially, but on the horizon is the promise of an outer relief road which holds out the prospect of facilitating the revitalisation of the historic inner core of our ancient town.

Francis Ledwidge

Just outside Mons in Belgium a stone monument records the date when a squadron from the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards fired the opening British shots of the first World War. The date was 22nd August 1914, the time 7.00 in the morning. By the time the ceasefire occurred on 11th November 1918 almost 10 million men, women and children had died in the war. Amongst the 10 million were approximately 35,000 Irish men and women and amongst those Irish men were two whose names will be forever remembered whenever and wherever the poets of World War I are recalled. Francis Ledwidge, a native of Slane, Co. Meath, left school at 14 years of age to work as a farm labourer and six years later took up employment as a roadworker with Meath County Council. In October 1914 he enlisted in the Royal Enniskillen Fusiliers where his mentor, Lord Dunsany, served as a captain. Ledwidge was a Lance Corporal when his battalion landed at Suvla Bay in August 1915. Within two months the British army lost more than 10,000 men and amongst those killed were Athy men Daniel Delaney, John Farrell, Christopher Hanlon, William Moran and Christopher Whelan. Edward Higgins and Henry Price, both of Ballitore and Michael Kinsella of Castledermot joined their Athy comrades in death on the beaches of the Dardanelles. After some time in Salonika where the Royal Enniskillen Fusiliers were encamped on the Greco-Serbian border, Ledwidge with his regiment were forced to retreat. Ledwidge was subsequently hospitalised in Cairo and from there sent back to a hospital in Manchester, just as the 1916 Rising was taking place in Dublin. The subsequent execution of the leaders of the Rising may have contributed to Ledwidge’s subsequent Court marshalling for overstaying his leave following which he was reduced in rank. He subsequently re-joined his regiment and on the opening day of the third battle of Ypres he was killed when a German shell exploded near him on 31st July 1917. Ledwidge, who was 29 years of age, is buried in Artillery Wood cemetery, Boesinghe, Belgium. His own poem ‘At a Poet’s Grave’ is a poignant reminder of Irish literature’s loss when Ledwidge died. ‘And here where the sweet poet sleeps I hear the songs he left unsung, When winds are fluttering the flowers And summer bells are rung.’ Tom Kettle’s father was a founder member of the Land League and a friend of Charles Stewart Parnell. Tom qualified as a barrister in 1906 and that same year he was elected as an M.P. to Westminster where he proved to be an orator of exceptional ability. Three years later he married Mary Sheehy, whose sister Hannah was married to Francis Skeffington and soon afterwards he was appointed Professor of Economics at Dublin University. He resigned his parliamentary seat in 1910 but continued to be politically active, becoming one of the founders of the Irish Volunteers in November 1913. When war was declared in August 1914 Kettle was abroad buying arms for the Volunteers. On his return to Ireland he enlisted but was not sent overseas until July 1916. Towards the end of August 1916 the Irish Brigade was sent to the Somme and it was there on 9th September Thomas Kettle was killed near the village of Ginchy. Aged 36 years his body was never recovered and he is today remembered on the ‘Thiepval Memorial to the Missing’ near Albert in France. The day Kettle died also saw the death of Maurice Cullen of Foxhill. Six days earlier John Vincent Holland of Model Farm Athy, as part of the Somme offensive, led his men in capturing the village of Guillemont located just a few miles south of Ginchy, an action for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross. Thomas Kettle will always be remembered for the memorable poem which included the lines:- ‘So here, while the mad guns curse overhead, And tired men sigh with mud for couch and floor, Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead, Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor, But for a dream, born in a herdsman’s shed, And for the secret scripture of the poor.’ Many of the young men who left Athy with the cheers and good wishes of local townspeople ringing in their ears were never to return. Many thousands of other Irish men including Francis Ledwidge and Tom Kettle believed they were fighting for Ireland, a claim which Ledwidge made in his poem. ‘For am I not of those who reared The banner of old Ireland high From Dublin town to Turkey’s shore’. On Thursday the Arts Centre hosts a show devised and directed by David Walsh remembering the men from Athy and district who died during the First World War. The following Sunday, November 11th, on the centenary of the ending of the war which witnessed the death of more than 120 young Athy men, those men and their colleagues who survived will be remembered at a commemoration ceremony at St. Michael’s cemetery commencing at 3pm.

Colm Walshe's music trail - Made of Athy

There is a growing realisation that our urban heritage is a key resource in helping to promote the development of Athy. There is no doubt our ancient town is badly in need of regeneration and the news of impending job losses in nearby Kilberry reinforces the need for even greater effort on all our parts to help that process. Heritage is a word once largely misunderstood and loudly condemned for allegedly holding back Athy’s drive for more and better jobs. That misunderstanding goes back a decade or two but has now been corrected as many of us have begun to appreciate the importance that attaches to familiar streetscapes and buildings in our town. Athy’s urban heritage comprises not only what we refer to as the built heritage, but also the intangible heritage created by literary and musical associations involving Athy, it’s writers and musicians, living or dead. I was reminded of this when approached some time ago by Colm Walsh with his plans for the creation of a music trail through and around Athy. His is a unique idea which draws on some distinctive aspects of the town’s musical heritage. Last week the first of the planned music trail plaques was unveiled by the grandson of Johnny Cash at the former Dreamland ballroom. It will be followed by the unveiling of a number of other plaques based around the town honouring musicians associated with Athy, whether directly or indirectly by way of family connections. I was particularly pleased to learn that Joe O’Neill and Padence Murphy, two Athy stalwarts who in the 1940s and beyond graced many local dancehalls with their orchestras The Stardust and The Sorrento, were honoured with a plaque unveiled by the Ceann Chomhairle Sean O’Fearghail T.D. at the district council offices at Rathstewart last Saturday. On Friday, November 2nd Emily Square can expect to be crowded by popular music followers when Johnny Marr, founder with Morrissey of The Smiths, unveils the third plaque in the Athy music trail series. Johnny’s parents were natives of Athy who emigrated to England in the early 1960s and Johnny Maher, as he was then known, later changed his surname to Marr. He is recognised as one of the most influential guitar players in British rock music history and has been the recipient of a number of awards. These include the Inspiration Award presented at the Ivor Novello awards in London and an award by NME for ‘Rewriting the history of music with one of the worlds greatest ever bands – The Smiths’. Johnny as a young fellow spent many summer holidays in Athy and his links with the town will be recalled on the plaque which he will unveil on 2nd November. Later in the year and into the new year further plaques will be unveiled to give Athy a unique music trail emphasising a key part of Athy’s cultural heritage. Another element of our heritage was evident during the Bank Holiday weekend when the 18th Ernest Shackleton Autumn School was held in the Town Hall. Never before had the 300-year-old building played host to so many visitors from abroad. Amongst those visitors were 27 Norwegians, many of them associated with the famous Fram Museum in Oslo who came to Athy recognising the important role that the south Kildare town has secured for itself in the world of polar studies. Here in Athy we have developed over the last 18 years a unique position as providers of the world’s only permanent exhibition to Kilkea born polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. The foresight of Kildare County Council in commissioning the wonderfully artistic Shackleton sculpture now standing in Emily Square was commendable and confirms the importance which must be attached to investment in our own distinctive heritage. Athy needs more investment, especially with regard to the built heritage of the town and here the County Council’s plans for the much-anticipated improvement of the town square are vital to help encourage local business confidence. On Thursday 8th November the Arts Centre in Woodstock Street will be the venue for a unique show devised by David Walsh with the title ‘The Bravest Little Town in the World’. The performance will form part of the local centenary commemorations for the ending of World War I. Athy is the bravest little town referred to in the show’s title and recognises the high number of young men from the locality who enlisted during the 1914-’18 war. Clem Roche published in the last year or so a book giving details of those young Athy men who died during the Great War. The book is on sale in the local Heritage Centre.

The Irish Presidency and the Presidents who came to Athy

The Irish Constitution of 1937 which established the office of President was adopted by referendum rather than by the Dáil of that year. As a consequence it can be rightly considered as a people’s constitution and not one allied to any one political party. The role of the President is that of Head of State, but his or her functions are largely symbolic and ceremonial. Real political power rests with the Houses of the Oireachtas, while the President, irrespective of his or her background, is required to be above politics. The first President of Ireland was County Roscommon born Douglas Hyde, who prior to taking up office had already played an important part in the Gaelic cultural revival of the late 19th century. He was the first President of the Gaelic League and when elected President in 1938 was 78 years of age. He was succeeded by Seán T. Ó’Ceallaigh who, so far as I can ascertain, was the first Irish President to visit Athy in an official capacity. Sean T. had been in Athy, first as Minister for Local Government when officially opening in 1932 the Michael Dooley’s Terrace Housing Scheme. He would return at least twice to Athy as President of Ireland. One visit was to the County Show in the Showgrounds and the second occasion was to join a formal dinner in the Leinster Arms Hotel, organised I believe, by Macra na Feirme. Éamon de Valera was President from 1959 to 1973 and while he passed through Athy on several occasions, he did not make a formal visit to the south Kildare town. As Sinn Fein leader and later as leader of the Fianna Fáil party, he attended a number of meetings in Athy over the years. The first such visit was in the company of Arthur Griffith when he spoke from a platform in front of the Town Hall in 1919. His one-time political colleague, Erskine Childers, succeeded Eamonn de Valera as President in June 1973. Erskine Childers, whose father was executed during the Civil War, died suddenly in November 1974. The fifth Irish President was the former Chief Justice Cearbhall O’Dalaigh. He was the first President to resign from the position which he did towards the end of his second year in office. He did so, he claimed, to protect the dignity of the office following disparaging remarks by the then Minister of Defence, Paddy Donegan, after President O’Dalaigh referred an Emergency Powers Bill to the Supreme Court. Next in line was Patrick Hillary, a former government minister and EEC commissioner who held the presidency from 1976 to 1990. Like his predecessors, Cearbhall O’Dalaigh and Erskine Childers, President Hillary did not come to Athy on official business during his 14 years in office. President Mary Robinson’s visit to Athy in 1994 to unveil the monument commemorating the founding of Macra na Feirme marked the first occasion in several decades that an Irish President came to Athy. Hers was a presidency which showed greater relevance than ever before and as she claimed in her inaugural address the Ireland she represented was a new Ireland, open, tolerant and inclusive. Her resignation from the highest office in the land to take up the post of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights was a disappointing and surprising end to an inspiring period as our President. Our first female President was succeeded by Mary McAleese, who like her predecessor brought a sense of energy to the position which was lacking during the time of the elderly male former politicians who had gone before them. The 9th President of Ireland is Michael D. Higgins, a man who has been a good friend to Athy as a government minister and as President of Ireland. Michael D. came to Athy when as Minister for Arts and Culture he opened the Aiseiri boat project in Nelson Street. The Aiseiri was an old canal boat recovered from the canal in Tullamore and brought to Athy where it was to undergo restoration over several years. The participants in that community project were young unemployed boys and girls and Michael D. approved funding for what was a very important community project. He returned a few years later as the Aiseiri project neared completion to open a Jim Flack exhibition in the local Heritage Centre. The canal boat when fully restored operated as a short trip touring vessel on the Barrow and the Grand Canal and was the precursor of the current boat hire project which has proved very successful. Michael D. Higgins’s visit to Athy as President of Ireland occurred when he opened the SHACKLETON AUTUMN SCHOOL in October 2012. His attendance that Friday evening in the Town Hall created enormous interest and the venue was full to capacity for what was a memorable occasion. President Michael D. Higgins has done our country proud, particularly so during the early years of the Decade of Commemoration. We can be justifiably proud of his cultured contribution to Irish public life.

Shackleton Autumn School 2018

In late October 1908 the Kildare-born explorer, Ernest Shackleton, was about to commence a long journey from his base camp to the South Pole. As it turned out he would not achieve his objective of being the first man to the South Pole. He would come within 90 miles of it after three months of unrelenting slog in extraordinary challenging conditions. In writing to his wife, Emily Shackleton, afterwards of his decision to turn back from the Pole because the supplies he had were insufficient to feed his men to get them back safely, he reckoned that she would prefer ‘to have a live donkey than a dead lion’. This decision would propel him to worldwide fame and his subsequent heroics in the Antarctic with the loss of his ship ‘Endurance’ in 1915 would ensure a place for him in the pantheon of polar explorers. His is a life we have celebrated in Athy every October over the last 18 years and the measure of the success of the event is that this year Athy will play host to a party of 29 Norwegian visitors from Oslo. Some of these visitors have come to Athy before, but for the vast majority of them this will be their first experience of our town and no doubt they will get a warm and vibrant welcome from the people of Athy. Their primary focus of course will be on the events around the Shackleton Autumn School over the weekend of 26th-29th October, which promises to be as diverse, entertaining and educational as it always is. The day to day events will commence with a master class with sculptor Mark Richards who sculpted the magnificent statue of Shackleton which adorns the back square. Mark will be taking students of Ardscoil na Tríonóide and Athy Community College through the steps in creating a sculpture. Later that evening, in the Athy Heritage-Centre Museum, the Norwegian Ambassador to Ireland will open an exhibition called ‘Exploring Shackleton’ which tells the story of Shackleton’s life from cradle to grave. The Exhibition will be on loan to Athy Museum from the Norwegian Polar Museum, the Fram Museum, in Oslo. Across the weekend there will be a full range of lectures covering a wide variety of topics. For those who have a particular interest in the sea and the environment, Dr. Kelly Hogan of the British Antarctic Survey will talk about the knowledge that people can gain from the study of the sea floor on the polar regions. The American shipwreck hunter David Mearns will be talking about his extraordinary career in locating some of the most iconic ships lost at sea over the last number of centuries, while Dr. Jim McAdam from Queens University Belfast, will speak about the Irish patriot sailor and adventurer, Conor O’Brien, whose boat the Ilen is currently being restored in Baltimore, County Cork. For anybody with an interest in the future development of the Shackleton Museum they can hear more details about this in the Icebreakers segment on Saturday afternoon. Entry to that particular part of the weekend is free. Local interest will also centre on Dr. Sharon Greene, from Kilkea, who will talk about Kathleen Shackleton, Ernest’s younger sister, who had as rich and varied life as an artist all over the world. The German explorer, Arved Fuchs who was the first person to reach both the North and South Pole on foot in the same year, will also be lecturing on the morning of Sunday, 28th October. He has had quite an extraordinary adventuring life and his is a lecture not to be missed. One of the highlights of the weekend will be undoubtedly the performance of the play, ‘Shackleton’s carpenter’ written by the playwright Gail Louw, being performed in Athy’s Arts Centre. This one man show, performed by the English actor Malcolm Rennie, tells the story of Harry McNish, the carpenter and shipwright whose work on the lifeboat the James Caird was fundamental to the survival of Shackleton’s men after their ship Endurance was lost. Reviews of the play from the UK have been extraordinarily positive and it is particularly pleasing that the Arts Centre has an opportunity to host such a prestigious production. While it is very welcome to see so many visitors from abroad coming to our town over the October Bank Holiday weekend, it is also important that people of the town take the opportunity of participating in some of the events over the four days.

Kathleen Coburn

During the week we buried Kathleen Coburn, who like myself was a child born during the war who grew up in Athy of the 1950s. We Offaly Street lads, two Kellys, two Moores, two Whites, two Cashs, one Webster and two Taaffes at different times were readily identifiable with the vibrant street where we lived and played. A short distance separated us from the fellows in Leinster Street, but we were poles apart insofar as our afterschool hours were concerned. The girls from either street were invisible to us, at least until we gradually recognised that football and stone throwing battles were not the only enjoyable youthful pastimes. For that reason, Kathleen Coburn and her friends, Maura Hyland, Reiltin Blanchfield, Lily McHugh and Maura Dooley, all of whom lived in close proximity to each other, either at the top of Leinster Street or in St. Michael’s Terrace, did not cross our human radar screens. The Blanchfield’s timber yard was the girl’s usual playground, with an occasional foray into the railway station end of the People’s Park. We Offaly Streeters played in the Sunderland side of the same park and seldom, if ever, ventured beyond the invisible boundary line which separated the two sections. It was much later that I first came across Kathleen who by then was working in the offices of that wonderful Athy man, Tadgh Brennan. Kathleen’s father Tommy Stynes died at a relatively young age. I remember his shop at 10 Leinster Street from where he carried on business as an undertaker and a hackney service man. Am I imagining things when I visualise petrol pumps outside his Leinster Street shop? And what is that I hear of a juke box in his shop, something which we Offaly Street lads, accustomed to Kitty Websters and Sylvesters, could never imagine. Kathleen’s parents, I am told, after marrying first lived in the Emily Row house where Tos Quinn now has his offices. That premises would later house the Solicitors practice of Tadgh Brennan, son of the old I.R.A. man and local District Court Clerk, Fintan Brennan. It was for Tadgh Brennan that the young Kathleen Stynes went to work. I am told that Kathleen was just passed her 14th birthday when she was given the job of bringing the letters from Tadgh’s office to the Post Office every evening. She was 17 years of age when she joined the secretarial staff and had served 61 years in that practice now owned by Tos Quinn when she sadly died. I first got to know Kathleen when I returned to Athy in 1982 and found her to be a person who was helpful, thoughtful and at all times generous of spirit. Her involvement in the Dominican choir extended back over many years, and her colleagues in the choir, augmented I believe by some of the parish choir members, paid a fitting musical goodbye at St. Michael’s Parish Church on the evening of the reception of her remains in the church and at the next day’s funeral mass. Casting my mind back to the 1950s and the near neighbours of the Stynes family in No. 10 Leinster Street I remember Kitty and Bridie McLoughlin. Their father James and his wife Agnes had a pub next to the Stynes’ and further on was located Ms. Blanchfields, then Ger and Lottie Moriarty. Next door to the Moriartys were Mattie and Kathy Murray and finally Tom Hyland and his wife Margaret. Across what was once the open space were Jim and Brigid Blanchfield, with a large family of 15 children. Sad to think all has now changed. The parents have passed away, as indeed have some of the children and those that remain are to be found in many cases far from their home town of Athy. Kathleen Coburn, who was predeceased by her husband Paddy, was one of six children of Tommy and Sheila Stynes and she is survived by her daughter Sandra, her son Padraig, her granddaughters Anna, Grace, Orlaith and her siblings Phil, Anthony, Kenneth, Pascal and Finbarr. Our sympathies are extended to the family, friends and colleagues of Kathleen Coburn.

Athy's links with the O'Connell Monument Committee 1862-1888

Canon John O’Hanlon, Parish Priest and secretary of the Daniel O’Connell Monument Committee wrote a report of the committee’s work which resulted in the erection of the O’Connell monument in Dublin. The project had started with an attempt by the people of Clare to erect a column surmounted by a statue of Daniel O’Connell where the courthouse formally stood in Ennis and from where O’Connell was returned as an M.P. in 1828. As work on the column continued the local committee ran out of funds. However, money to complete the Ennis monument was soon collected when the proprietor of the Freeman’s Journal, John Gray, and a number of other persons including the ’98 historian, Dr. Richard Madden, came together to help and that group later decided to raise a national monument in honour of Daniel O’Connell in Dublin city. Canon O’Hanlon’s report on the work of the O’Connell Monument Committee published in 1888 made several references to Athy’s involvement in the project. We learned that on Monday 16th October 1862 a meeting of the townspeople was held in Kavanagh’s hotel in Athy. O’Hanlon recorded that an ‘influential committee was formed and several subscriptions were paid before the meeting separated. Arrangements were made for the reception of other contributions.’ Another interesting link with Athy was provided by Fr. John O’Rourke who was responsible for drafting an appeal addressed to the people of Ireland in support of a national collection planned for St. Patrick’s Day two years after the monument project was first mooted. Apparently the funds raised at that point were less than sufficient and Fr. O’Rourke, who had served as a curate in Athy in 1851/’52, was moved to write: ‘if the O’Connell testimonial be not now made what it ought to be, the mistake can never be retrieved; it will be a monument not to his glory, but of our shame, and our children will look upon it with sorrow and despise us.’ The well-chosen words of the one-time Athy curate who would write in 1874 the earliest published account of the Great Famine under the title ‘History of the Great Famine of 1847’ prompted a ready response throughout the country. This enabled the foundation stone of the O’Connell monument to be laid in Sackville Street by the Dublin Lord Mayor on Monday, 8th August 1864. A sub-committee was appointed to select a suitable design for the monument. Amongst their members was the earlier mentioned Fr. John O’Rourke. The sub-committee decided to hold a competition for the design of the monument and although 60 entries were received, none were successful. A second competition was held but the designs submitted were deemed to be ‘wanting in grandeur and simplicity’. It was eventually decided to give the commission to John Henry Foley, the noted Irish sculptor then based in London. Originally expected to be completed within three years of Foley’s appointment, the subsequent delay caused concern which turned to dismay with Foley’s death in August 1874. The unveiling ceremony initially planned to coincide with the centenary of O’Connell’s birth on 6th August 1875 had to be postponed indefinitely. Fr. O’Rourke and John Gray were sent to London to inspect the substantially completed O’Connell monument, but no further work was possible while the sculptor’s estate was probated in London. Court proceedings concerning Foley’s estate caused further delay, but eventually work on completing the monument recommenced after an interval of nearly three years with Foley’s assistant, Thomas Brock, in charge. Twenty years after the O’Connell monument project was initiated the Liberator’s statue was unveiled on 15th August 1882. Amongst the early subscriptions by Athy folk was the sum of £21-1-6 recorded in January 1863. James Leahy contributed £1-10-0, followed by John Lord, Solicitor, Dr. Thomas Kinsey and R. Stein, each of whom donated £1 to the fund. The local parish priest, Fr. Andrew Quinn, joined his curates Fr. McManus and Fr. Doyle in contributing 10 shillings each. Amongst those contributors also was Thomas Peppard, Town Commissioner, who was a member of the platform party at the Monster Repeal Meeting addressed by Daniel O’Connell at Mullaghmast on Sunday, 1st October 1843. Sixty-eight other locals contributed on that occasion and two weeks later five further contributions were submitted through James Lawler of the Nags Head Hotel, Athy. Athy’s involvement in raising funds for the O’Connell monument continued throughout 1864, with a further £5-5-10 paid in by contributors who included the local Christian Brothers and Dr. Ferris, each contributing ten shillings. The outlining rural areas were also committed to the project and during 1864 the Parish Priest of Castledermot, Archdeacon Laurence Dunne forwarded £6-4-3 from the parishioners of Moone, £4-15-5 from Castledermot and £3-4-9 from Levitstown. The Archdeacon’s personal contribution of £1 was separately noted, as was the ten shillings contributed by each of his curates, Fr. John Fogarty and Fr. James Germaine. The O’Connell monument stands today, a proud reminder of a past generation’s tribute to a great Irish leader.

The building of the Pairc Bhride Housing estate

During the 1930s as part of the Slum Clearance Programmes initiated by de Valera’s Government Athy U.D.C. increased its housing stock from 30 houses to 269 houses. It represented the greatest decade for house building in the town’s history. The next housing scheme planned by the Council was for 94 houses in O’Rourke’s field on the road to Barrowhouse. It was to be named Pairc Bhride after the patron saint of County Kildare. Officially opened in 1949 the tenants appointed were required to pay rents of up to 18 shillings per week in addition to a charge of 4 shillings per week for rates and water rates. Work on the houses commenced after the Department of Local Government approved in July 1948 the tender of local builders D. & J. Carbery in the sum of £134,166-18-8. The houses were completed by March 1950. The workmen employed by Carberys worked a 48 hour week, 8¾ hours a day for five days and 4¼ hours on Saturdays. The general operatives earned £4-8-10 per week, while carpenters earned £7-1-9. The workmen identified 68 years after the housing scheme was completed included Fran Ellard who drove the company’s lorry, Joe Dillon who had charge of the company’s horse and cart and Maurice Doogue who drove a large dumper. The electrician was Stephen Farrell whom I am told had a radio shop in Duke Street and the cleric of works was Godfrey McDonald of Carlow. All of the railings to the front of the houses were made and assembled by Dom Harte who later worked in the carpet department of Shaws. The youngest person on the site, and he was only there occasionally, was 8-year-old Jerry Carbery who was given the task of blowing a whistle to signal the end of the day’s work. Jerry has compiled the following names of the men who worked on the Pairc Bhride houses which I want to put on record. I would like to hear from anyone who can give me the full names of these men. M. Carbery, M. May, J. O`Connor, J. Ryan, M. Forde, M. Mullery, J. Dobbins, P. Robbins, T. Breen, C. May, J. Carbery, M. Candy, P. Fennelly, T. Knowles, M. Dooley, M. Bradley, J. Finn, J. Murray, J. Murphy, D. Shaughnessy, M. Hanley, T. Sheridan, J. Hanley, S. Dixon, T. Simms, J. Mc Evoy, P. Toomey, K. Reddy, T. Baker, A. Metcalfe, F. Mc Partlin, D. Harte, D. Nolan, J. Dillon, J. Keeffe, N. Lawler, R. Alcock, P. Aldridge, M. Johnson, P. Murphy, P. Roche, J. Sweeney, T. Dunne, J. Lucas, Ed. Pierce, J. Chanders, C. Myles, S. Bolger, P. Ryan, M. Connelly, J. Maher, P. Carbery, P. Casey, E Murray, J. Kavanagh, J. Ryan, D. Carter, J. Doogue, T. Flynn, M. Nolan, M. Prendergast, P. Doyle, J. Sweeney, F. Ellard, T. Maguire, E. Flynn, J. Duffy, T. Lynch, M. Rainsford, A. Lawler, G. Dillon, P. Kiely, , J. O`Sullivan, J. Bolger, J. Maher, J. Dunne. While reading through research notes for information on the Pairc Bhride Housing Scheme I came across the following extract from the minute book of the UDC under the date 6th of February 1950. ‘The town planning consultant submitted a sketch development plan under the Planning Acts complete except for the exact route of the proposed by-pass road. He is to consult with the County Engineer re same’. Who would have ever thought that the outer relief project goes back 67 years. Two entries in the Council minute books revived two very youthful memories of mine. One related to the drowning of young James Bracken who was lost in the River Barrow directly opposite to where the Bracken family lived in Emily Square. I remember the shock of that day as I can remember two years later the sudden death of Councillor Thomas Flood whose passing was noted in the minutes of the Council meeting of the 6th of December 1950 with the entry ‘Francis Flood, 11 Leinster Street co-opted to the Council to fill the vacancy caused by his father’s death’.