White's Castle and the possibility of its acquisition by Athy U.D.C. in the 1950s

The Nationalist and Leinster Times of December 17th 1955 under the headline ‘Bord Failte foots the Bill’ reported on that week’s Athy Urban District Council meeting which had been attended by two representatives of Bord Failte. The Councillors were informed of Bord Failte’s plans to acquire Whites Castle for development as a museum. The entire acquisition and renovation costs were to be borne by the tourism authority. Bord Failte also undertook to provide suitable living quarters for a caretaker and to pay all legal costs in connection with the transfer of ownership to the Urban Council. It was indicated that the Marquis of Kildare had promised several artefacts for display in the museum, while the Acting Town Clerk Jimmy O’Higgins was pleased to announce that ‘all necessary work on the Castle would be carried out under the supervision of Bord Failte’. The Council’s Chairman Tom Carbery proposed a vote of thanks to the Bord Failte representatives, Messrs P. Lawler and P.J. Hartnett which was seconded by Matt Tynan who expressed the view that ‘the people of Athy will be glad to know that the town would soon have its own museum.’ In response Mr. Lawler of Bord Failte reminded the Councillors that ‘if Athy and other inland centres can offer an attraction of that nature, they will be handsomely paid by the money that comes from tourism.’ The Urban Council minute book records the first reference to the museum in Whites Castle as a letter to the Council from Bord Failte on 10th July 1953 suggesting that the Council purchase Whites Castle for use as a local museum. The Council members agreed to enquire into the tenure rights of Miss Norman who occupied the castle. The next reference in the Council minute book to the museum was on 2nd March 1955 after Bord Failte submitted drawings and specifications for proposed structural and decorative work to Whites Castle. The local Councillors enquiries, if any, into Miss Norman’s tenancy rights were not recorded but in considering the Bord Failte drawings it was agreed ‘to see if Miss Norman would act as a caretaker to the museum.’ A new Council was elected in June 1955 and at their meeting the following September the Councillors resolved ‘that before any final decision is taken by the Council as regards the acquisition of Whites Castle a sub-committee consisting of the Chairman Tom Carbery and Councillors Dooley and Tynan be and is hereby appointed to interview Miss Norman to obtain her view on what remuneration she will require if she was appointed caretaker of the proposed museum.’ At the October meeting the Chairman reported that he and Councillor Tynan and the Town Clerk visited Miss Norman on 5th October. She was willing to act as caretaker of the museum for £1 per week plus fees collected from visitors. She also required the Council to provide her with adequate living quarters in the Castle and to employ ‘a charwoman for the museum.’ These terms were dependant on her retaining her old age pension of 24 shillings per week. The terms were accepted by the Council subject to Bord Failte bearing the full costs of converting the castle for use as a local museum. The project advanced when Bord Failte after initially refusing to do so agreed to provide showcases for the museum. In June 1956 Bord Failte reported that if Miss Norman became life tenant of portion of Whites Castle there would be no difficulty in the Council obtaining clear possession on her death. The Council immediately passed a resolution that ‘the caretakers’ quarters in Whites Castle be leased to Miss Mary Norman for her lifetime.’ The County Manager wrote to Miss Norman on 1st August 1956 setting out the Council’s terms to which her Solicitor, P.J. O’Neill, replied on 31st August (P.J. O’Neill had been a member of Athy U.D.C. from 1950 to 1955). Mr. O’Neill claimed that Miss Norman had a ‘valuable saleable interest in Whites Castle which she occupies under a lease dated 25th April 1925 for a term of 60 years at a yearly rent of £5. Accordingly, she was not prepared to surrender her interest in the property to Athy U.D.C. without receiving suitable monetary compensation.’ The Council members having considered the letter concluded that they had nothing further to add to their original offer. The local newspaper of 6th February 1957 reported the Council’s receipt of a letter from Bord Failte which stated ‘in view of Miss Norman’s refusal to accept the Council’s offer ….. there would appear to be no alternative but to abandon the project and accordingly Bord Failte’s offer of grant in aid towards rehabilitation of Whites Castle for the purpose of a museum was being withdrawn.’ The Councillors agreed to send a deputation to meet Miss Norman and her Solicitor. There is no record of what transpired but by letter of 26th April 1957 Bord Failte advised that its commitments over the following five years ‘and the necessity for adhering to a planned programme leaves no immediate prospect of making a grant in aid towards the rehabilitation of Whites Castle.’ When I founded the Athy Museum Society in 1983 I was not aware of the opportunity which had been presented 28 years earlier to open a museum in Whites Castle. There have been three occasions within the past 20 years for Athy Urban Council or Kildare County Council to acquire the castle. However, on each occasion the local authority failed to grasp the opportunity to purchase Athy’s most iconic building. I have no doubt that some time in the future Whites Castle will be acquired, developed and opened as a public museum to complement the town’s existing Shackleton Museum.

Garda Siochana members from Athy and the G.A.A.

We are about to celebrate the centenary of the founding of our police force, a celebration which would throw up memories good and bad for every family and every household in Ireland. For many households it will be good memories of family members who joined the Garda Siochana, for others sad memories of Garda members who were killed or injured in the course of their duties as Guardians of the Peace. Others may have memories which centre on wrongdoings and the part played by Gardai in bringing offenders to justice. Whatever our memories, the Garda Siochana has played an important role in the lives of several generations of Irish people. We may complain about the apparent lack of interaction between the Garda Siochana and the general public drawing comparison with the Gardai of an earlier age for whom “policing” was such an important part of the policeman’s role. Whatever about the strength and weaknesses of the modern day Garda Siochana one welcomed aspect of the earlier force was a decision of the then Commissioner Eoin O’Duffy to encourage Gardai to be involved in Gaelic sports. It was a decision which helped to break down the barriers which existed between the Irish people and the previous policing force, the RIC, during the War of Independence. Over the last 100 years Gaelic football and hurling has had many great exponents of the games who in their everyday life wore the uniform of An Garda Siochana. Here in Athy we were privileged to have one of the great footballing greats of the past, Garda George Comerford who captained the Athy team which won the Kildare senior championships in 1937. George was stationed as a garda in Athy working out of the Garda barracks in Duke Street which was then directly opposite what was Maxwells Garage. During his footballing days George togged out for four different counties, his native Clare, Dublin, Kildare and Louth. He joined the gardai in 1931 and that same year he was the only non Kerry man on the Munster team that defeated Leinster in the Railway Cup final. He also played on the Irish team in the Tailteann games of 1932. As captain of the Athy senior team in 1937 he played alongside Johnny McEvoy of Woodstock Street who would later join the Garda Siochana. Johnny who played for the Kildare senior county team for several years also won a county Dublin championship medal as a member of the Garda football club. The 1950’s saw the emergence of two young Athy club members as stars on the Kildare County senior team. Brendan Kehoe whose father John W operated a pub in Offaly Street first played for the county team in 1957. For the following four years he was a regular on the Kildare County team. Brendan joined the Garda Siochana and retired some years ago as a Sergeant. Another Athy player to feature in the 1957 Kildare county team was Mick Carolan whose county playing career extended over a period of 18 years. Mick, who has been the subject of a previous Eye in the Past, like his team mate, Brendan Keogh also joined the Garda Siochana. He won an All Star award in 1966 and retired from the Garda Siochana as a Superintendent several years ago. Another retired member of An Garda Siochana who played football for Athy Gaelic Football Club and County Kildare is Eamonn Henry. Eamonn who is now a retired member of An Garda Siochana played as did his father for his native County Roscommon. Eamonn featured as a County player on the Kildare team between 1984 and 1987 following which he lined out for County Roscommon for another 3 years. He won a senior championship medal playing for Athy in 1987 and indeed won the Man of the Match award in that final. Anthony McLoughlin currently serving as a Superintendent in the Garda Siochana also played football for Athy and Kildare County. He was on the Athy senior championship winning team of 1987 with his garda colleague, Eamonn Henry. These men all members of An Garda Siochana who played for Athy Gaelic football club surely fulfilled Eoin O’Duffy’s desire for Gaelic sport to create comradeship within the ranks of the Garda Siochana. Their participation in the sport also helped create a bond between the members of the Gardai and the people they served as Commissioner O’Duffy had intended. The involvement of young gardai in Gaelic games up and down the country is in sharp contrast to the events of the 4th of August 1918 when the then young GAA took on the British empire and the Garda Siochana’s predecessors, the Royal Irish Constabulary who had sought to ban the playing of GAA games.

The Great Famine and Athy

Started in 2008 the National Famine Commemoration Day gives the Irish people one dedicated day each year to reflect on one of the most significant tragic events in our history. The Great Famine which started in 1845 resulted in the deaths by starvation or disease of one million Irish men, women and children and the loss of a million and a half others to emigration. The third Sunday in May was officially designated by the Government as the National Famine Commemoration Day and this year the Athy commemoration ceremony will be held in St. Mary’s cemetery across the Canal bridge from the former local workhouse, now St. Vincent’s Hospital, on Sunday the 15th of May. In December 1995 Kildare County Council published “Lest we Forget – Kildare and the Great Famine” and by doing so allowed our knowledge of a significant and sad period of our history to overtake the silence of those who survived the famine. By and large those survivors did not pass on to the next generation their accounts of the unimaginable horrors of the Great Famine and so it was left to a later generation of historians to broaden our knowledge of those distressful days. I was one of the contributors to the County Council’s publication and in researching Athy’s Great Famine story I was astonished to learn of the emigration scheme which saw young girls from Athy’s workhouse sent to Australia after the famine. The death of 1,205 inmates of Athy’s workhouse during the Great Famine was another fact from our local history with which I was not familiar. Indeed that lack of knowledge extended not only to everyone of my generation but also to all post famine generations. A Catholic priest, Fr. John O’Rourke, who served as a curate in Athy from 1851 to 1852 wrote “The History of The Great Famine of 1847” which was one of the earliest accounts of the famine. It remained a standard work for generations but even his account has no reference to Athy’s famine story. The town of Athy was estimated to have lost upwards of 1,036 persons in addition to the 1,205 who died in the workhouse. The population of Athy Poor Law Union fell by 10,701 in the ten years to 1851. Within that part of the union area located in County Kildare the actual decrease was 19.04% while in the County Laois area of the union the population loss was a staggering 28.26%. At the height of the famine 16,365 persons from the Athy Poor Law Union were fed from local soup kitchens. This represented 34% of the total population. The highest dependency on soup kitchen rations was in the Ballyadams electoral division where it was almost 100%. The possibility of hungry distressed poor people exacting retribution on the prosperous merchant class was a matter of concern for local Justice of the Peace, John Butler who lived in St. John’s, Athy. He wrote as follows to Dublin Castle in April 1848 “As the only resident magistrate in this town I beg leave to state to your excellency that a few days ago the troops quartered here were withdrawn and the town left to the protection of a few police. I beg to refer that this is a county town with a jail and nearly 100 prisoners in it, 16 of whom are under sentence of transportation and only the Governor and three turnkeys to guard them. There are two banks in the town, a barrack for either cavalry or infantry and not a soldier. I do not like my native town in these alarming times to be left to the protection of 10 or a dozen policemen”. Athy was to remain peaceful despite the revolutionary events in Europe that same year and the short lived revolution led by William Smith O’Brien which ended with what became known as the battle of widow McCormacks cabbage patch. Throughout the first six months of 1849 the workhouse numbers in Athy increased so as to require the provision of additional workhouse accommodation. A grand canal store at Nelson Street was requisitioned to accommodate the overflow from the workhouse while five houses in Barrack Street were taken over for use as an auxiliary workhouse. It was only in recent years that we have come to understand how the Great Famine physically and emotionally shattered the lives of so many families from this area. It was for generations an unrecorded and unspoken period in our local history until it gradually became part of the community’s folk memory which helped define the relationship between a decolonised 26 counties and Britain. Here in Athy our famine dead from the local workhouse were brought across the road to be buried in unmarked graves in the workhouse cemetery. St. Michael’s cemetery also holds the remains of those residents of the town who died during the Great Famine. On Sunday, 15th of May at 3.00pm a short service will be held in St. Mary’s cemetery to remember Athy’s famine dead and to recall what was the single most important event in Irish history.

The fight for Athy Outer Relief Road

We are told that history is written by the victors. Not always it seems, as evidenced by the recent publicity surrounding the “tossing of the sod” to mark the start of work on the construction of the Southern Distributor Road formerly referred to as the Outer Relief Road. This was a project first proposed in or around 1975 as part of a traffic alleviation measure in anticipation of increased traffic flows through the town of Athy. Both an inner relief road and an outer relief road were suggested as future developments for the town and the then council members Paddy Dooley, Mossie Reilly, Jim McEvoy, Cha Chanders, Christy Delahunt, Enda Kinsella, Frank English, Jim Bergin and Megan Maguire accepted the experts proposals. However, there was no follow up until 10 years later when it became known that the inner relief road was to be built with walls on either side as it went through the centre of the town. This was an unbelievable degree of planning ineptitude which prompted the councillors elected in 1985 to raise objections which eventually led the County Council officials to announce that the roadside walls would not be built. At the same time some members of the Urban Council expressed concern at the building of a traffic route through the centre of the town which prompted the then County Manager Gerry Ward to bring forward an agreement whereby responsibility for any new road development passed from Athy U.D.C to Kildare County Council. At that stage while a majority of the Athy Councillors approved the building of an inner relief road, opposition to it’s construction was increasing amongst the local people. In its later stages that opposition was led by a newly formed Athy Urban Development Group which supported the alternative outer relief road as the best solution for the town’s growing traffic problems. However, a majority of the local councillors still supported the inner relief road and the matter became a local election issue during the Local Government elections of 1999. The election of 9 members of Athy U.D.C in June of that year saw 5 members elected who opposed the inner relief road and supported the outer relief road. However, just two weeks after the election one of the newly elected Councillors changed his views to give a majority in favour of the inner relief road. Kildare County Council was now ready to proceed with the building of the inner relief road which would exit from Meeting Lane across the back square and over a new bridge to join the Kilkenny Road at Augustus Bridge. It was a proposal which was the subject of a Planning Appeal Board enquiry held in the Curragh over 8 days in 2005. The local people’s objections to the inner relief road were presented with the assistance of Derek Tynan, Architect and Conor Wall, Environmental Consultant and opposed by numerous experts engaged by Kildare County Council. The Planning Board decision of the 2nd of June 2005 rejected the Council’s plan for an inner relief road as it considered that the road would both fail as a street and as a relief road because it would continue to bring traffic, including heavy commercial vehicles, through the town centre. This was a landmark ruling being the first time a local authority road scheme was rejected by the Planning Appeal Board. Undaunted Kildare County Council appealed the Planning Board decision to the High Court where they were also unsuccessful. Several years passed during which time Kildare County Council and Athy Urban District Council insisted on including the construction of an inner relief road in Athy’s town development plan. In the meantime nothing was done to advance the building of a new road. A change of attitude came with a change of personnel and the outer relief road project, fast approaching it’s 50th anniversary, was taken up and moved forward. Kildare County Council applied to the Planning Appeal Board for planning permission for the outer relief road which was granted in October 2017. The contract for the €40 million road construction contract was awarded to the Kill, County Kildare based firm BAM Ireland last October. Happily work on the much needed road has now commenced. The new 3.4 KM road will include two new roundabouts, new signalised junctions, footpaths and cycleways as well as an 80M single span bridge over the River Barrow which will allow the present railway bridge to be used for pedestrians and cyclists. It was those local people who resisted the inner relief road project and supported a call for an outer relief road who deserve our praise and gratitude. Amongst those were the following members of the development group which was formed in 1998 as a non-party political group to support the building of the outer relief road and to oppose the building of an inner relief road. They included Joan Collis, Vera Doyle, Mick Grufferty, Padraig Healy, Henry Howard, Fiona Rainsford, Liam Rainsford, Carmel Reddy and Peggy Whelan. The local politicians who supported the towns people’s opposition to an inner relief road and advocated for an outer relief road included Sean Cunnane, Frank English, Mark Dalton and Michael Foley. The true story of the campaign for the outer relief road or what is now called the Southern Distributor Road is one which is in danger of being overlooked or misinterpreted by later generations. This short account tells the true story of a controversial road project which brought a majority of the local people of Athy into conflict over several years with many of the towns public representatives and with the local authorities of Athy and Kildare County. When the new road is completed it will represent the greatest intervention in the town of Athy since the arrival of the railway in 1847.