Festival Athy 1979

One of the interesting magazines published in Ireland in the aftermath of the Act of Union was the Irish Magazine. Edited by the notorious Walter (Watty) Cox it first appeared in 1807. Cox’s Magazine was one of the more significant journals of that time and engaged in what Barbara Hayley in ‘300 years of Irish Periodicals’ described as ‘outrageously insulting (behaviour) to the Administration and to the Established Church’. My interest in the Irish Magazine stemmed from my purchase of a bound copy of the monthly journal for 1809. In March of that year Michael Devoy of Kill wrote an interesting piece on the history of Athy. Devoy was a granduncle of the Fenian John Devoy. He was born at the Heath, Athy but because of his involvement in the 1798 rebellion the family moved to Kill in 1805. The Nationalist and Leinster Times of 6th October 1928 on reporting the death of John Devoy made reference to Michael Devoy’s article on Athy. It noted that the volume of the Irish Magazine in which the article appeared ‘was picked up at Mendozas Old Book Store at Ann Street, New York by Frank Richardson, a native of Athy and handed to the editor of the Gaelic American.’ The article claimed that Michael Devoy was a captain of the rebels in County Kildare during the ’98 Rebellion and that he had the benefit of his father’s long and intimate knowledge of the town of Athy when writing the article. Devoy in the Irish magazine article recounted how the monastery on the west side of the River Barrow was founded by Richard de St. Michael, the Lord of Rheban, under the invocations of St. John and St. Thomas. The precinct of the monastery extended from the river at the foot of the bridge, containing all that part of the town called St. Johns and St. John’s Lane and its demesne consisted of the island in the river and the adjacent fields as far as the military barracks. He noted that the Dominican Monastery on the east side of the river, founded in 1253 by the families of the Boisels and Hogans, extended from the river along the north side of the church to the corner of the street heading to Prestons Gate and from there along the street under the said gate and to the corner of Janeville Lane and to the rear of the present house called The Abbey. The church referred to was the Church of Ireland church which was then located at the rear of the Town Hall and interestingly Devoy referenced the claim that the church steeple had formed part of the old Dominican Abbey. The reference to the house called The Abbey which was demolished a few years ago was much older than we all thought given Devoy’s references to it in 1809. Whites Castle, according to Devoy, was built by the 8th Earl of Kildare about 1506, a year or two after a bridge over the river Barrow was built. He claimed that the castle was repaired and enlarged in 1575 by William White from hence it obtained the name Whites Castle. Among the town ruins noted over 200 years ago were those of St. Michael’s Church built some time in the 14th century and founded, as Devoy claimed, by the St. Michael family. He described the ‘new chapel’ built in place of the chapel burned in the aftermath of the 1798 Rebellion, which he says was built on a plot of ground granted by the Duke of Leinster. He continued ‘the new chapel (which was demolished in 1960) is not by any means suitable to the large congregation, nor on a plan fit for a country chapel.’ Apparently, he was dissatisfied with the construction of a gallery which he claimed ‘from the noise above the people below for about 60 feet in length cannot hear the priest’s voice, the men ranged on one side and the women on the other.’ He referred to the Quaker Meeting House and to the Methodist House as well as the prison (then in Whites Castle) which he claims was without a privy until an addition was built in 1802. He decried the fact that there was no manufacturer of any consequence in the town which for many years ‘surpassed the Kingdom for the best and most extensive tanyards.’ Athy was also he claimed the most extensive town in Ireland about 30 years previously for distilling whiskey ‘there being 14 stills at full work and the entire of the malt to supply them was manufactured here.’ The one redeeming feature according to Devoy was the extensive porter and ale brewery carried on by Robert Rawson and the extensive flour mills ‘in the neighbourhood, two of which are in the town.’ This years famine Remembrance Service will be held in St. Mary’s Cemetery located opposite St. Vincent’s Hospital on Sunday 15th May at 3.00 p.m. The service gives us an opportunity to publicly honour Athy’s Famine dead with dignity and reverence and to recall a period in our history which cast a shadow over Ireland’s subsequent history.