Athy's Women Shed

Lunchtime on Thursday gave me an opportunity to visit local exhibitions by two talented artists whose work has benefited from grants provided by Kildare County Council under the Council’s Heritage Scheme and the Creative Arts Scheme. My first port of call was to the local library to see Marie Hopkins’ depiction of five element of Athy’s built heritage. Marie has created in acrylic a unique display showing the Town Hall, the Courthouse, the Methodist Church, Whites Castle and the former Dominican Church, now our town library. Her work highlighted what I imagine would generally be accepted by many as architecturally the more important buildings in Athy. We pass them by every day, seldom, if ever, giving a thought to the workmanship of the masons of past years whose talents and skills are mirrored in the buildings they built. My next visit was to Athy Arts Centre located in the town’s Methodist Church, which is one of the buildings captured in Marie Hopkins’ earlier mentioned exhibition. I was expecting to review the paintings produced by participants in the Brigid 1500 Art Project which was led by local artist Cathy Callan. Cathy is one of several superb artists living and working in the South Kildare area. On arrival in the Arts Centre I was met not only by the work of the Brigid 1500 Art Project participants as well as several excellent pictures by Cathy herself, but also by the sight and sounds of a Christmas fair organised by Athy Women’s Shed group. The tables were choc a bloc with Christmassy fare, but my attention was diverted to a discussion taking place in the centre/church led by Eilish Langton, Creative Art Organiser. On stage was the artist Cathy Callan taking questions about her art, during which she explained how in good weather she likes to paint outside as drawing and painting directly from life are experiences she treasures. The jolly women in the former classroom of the Methodist Church were enjoying themselves as they manned their Christmas stalls. I decided there and then to write of the Women’s Shed in this week’s Eye and asked if some background information could be emailed to me. Low and behold within a few hours Breda Gavagan, Chairperson of Athy’s Women’s Shed, sent me an extensive note and it is from here that I give over this week’s Eye to Breda Gavagan and her group. ‘The Athy Women's Shed was founded with just five members in February 2022 in a community house in Townspark. The goal of the shed is to reduce isolation among women. especially after Covid. It provides a safe, inclusive space for women to learn and connect through sharing stories, experiences and knowledge. There are currently 40 members, the shed operates on a Tuesday morning for 3 hours (11am-2pm). Members come from Athy and the surrounding areas, some come from as far afield as Carlow and Kildare town. The membership is currently closed. Activities include creative arts and crafts projects, horticulture, healthy food made easy cookery classes, jewellery making classes, ceramics, basket weaving, dragon boating, walking club, aqua aerobics, and women's health demonstrations and talks. The Chill Out Choir is also part of the Women Shed and they sing coming up to Christmas in Cloverlodge Nursing Home, St. Vincents Day Care Centre, Whitewater Shopping Centre Newbridge, etc. We collaborate with other groups such as Creative Places Athy for art projects, the community education programme, Kildare Sports Partnership and the Athy Alternative Project. Since we started, we have packed in a lot, we participated in two St. Patrick’s Day Parades, a Bring and Share for International Women’s Day, and two Dragon boat days on the River Barrow, one of which was with the Naas Men’s Shed, a Breast Cancer Awareness talk, two trips to Bloom in the Phoenix Park and the Shackleton Needs a New Hat project, which raised funds for the Athy Family Resource Centre. We visited the Dail which was organised through Senator Mark Wall and the Seanad, which was recorded on the minutes of the Seanad, which will forever be in the history of Ireland. Four committee members met President Michael Higgins and his wife Sabina at a Garden Party in Áras an Uachtaráin, organised for individuals who have dedicated their lives to make a positive impact in their communities. We have given back to the community by donating knitted blankets to St. Vincent’s Hospital Athy and St. Brigid's Hospice in the Curragh. We did a Fundraising day for the Ukraine Appeal with The Irish Red Cross. For our mental health and well-being, we have run Yoga workshops with Margareta Kal and Sound Healing and meditation with Kiera Geoghan. We have done a boat trip in Kilkenny with Cliff Reid, a tour of Kilkenny Castle, the Shackleton Museum tour, the Military Museum tour in the Curragh, a tour of the Natural History Museum and the National Gallery of Ireland, both in Dublin, and historical walks around Athy town. We participated in the Healthy Eating course run by Healthy Ireland. We collaborated with several artists such as Cathy Callan, Claire Murphy, Nasrim Golden and Orla Mc Donagh on projects. We have created our manifesto with artist Nasrim Golden and some of our art with Cathy Callan was displayed at Electric Picnic. We participated in our first event with the Kildare yarn bombers during the June Fest in Newbridge. We participated in the Brigid 1500 project with artist Cathy Callan, a year-long project that ended with an exhibition which is currently on view in the Athy Community Arts Centre.’ The members of the Women’s Shed are to be congratulated for their impressive work in encouraging the exchange of experiences, knowledge and friendship.

Poverty in Athy of old and Athy's Workhouse

With Christmas time fast approaching our thoughts turn to festive celebrations. Sadly, the festive season offers no respite from the daily struggle facing many households. The local St. Vincent de Paul Society which tries to help out families in need throughout the year, makes extra special efforts to bring some comfort to many at Christmas time. Last weekend the local Lions Club held it’s annual food appeal collecting funds to enable the St. Vincent de Paul Society to offer some extra help to needy families during the Christmas period. Athy, despite its impressive history as a market town of regional importance, a position which it held up to fifty years ago, was always home to a substantial number of poor families living in the laneways and alleyways of pre-slum clearance days. The two roomed and one roomed hovels built by private landlords in the 18th and 19th centuries were still part of Athy’s townscape up to the mid-1930s. It was the Slum Clearance Programmes of the third decade of the last century which did away with many of the town’s unfit and unhealthy slum dwellings. It is quite revealing to look back at Athy of 1846 and to see the enormous progress the town had made following the opening of the Canal in 1792 and the expected opening of the railway line to Athy the following year. Athy had adopted the commercial sophistication of a prosperous market town with an impressive number of craft persons trading in the town. Bakers, blacksmiths, boot and shoemakers, butchers, carpenters, saddlers, tailors with a tin plate worker and a tanner spoke of a thriving commercial town life existing side by side with many for whom the prospect of work was limited to seasonal farm work or summer work in the local brick yards. Athy’s economic lifeline in the early years of the 19th century were its fairs and markets, with its weekly market of particular importance. There was substantial unemployment in all Irish provincial towns during the 19th century and here in Athy with a history as a fortified garrison town inevitably the lure of army life saw many Athy men enlisting in the English army. The Crimean War saw many Athy men joining up, while the Boer War and especially the First World War saw high numbers enlisting. The unemployed men enlisted during times when State aid was not yet in place to assist the unemployed. Indeed, in the absence of State involvement the philanthropy of what was identified as the ‘gentry and clergy’ of the time established a dispensary system in Athy in 1818 to meet the medical needs of the poor. Those same people would later help fund the building of a fever hospital at a time when cholera outbreaks presented great risks for the general public and not just those living in unfit houses bereft of sewerage facilities and served by streetside water pumps supplying contaminated drinking water. A letter published in the Athy Literary Magazine in March 1838 claimed that Athy was ‘completely neglected ….. sickness and starvation visited alike the able bodies and the aged poor.’ The Workhouse in Athy planned to accommodate 360 adults and 240 children was opened on 9th January 1844. Within a few years two auxiliary workhouses had to be opened to accommodate the 1528 starving men, women and children who towards the end of the Great Famine sought shelter and food within the high walls of the Workhouse. Nowadays we do not have the same level of poverty as that witnessed by our predecessors of earlier centuries. What we have is deprivation and in many cases hunger which can only be helped by neighbours or community members coming together and working through charitable organisations such as the St. Vincent de Paul. If you missed the opportunity to make a donation during the Lions Club Food Appeal, you can still drop your contributions into the local St. Vincent de Paul shop in William Street. While writing of the Workhouse I was reminded that it is now almost four years since the then chairman of Kildare County Council agreed to my request for a suitable memorial to be erected in St. Mary’s Cemetery to honour the memory of the more than 1200 unfortunate Workhouse inmates who died during the Great Famine. A recent report in this newspaper would seem to indicate that any memorial to be erected was intended to highlight the deaths of women and children in the Workhouse which one Councillor seems to regard as a Mother and Child Home. Athy’s Workhouse, later the County Home, was never part of the Mother and Child Home regime. It was the Workhouse where sick and hungry men women and children from Athy and district died. The memory of the Famine dead who now lie in unmarked graves in St. Marys cemetery should never be forgotten. A stand-alone Famine memorial should be put in place without further delay.

The Death of Manager

The news of Margaret Walsh’s sad death was an unexpected blow to her family and friends and those of us associated with the Athy Heritage Centre/Shackleton Museum where Margaret was Manager for the last 19 years or so. I interviewed Margaret and several other candidates for that position, not having met her or known her previously. She was a very private person but at the same time she was someone who endeared herself to the Museum visitors and especially those who came each year to the annual Shackleton Autumn School. That event held over an October weekend since 2001 was I believe in its fourth year when Margaret joined the Heritage Centre. For the years that followed Margaret became the contact person for the Irish and overseas visitors who travelled to Athy for the Autumn School. The high regard those visitors had for Margaret was borne out by many messages of sympathy received from America, Norway and our near neighbour the UK following her death. Margaret, who was ill for the past two years, tried valiantly to keep to the high work standards she had set for herself in previous years. Her work in securing official Museum status for Athy Heritage Centre in 2016 was of the highest quality and enabled the Heritage Centre to move ahead of many other local centres/museums. It is tragic that Margaret passed away the same week as the building contractor moved into Athy’s Town Hall to start the long-awaited development of the Shackleton Museum. Margaret was part of the team that worked so hard over several years to secure the successful transition of the local Heritage Centre to become a museum of national, if not, international importance. The Shackleton Museum when opened will represent the third stage of a development which started with the opening of a one room local museum which was manned voluntarily for three hours every Sunday. Forty years have now passed since that first Sunday opening. The subsequent opening of the Heritage Centre in the Town Hall by Minister Charlie McCreevy in June 1998 followed on the appointment of the Centre’s first Manager in November of the previous year. Mark McLoughlin from Kildare town was the Centre’s first mManager and he remained in that position until January 2001. Margaret O’Riordan was next to take up the roll as Heritage Centre Manager and it was during her tenure that the Shackleton Autumn School was started. Margaret O’Riordan left to join the staff of University College Galway in early 2004 and following interviews the same year Margaret Walsh from Monasterevin took over as Manager. Managing the Heritage Centre with limited funds and very few staff was a difficult job. However, Margaret and her staff together with the Board members, all of whom were and still are volunteers, did an excellent job over many years. The success which is today marked by the multi-million euro redevelopment of the Town Hall building owes much to the work of everyone involved in the Heritage Centre project over many years. Margaret Walsh’s contribution and dedication was acknowledged and recognised by the staff members, Board members, volunteers and Shackleton Autumn School attendees who attended her funeral Mass in Monasterevin and later walked with the funeral cortege to Margaret’s last place of rest with her deceased parents. Margaret was the public face of the Shackleton Autumn School and she built a rapport with the many visitors to the annual October event which was reflected in the many messages of sympathy received from abroad and throughout Ireland following her death. Once such message from Northern Ireland read:- ‘For almost 20 years we have been regular attenders at the Shackleton Autumn School and Margaret was always our friendly gateway to the weekend. She dealt with all our queries and bookings in a calm, efficient, friendly and familiar manner and always made us so welcome when we arrived for the weekend.’ Another annual visitor writing from England wrote to me. ‘The Autumn School will not seem the same without Margaret; she was a special lady.’ Margaret fell ill approximately two years ago but being the private person she was she sought to continue working. Just the day before the last Shackleton Autumn School was to start, she received an urgent call to return to hospital but despite her worsening condition she insisted on attending for work the following day with the opening of the Autumn School. The next day at the school dinner I shared a table with Margaret and there was little hint of what lay ahead as we talked of the Museum redevelopment work which was to start the following week. Margaret would not live to see the commencement of the work. She had played her part as did many others in fulfilling a dream which in time to come will make Athy and the Shackleton Museum an important part of the worldwide polar network. Margaret will be sadly missed by us all. Ar dhéis Dé go raibh a anam.

The Role of History Societies in retrieving County Kildare's lost history

When I was growing up in Athy in the 1950s history was a school subject, loathed by some, studied by many, even if disliked, as a necessary subject which faced us as we sat our Intermediate or Leaving Certificate examinations. If truth be told our history lessons were dull affairs as we learned of battles in Europe and the oft told tales of Irish rebellions and Irish martyrs. The only text book available in those days was that written by Hayden & Noonan, University professors in Dublin, which was published in the 1930s or thereabouts. All Irish history finished insofar as secondary school students were concerned with the execution of the leaders of the 1916 rebellion. There was no local Athy element in any of the history lessons delivered in the local Christian Brothers School. After we bounded up the iron stairs to the three classrooms on the first floor of the school building, we learned of the Great Famine and its devastating affect on the people of West Cork and the counties on the western seaboard. No mention however of Athy’s Workhouse or of the more than 1,200 lifeless bodies carted from the Workhouse across the nearby canal bridge to be buried in unmarked graves in St. Mary’s Cemetery. The famine dead of the Athy Poor Law Union were never part of our history school lessons. A similar loss of community memory saw the events and hangings here in Athy during the 1798 Rebellion ignored for many generations. Another aspect of the town’s story which was similarly forgotten was the involvement of Athy men in the First World War. It is only in recent decades that Ireland’s and South Kildare’s local histories have been retrieved. For this we must acknowledge the extraordinary growth in the formation of local history societies in recent years. Here in South Kildare we have history societies in Athy, in Castledermot and in Ballitore, while there are few, if any, towns or villages throughout Ireland without similar voluntary groups seeking to unearth their local histories. The oldest such society in County Kildare is the Kildare Archaeological Society founded in 1891. Its first president was the Duke of Leinster. In the intervening years the Society has published a journal containing articles relating to the history and archaeology of County Kildare. In addition, the Society initially met three times a year, twice for lectures and once for an excursion to a place of archaeological interest in the county. The society now continues to hold outings, generally six or seven per year, while the Journal is published every second year. The 2022-2023 Journal was launched a few weeks ago at the society’s annual dinner held in nearby Kilkea Castle. That annual event was planned for the former home of Lord Walter Fitzgerald, who it is generally accepted was the moving force in the founding of the Kildare Archaeological Society. The current President of the Society is Siobhan McNulty of Athy whose maternal grandfather was the legendary Tom Moore of Offaly Street. Tom was for more than half a century secretary of Rheban Gaelic Football Club, which with his brother John and others helped establish in 1929. Siobhan’s paternal grandfather was Peter McNulty whose involvement in the War of Independence as a member of Frank Aiken’s Flying Column was little known until a few years ago. Sadly his contribution during the War of Independence, like that of so many others, was not known or acknowledged during his lifetime. Siobhan McNulty’s election to the Presidency of the Kildare Archaeological Society was the first time an Athy person holds that position. Interesting to note that the Athy connection was highlighted in the Society’s recently published Journal with a photograph of Athy’s courthouse on its front cover. The photograph was taken by local photographer Peadar Doogue, whose photographic work over many years has shown him to be a photographer of the highest standard. Membership of the Kildare Archaeological Society is open to everyone and especially anyone wanting to learn more about the history and archaeology of County Kildare. Persons wishing to join the Society should contact its membership secretary, Mr. G. Connolly, Newington House, Christianstown, Co. Kildare. The final history lecture for this year was held in the Community Arts Centre on Tuesday last. Thanks to Dr. Sharon Greene for a very interesting talk on Stephen Le Scrope who died during a plague outbreak in Castledermot during the 15th century. The story of his connection with Castledermot supported the view that the medieval walled town of Castledermot, the location of early meetings, now regarded as the first Irish Parliaments, was in many respects a more important outpost than its near neighbour, Athy. Our town, situated on the Marches of Kildare, was primarily a fortress town, garrisoned as the first line of defence to protect those living within the Pale. Our town’s past, whether socially or militarily, provides us with stories which need to be recorded and passed on. Unlike the history lessons of my generation there is a wealth of information now available to us thanks in many ways to the growing interest in local history and the formation of local history societies throughout Ireland.