Boyd's Shoe Shop and its founder Jim Boyd

The journey from Killeshandra, Co. Cavan to the South Kildare village of Castledermot was made by Jim Boyd almost 90 years ago. Jim, who had served his apprenticeship in a drapery/shoe shop in Cootehill, was joining Copes of Castledermot, then one of the biggest employers in the south of the shortgrass county. A few years later Jim took up employment with Shaws in its Duke Street premises where the legendary Sam Shaw was in charge. For the next four or five years the County Cavan man had charge of the busy shoe department in Shaws at a time when late shop openings on Saturday nights were a feature of the commercial life of the market town of Athy. With a population which had remained fairly constant over the previous 100 years Athy in the 1930s was a busy town, with a wide range of independent shops. Jim Boyd seized the opportunity to open his own shoe shop at No. 37 Duke Street. The premises had at different times housed a sweet shop, a bakery and a tailors business. For the next 85 years or so it would be a shoe shop in that part of Duke Street which in its earlier years had as neighbours a wide variety of businesses. Across the street was Lily and Teresa Kanes’ sweet shop, Jim Fennin’s grocery shop, Brophy’s public house and Finbar Purcell’s butcher shop, with Conroy’s public house at the corner of Green Alley. On the same side of the street as Jim Boyd’s shoe shop were to be found Sam Wards, P.P. Doyles pawn shop, Molly Bradley’s sweet shop, Mrs. Farrell’s tea rooms and on the corner of Woodstock Street the unforgettable Ernest O’Rourke Glynn’s shop. Jim Boyd carried on a successful business for many years. As with all other shop owners of that time the proprietors and their families lived over the shops which lined the main streets of Athy. Jim died in 1986 and his wife, formerly Elizabeth Harris from Mountmellick, whom he married two years after he opened his shop, died in 1995. Their son Basil, who had joined his father in the shoe shop in 1961 carried on the business and his recent announcement of the impending closure of Boyd’s shoe shop will bring an end to the oldest business in this part of Duke Street. Although Basil was born in No. 37 Duke Street, like so many other local shopkeepers, he stopped living over the shop many years ago. The change in recent years in living patterns within the centre of Irish towns has had an impact on the vitality of provincial town centres. It has led to a substantial under use of badly needed living accommodation which government agencies and local authorities have failed to deal with. Basil Boyd has witnessed, as we all have, the gradual decline in the commercial strength of our town which fifty years or so ago was regarded as one of the most successful market towns in Leinster. Local shops attracted customers, whose custom and loyalty was retained by the judicious availability of credit and family account books. I well remember my own parents having credit accounts in Jim Fennin’s grocery shop, in Shaws, as well as M.G. Nolans where I presume payments were made on a monthly basis as my father’s wages were paid. There were no credit cards in those days, nor did many have bank accounts. Credit Unions were still in the future, while few people had any access to business with the three local banks which once graced Athy’s main streets. Strangely with a population more than fifty per cent smaller than it is today, Athy of yesteryear was a thriving and busy town. Local shop businesses did well, yet today with a much larger population the empty shop premises which marks one’s journey through the towns main streets speak of changing times. Centralisation, so beloved of governments past and present, saw the quite recent loss of Town Councils throughout Ireland. In our Irish provincial world centralisation saw the loss of rural Post Offices and rural Garda Stations. Here in Athy we lost the Chamber of Commerce while the development of major food chains led to the closure of independent grocery shops on our main streets. Local public house numbers have dramatically declined due to a tightening of the drink driving laws and perhaps a reluctance by family members to commit themselves to a job which requires an extraordinary time commitment. Our main streets are changing and with the soon to close Boyd’s shoe shop in Duke Street another memory of a once thriving Athy business will soon be lost. To Basil, his wife Norma, who coincidentally like Basil’s mother comes from Mountmellick, and their daughter Orla all of us extend good wishes for the future and heartfelt thanks for 85 years of service to the townspeople of Athy.

Remembering John Alcock, John Murphy and George Taaffe

It was early last week that news reached us from the far side of the world of the death of John Alcock in New Zealand. It was soon followed by news of the passing of John Murphy in Australia. Both men were part of the great migration of men folk which was a sad part of life in Athy and its rural hinterland during the decades which followed the economic war of the 1930s. Despite the vast distances they travelled to make new lives they retained fond memories of Athy and its people. I first met John Alcock in March 2020 when approaching his 90th birthday he travelled with his daughter to visit his home town. It was a nostalgic visit for a man who had first emigrated to England in 1949 and who 6 years later moved to New Zealand. His sister Sheila and brother George also emigrated to New Zealand. John, who lived in the North Island of New Zealand, was a near neighbour and friend of Athy man Aidan Tierney, formerly of Belview. It was Aidan who passed on the news of the death of John who was the subject of Eye on the Past No. 1421. I had not met John Murphy in person but his frequent presence on the Athy and district Facebook page spoke of a man who had retained an interest and indeed an appreciation of his South Kildare background. He kept up to date with the news from Athy on Facebook, as well as his long-standing friendship with Aiden McHugh who on his visits to Australia always sought out John. John, who was originally from Prussellstown, emigrated to Australia in the early 1970s from Butlers Row with his wife May and four children after retiring from the Irish Army. Towards the end of last week my older brother George passed away at 88 years of age. George was one of those fortunate young Athy men who in the 1950s found employment in their own country. After attending the Christian Brothers School here in Athy he was called to St. Patrick’s training college in Drumcondra to train as a National school teacher. I didn’t know until recent years that in doing so he was following in his father’s footsteps. My father apparently did not continue his teacher training as his command of Irish was weak and so he left St. Patrick’s and joined the Gardai. A native of Moyne in County Longford his career in An Garda Siochana resulted in several transfers around Ireland and his last move to Athy from nearby Castlecomer allowed his five sons attend a secondary school where none was then available in the Kilkenny mining town. George, who taught for a few years in Moone National School under the principalship of W.G. Doyle and later Joe May, later moved to his father’s home place in County Longford to take up the principalship of Moyne National School. In the meantime George married local Moone girl Eileen Kelly, who with their five children survive him. George, who retired over twenty-five years ago as Principal of Dromard National School, was buried in his father’s home townland nearly 50 years after his father was laid to rest in Athy. The celebrant of the funeral mass for George spoke of the ‘Master’s’ contribution to the local communities of Moyne and Legga and I smiled as I heard of the teaching profession being described as a ‘secondary priesthood’. No wonder I smiled, being aware as I was of some of the escapades involving the young unmarried George and his best friend here in Athy, the late Reggie Rowan. George was a big fellow and a good footballer in his youth, but my abiding memory is of a family story which recounted the day George playing in midfield caught the ball at the start of the second half of a game in Geraldine Park and immediately put the opposing team on the attack by kicking the ball in the wrong direction. The two Johns and George were of a generation of Athy folk whose numbers are sadly being depleted week by week. All three have now found their last resting place far from the town in which they grew up, taking with them memories which we can never recover.

'The Black and Tans 1920/'21' and 'The World War 1 Dead of Co. Kildare'

Two important books arrived on my desk in the last week, both of them with listings of men who served our neighbouring country at a time when Ireland was an unwilling part of the British empire. The first book was Jim Herlihy’s latest publication, ‘The Black and Tans 1920 – 1921’, which added to his impressive list of previously published works makes him the outstanding author of policing before and during Ireland’s War of Independence. Subtitled ‘A complete Alphabetical List, Short History and Genealogical Guide’, the book is a complete listing of the 7,684 men who enlisted in the Royal Irish Constabulary Special Reserve, or as they were better known the Black and Tans. The Black and Tans were recruited to compensate for the shortfall in R.I.C. members, resulting from the IRA campaign against the police which forced so many policemen to resign. Between 6th January 1920 and 7th July the following year 7,684 men were recruited in Britain and brought to Ireland to join the R.I.C. Special Reserve. Amongst their numbers were 381 native Irishmen, including 9 from County Kildare, 6 from County Laois and 5 from County Carlow. The Black and Tans, so called because they dressed in black trousers and tan tunics, were initially trained in the R.I.C. Depot at Phoenix Park, but later in the Hare Park Camp on the Curragh before ending up in September of 1920 in Gormanstown Camp, Co. Meath. On completion of their one month training the R.I.C. Special Reserve were transferred to R.I.C. Barracks around the country. Athy, while not regarded as an active rebel town, had a small number of Black and Tans stationed in the old Cavalry Barracks at Woodstock Street. While recruiting for the Special Reserves stopped on 7th July 1921 the members of that force only began to leave Ireland in January of the following year. At least one member of the Black and Tans who was based in Athy remained in the town or later returned, which I do not know, for he married a local girl. The story of the Black and Tans is one which we Irish remember as one of killings and atrocities by men who were a law unto themselves. Jim Herlihy’s book is a comprehensive listing of the men who during the 18 months they were in Ireland suffered 143 casualties. During their time in Ireland they earned the outrage of Irish men and women who regarded them as terrorists. The second book published by the County Kildare Decade of Commemoration Committee is titled ‘Remembrance: The World War 1 Dead of Co. Kildare’. Compiled by Karel Kiely, James Durney and Mario Corrigan it lists the 753 men and 1 woman from the County of Kildare who served and died during World War I. The research for this book has uncovered 9 Athy men not previously identified who died during the war. Three of them were from Offaly Street, two brothers James and Thomas Connell and Joseph Breen. As a young lad growing up in Offaly Street I remember the brothers Mick and Johnny Connell lived in Crampton House opposite what is now the Credit Union in Offaly Street, while another brother Lar lived in Stanhope Street. They were the brothers of the two World War 1 soldiers, James who died on 17th April 1915 and Thomas who died on 9th September 1916. Further up Offaly Street during my youth lived Tom Breen and his family, whose daughter Nan died within the last year or two while she was still living in the family home. Tom’s brother Joseph, a soldier in the Royal Army Service Corps, died aged 32 years, less than two weeks before the end of the war. He was born in Janeville and his younger brother Tom at the time of his brother’s death was living with his grandmother Julia Bradley in Offaly Street. Two other soldiers of whom I was not previously aware are identified as William Dooley of Castlemitchell and his namesake whose brother James Dooley lived at Rathstewart Cottage, Athy. Other Athy soldiers who died in the war but whom I was unaware of until they were included in the new book were 22-year-old Christopher Doran of St. John’s Lane, 33-year-old Michael Davis of Kelly’s Lane and later Chapel Hill, Patrick O’Mara of Chapel Hill, and the Vigors brothers, Arthur and Charles, whose father Charles Vigors was a shopkeeper in Market Square in the 1890s and later. The book lists the deaths of 120 men born in Athy, by far the highest number of any town in the county, the next highest being the Curragh with 67 and Naas with 64. An additional 19 names must be added to Athy’s World War I casualty list, representing men not born in the town but who lived there either when they enlisted or sometime earlier. For many years it was believed that they were on the wrong side of history, that is until Kevin Myers, John MacKenna and later Clem Roche and others wrote of Athy’s men’s sacrifices with pride and gratitude. Here in Athy we arranged the first Armistice Day Sunday Service nearly 30 years ago as part of a weekend of remembrance which featured a seminar in the Town Hall, with lectures by Con Costello, Pat Casey, Kevin Myers, Josephine Cashman and Jane Leonard, followed by a performance of ‘The Fallen’, a voice play of the Great War by John MacKenna. This was the first awakening of an important part of our town’s story and one which now finds another retelling of part of that story in the new book ‘Remembrance: The World War I Dead of Co. Kildare’. Congratulations to Karel Kiely and her colleagues James Durney and Mario Corrigan for a magnificent new publication on Kildare’s World War I dead.

St. Vincent de Paul Society and Athy Lions Club Presidents Everest challenges

During twelve months of lockdown we have witnessed a catastrophic change in the commercial life of our town and district. Local businesses have suffered badly, and business owners and workers alike have felt the financial repercussions of a local economy which is closed down. Families which have always managed to face up to life’s trials now find themselves facing an ever more uncertain future. There is an increasing number of families and individuals experiencing financial difficulties who, for perhaps the first time, have to rely on the charity of others. In Athy we are very fortunate to have an active branch of the St Vincent de Paul Society which, for more than 100 years, has been helping local families and individuals in need. Historically that help was availed of by those whose poverty was the result of long-term unemployment. Today, the Vincent de Paul Society is called upon to help those no longer able to cope financially as a result of the Covid lockdown. Reliance on the Vincent de Paul Society is a new experience for many. Their needs are all the greater as the psychological impact of the national lockdown is felt by parents and children alike. The local branch of the St Vincent de Paul Society is made up of a small number of men and women who quietly and discreetly help local people in need. The demands on their time and on the resources of the local branch are in normal times quite high. However, with the ongoing Covid lockdown demands for help have increased enormously. More money than ever before is required to meet the urgent needs of those in want. Athy Lions Club, recognising the crisis facing many people in Athy and district, have decided to organise a fundraising event to help the St Vincent de Paul Society. Called the Everest Challenge, it will feature an attempt by the Lions Club president, 45-year old Brian Dooley, to ascend 39,340 steps representing the height of Mount Everest. The world’s highest mountain is located on the crest of the great Himalayas of Southern Asia, between Nepal and Tibet. It was believed to be 29,028 feet high when first climbed by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. However, a recent American survey found that it is 29,035 feet high. The extra seven feet will mean a little extra work for Athy Lions president, who will not only walk up 39,340 steps but also descend the same number of steps. He will get no credit for steps descended, but will find a little relief going down before facing into another upward advance. The challenge will start on Saturday, 1st May and continue the next day and into a third day, if necessary, until the target is reached. As I write this Eye, Brian Dooley is practising his stairclimbing techniques to ensure the fitness levels necessary to keep climbing for eight hours on the opening day, and on each day thereafter. It will all take place on the Athy Rugby Club fire escape, which is a sturdy metal stairs, ten feet four inches high, with fourteen steps. The Lions Club president is undertaking this challenge in return for donations which will be divided between Athy St Vincent de Paul Society and Pieta House, which provides counselling to people who are in suicidal distress. Donations can be made online at www.idonate.ie/athylionsclubeverestchallenge or at the Everest Challenge site on any of the days the intrepid Brian Dooley is “stepping it out”. I would hazard a guess that there is not another Lions Club president in Ireland who could match our Lions president’s vision and stamina. If and when Brian successfully makes the 39,340 upward steps, and reaches the summit of the virtual Everest, it will mark an extraordinary personal effort by him. We will all wish him well on the day, or days, of the climb beginning on the 1st of May. In the meantime, remember the two charities which will benefit: St Vincent de Paul Society, Athy and Pieta House. Your donations, no matter how small, will help both organisations continue to offer assistance to all those in need during these difficult times.

Athy's Town Hall and its redevelopment as Shackleton Museum

The ongoing redevelopment of Athy’s Town Hall seems to have puzzled some local residents who were unaware of the plans for the Shackleton Museum. This lack of knowledge probably owes much to the ever increasing lack of support for print journalism as the story of the museum has featured several times over the years in the local newspapers. Athy’s Town Hall like Whites Castle is an iconic building whose importance as part of the town’s built heritage has not always been appreciated. The Nationalist newspaper reported on the 7th November 1980 that “Athy Urban District Council have passed a motion to demolish the building and replace it with a modern structure”. This had followed the Council members consideration some years earlier of a motion to demolish the Town Hall so as to provide extra car parking facilities in the town centre. Happily, the building which was admittedly in a sad state of semi dereliction at that time was saved following the intervention of the local branch of An Taisce. A subsequent Community Employment Scheme helped restore the building which continued to be used for a time as the town’s Council offices, the local Fire Brigade station and later still as the town library. The local Museum Society, which was founded in 1983, was allowed to occupy in or about 1985 what was once the caretaker’s living quarters in the Town Hall. With the subsequent departure of the Fire Station to newly built facilities at Woodstock Street, the Museum Society took over the entire ground floor of the Town Hall. Further expansion of the Museum then designated as a Heritage Centre followed with the transfer of the Town Library to the magnificent former Dominican Church. The growing national and international success of the Shackleton Autumn School organised by volunteers working from the Heritage Centre sparked the idea of a Museum dedicated to one of the world’s most famous polar explorers Ernest Shackleton who was born in nearby Kilkea. The work which is now being undertaken at the Town Hall is the final stage of several years of planning to give the town of Athy a Museum of national importance. Building work which will last until mid-2025 will give us quite an extraordinary architectural addition to the town’s built heritage. Athy Museum Society first formed in 1983 and which later established Athy Heritage Company Limited to operate the Heritage Centre will be soon dissolved. It is intended to call a public meeting open to all persons interested in Athy’s history and local history generally to formalise the setting up of Athy’s History Society. Details of that meeting, venue and the date will be published shortly. The current members of the Board of Directors of Athy Heritage Company Limited, all of whom are volunteers will, with two exceptions, resign from the Board in the very near future. The new Board of Directors will be nominated by Kildare County Council and thereafter the Shackleton Museum will be effectively operated subject to the control of the County’s Local Authority. There have been many persons who over the years volunteered their time and expertise to the running of the original Museum and the Heritage Centre. It would perhaps be invidious to name names for fear of leaving out anyone who contributed at any time over the last forty years to the museum’s success. However, a heartfelt thanks must go to everybody in Athy and elsewhere who have made a contribution to the ongoing success of the Heritage Centre/Shackleton Museum and the Shackleton Autumn School. With the resignation of all but two of the current Board of Directors, I too will be stepping down as Chairman of the Board. It has taken forty years to get the museum story to this point almost as long as it took to get the outer relief road which opened last year. Writing of one iconic building in our town I have to acknowledge that the most important building in Athy, having regard to its links with past historical events and its location in the heart of the town, is Whites Castle. While it continues in private ownership there is no indication that there are plans in place to protect and conserve the building structure. Having regard to its current condition concern must be expressed at the possibility of losing Athy’s most widely known and distinctive building. I am reminded of the comments made by the Kildare County Council C.E.O. at the recent opening of the new library in Naas when she described the Naas Town Hall as ‘an iconic building at the heart of Naas being given a new use while preserving its history and heritage.’ If there is any other building in the entire county of Kildare fitting that description it is surely Athy’s Whites Castle. I have sought over many years to interest the former Athy Town Council and Kildare County Council in acquiring Whites Castle. Placing it in public ownership offers the best possibility of conserving the building and allowing it to be developed and used for the benefit of the public. Now that local authorities have greater responsibility than ever before for matters of culture and heritage, surely Kildare County Council should now seriously consider what it can do to ensure the future of the 600-year-old building at the heart of our town. The history lecture series in the Community Arts Centre, Woodstock Street recommences on Tuesday, 13th February at 8.00 p.m. with a lecture by Adrian Kane whose book on Trade Unions was recently published. Adrian, who is an officer with S.I.P.T.U., is a native of Athy and has been based and working in Cork for a number of years. His father Paddy was an active community worker during his lifetime here in Athy and one of the founding members of Athy Credit Union. Admission is free to what promises to be a stimulating evening.

St. Michael's Church Register 1753 and the last years of Penal Laws

Some time in the 1970’s while I was living in Dublin, I was contacted by a local man who had in his possession a church register for St. Michael’s, Athy. He explained how he had rescued it when the old St. Michael’s Church was being demolished in 1960. How or in what circumstances the register needed to be rescued was never satisfactorily explained to me but fortunately I was able to ensure its subsequent return to the Parish. I had the opportunity of examining the register in which the first entry was made in August 1753. The laws forbidding Catholics from exercising their religion was still on the Statute Books as were a multiplicity of enactments which restricted Catholics from receiving education, entering a profession or holding public office. Following the passing of an Act in 1696 banishing all priests from Ireland, a list of all priests were required to be compiled on a county basis. That Act was apparently not strictly enforced, for eight years later priests who were still in the country were required to report to their local Clerk of the Peace. Every catholic priest had to give his name, address, age, his parish, date and place of ordination and the name of the Bishop who ordained him. At Athy Quarter Sessions in 1704, Fr. John Fitzsimons reported himself as the Parish Priest of Athy since 1697, having been ordained in 1673 by Archbishop Oliver Plunkett. A State of Popery Report of 1731 recorded “Mass house” in Athy which had been built during the reign of King George I between 1714 and 1727. The Report noted that “it had two priests while there was no popish school in the town”. At the same time, Castledermot had three Mass houses, four priests, two of whom lived as farmers and three “popish schools”. The neighbouring village of Castledermot had more facilities for Catholics than the town of Athy which might suggest a majority of non catholic overseas settlers in the one time fortress town on the river Barrow. The building of a Catholic church in Athy in the early years of the 18th Century might indicate that local enforcement of the penal laws was somewhat relaxed. The return of the Dominicans to Athy in 1743 after an absence of several decades supports that view. Nevertheless, the local Parish Priest who may have been Fr. Daniel Fitzpatrick ensured that the Parish Church was built off a side street in the town. The church which was torched and destroyed in the aftermath of the 1798 Rebellion was built in what is now known as Chapel Lane. Despite the lack of strict enforcement of the penal laws, the Dublin Castle authorities still required Catholic activities to be monitored. A letter sent by Mr. J. Jackson, a member of Athy Corporation, to the Dublin Castle authorities in March 1673 noted that “he could not find that there is or has been any popish priests or regular clergy in this corporation”. He then went on to explain that “the priest lives in the Queens county about two miles from the town”. Jackson did not mention the existence of the Mass house which would tend to show that the penal laws were not strictly enforced at that time. I wonder whether the limited religious toleration had evaporated by 1758 when the following entry was made in the earlier mentioned Catholic register of St. Michael’s. One entry in the register for 1758 was made on January 26th with the next entry on December 3rd which was preceded by the note which explained that the blank was “occasioned by the prosecution against the Reverend Mr. Callaghan”. I have a note of a Fr. Callaghan as a Curate in Athy in 1758 but have no further information about him. I have not discovered the nature of the prosecution against Fr. Callaghan but assume it related in some way to a breach of the penal laws. Fr. Daniel Fitzpatrick was Parish Priest at that time and he was succeeded in 1758 by Canon James Nele. In Athy during Fr. Fitzpatrick’s time as Parish Priest, two other religious groups were subjected to the same penal law codes as the Catholic’s. Rev. Dr. Thralkield and Rev. Robert Rutherford were ministering in and around Athy on behalf of the Presbyterian church while for about 31 years prior to 1751 Rev. John McGachin was the local Presbyterian Minister. The Society of Friends known as Quakers also had a presence in Athy as early as 1672 and like Catholics and Presbyterians were subjected to the provisions of the penal laws. The Quakers formed a commercially active group in the town but it would take several decades before a Catholic commercial middle class emerged in Athy. The enforcement of the penal laws and their effect on religious practice and Irish society generally in the 18th Century is difficult to unravel. What we do know is that religion took second place to politics after the passing of the Repeal Act of 1793 and the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 with the emergence of a Catholic middle class.