Volunteerism in Athy

Volunteerism is alive and well in south Kildare. That has always been the case for as long as I can remember. Voluntary groups worked to give us a swimming pool in the early 1960s and a much-improved Gaelic games grounds at Geraldine a decade earlier. The local rugby club and the various soccer clubs in Athy have also benefited from the work of their members and volunteers over the years. There is an impressive array of work still being done by local volunteers in present day Athy. The Athy Recreational Community Centre, formerly Dreamland Ballroom, is managed by a committee chaired by Ann Cunningham and over a long number of years they have kept the doors of that centre open for a mixed variety of community activities. Ann and her colleagues are doing a service for the community in the same way as are members of committees working anywhere in the town for a multiplicity of organisations. Another aspect of volunteerism is the unusual and generally rare adventurous tasks undertaken by individuals or groups to raise funds for worthy causes. Over the next few weeks three separate acts of volunteerism for charitable purposes will take place. The first features the local man who in 2021 climbed the iron stairs on the outside wall of Athy’s rugby club 2812 times over three days to reach the equivalent height of the worlds highest mountain, Mount Everest. This was a stupendous achievement by Brian Dooley and the sponsorship he earned on that occasion all went to local charities. Brian is again on the volunteering warpath and this time he intends to walk the marathon distance using the walkway around the perimeter of the playing field at Geraldine Park which over a hundred years ago hosted both hurling and football All Ireland finals. Walking 26.2 miles would not present any major difficulty for a reasonably fit young man. However, Brian’s marathon journey will be made as he walks backwards. Having trained for a number of weeks Brian is reasonably confident that all going well he will complete the backward walk in 10 hours. He starts his marathon on Saturday 16th March at 6 o’clock in the morning. The days event is dedicated to his mother Josie, the second anniversary of whose death takes place on the same day. The funds collected will be donated to Athy Gaelic Football Club, St. Michael’s Parish heating fund and Athy Lions Club. Brian would welcome people to join him on the day and he invites those who have lost loved ones to join in what for him is a pilgrimage of remembrance. An unusual feature will be a memorial wall positioned at the start of the walk where anyone wishing to participate can place a photograph of a lost loved one. Donations can be made on the day. So come along on Saturday to walk, to talk, to remember and most of all to donate. Six days later on March 22nd the pupils of the local Gaelscoil are undertaking a sponsored walk to raise funds for Athy Lions Club and to make a presentation to our Parish Priest, Fr. Liam Rigney, whose house was recently damaged by fire. I am told the junior pupils will each walk 2.5kms, while the senior pupils will walk 5kms. It has been calculated that the entire school pupils’ participation when added together will measure the same distance as that from Malin Head in Donegal to Mizen Head in west Cork. Donations and sponsorship can be made through any of the school students or teachers, and I am told that the school’s website includes a QR code which one can scan to donate. The third charitable event, this time for the Irish Cancer Society and Athy Lions Club, involves Mary Feely climbing to first base camp on Mount Everest. Mary and her husband Rod will start the climb on Holy Thursday, setting off from Lukla, Nepal to reach the base camp approximately 8 days later. Mary has been a volunteer driver for the Cancer Society for several years and decided to celebrate what she described as a ‘roundy’ birthday by challenging herself to walk all the way up 17,500 feet for the Irish Cancer Society and Athy Lions Club because of her involvement with both groups. See Mary’s fund raising page on iDonate.ie. The young pupils of Athy’s Gael Scoil and both Mary Feely and Brian Dooley have shown tremendous spirit and good will in undertaking their different challenges. Their involvement as volunteers to raise funds for charitable purposes is highly commendable and deserving of the support of the community at large.

Athy's local history

Athy Museum Society, founded in 1983, will shortly disappear from the local scene when arrangements already agreed with Kildare County Council to take over the running of the Shackleton Museum are implemented. Athy History Society, founded a few years ago, will take its place in promoting the study of the history of Athy and its people. Our local history was for many many years an unknown subject even to those who like myself attended secondary school here in the town. We learned of battles and Kings, revolutions, and Famine deaths but seldom, if ever, did we hear any mention of Athy’s involvement in national events. This is surprising given Athy’s importance at different periods of its history as a fortress town, a garrison town and for centuries up to the mid-19th century, the largest and most important town in county Kildare. Founded as a settlement by the Anglo Normans in or about the last decade of the 12th century the newly established village formed part of the manor of Woodstock. As the village developed, helped by the founding of two monasteries on opposite sides of the River Barrow, it became a fortress as part of the defensive measures put in place by the Anglo Normans. Woodstock Castle on the west bank of the River Barrow provided little protection for the villagers as the ‘warlike Irish’ lived amongst the woods which were located on the same river side. Attacks on the village of Athy resulted in its destruction on several occasions but the settlers, confident of their military superiority, persisted in regrouping and rebuilding. Athy’s importance as a fortress on the Marches of Kildare was determined by the closeness of the southern part of the Pale. This led to the placing of a garrison in the village and for many centuries right up to the Crimean War period Athy earned for itself the sobriquet ‘Garrison Athy’. Indeed, as a young pupil in the local Christian Brothers school I can recall a Christian Brother annoyed at his class for some reason or other telling his pupils ‘you’re nothing but soldiers’ sons’. At the time I assumed it was something to do with the nearby Curragh Camp but now methinks it was a throwback to the garrison town nickname of the past. The village originally established in the shadow of Woodstock Castle proved so difficult to defend against the marauding Irish that it was relocated towards the end of the Middle Ages across the River Barrow to the more easily defended east bank. The White Castle and the bridge of Athy afforded a substantial defence which allowed further development of the settlement. The Confederate Wars of the 1640s in which the now town of Athy played a significant part, ended in victory for the Parliamentary forces. It led to a fresh influx of what we would now describe as ‘economic migrants’ who came across the Irish Sea to take up residence in the developing town. Athy’s history thereafter is that of a developing market town and one which enjoyed a good measure of prosperity over many years. It was however a prosperity enjoyed by a minority who lived in close proximity, if not quite side by side, with poverty-stricken people. It was also a period punctuated by heart rendering events which caused enormous hardship and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of local people. I’m referring to the 1798 Rebellion and the Great Famine of the 1840s. These were two national events which as a pupil of the local school I learned without hearing of any mention of Athy. This, despite the work of Patrick O’Kelly, formerly of Kilcoo, who wrote of the 1798 Rebellion in his book published in the 1840s. He gave a detailed account of events in and around Athy during the Rebellion including the hanging of six young local men. Initially imprisoned in Whites Castle they were marched across Crom a Boo bridge, which was built two years previously, and brought to the recently opened Canal harbour where the six were hanged. Two were beheaded and their heads hung on the very bridge which you and I probably pass over many times every week. The events of 1798 and the tragic deaths in the local Workhouse during the Great Famine were largely overlooked by subsequent generations. These national events formed part of our local school history lessons, but the local involvement was ignored or forgotten. As a result, we lost for a time important elements of Athy’s story and it was due to the research of several locals that our past was recovered. Indeed, it was due to the good work of some local historians that the people of Athy have been able to remember and honour the 1798 rebels with a memorial in Emily Square. Similar good research work resulted in the erection of the magnificent World War I memorial in St. Michael’s Cemetery honouring the men from Athy who died during the 1914-18 War. St. Mary’s Cemetery, located a short distance from the old Workhouse building, contains the remains of the 1200 or so unfortunate men, women and children who died in the Workhouse during the Great Famine. Athy’s Workhouse was never alluded to in any local school history lessons when many references were made to Skibbereen and other places on the west coast during the Great Famine. As a result of local research, we now know the depth of misery which marked the lives of workhouse inmates during the Famine. Each year on a Sunday in May we gather in St. Mary’s Cemetery to remember our Famine dead, while we await Kildare County Council’s implementation of a decision to erect a memorial in their memory. Athy History Society, some of whose members have been researching our local history, are anxious to bring together more persons who share interest in our town’s history. The local History Society will host a meeting in the Community Arts Centre, Woodstock Street on Tuesday, 12th March at 7.30p.m. to greet and enrol all and any persons wishing to join the Society. A short lecture on Athy’s history will be followed by refreshments and an opportunity to meet and greet.

Athy's Musical Heritage

The recent announcement that Johnny Marr, the musician and songwriter, will play a concert in the A.R.C.H. in Athy on 25 June next has generated great excitement in Athy. Having first found fame as a guitarist and co-songwriter of The Smiths, he has enjoyed a successful solo career over the last 35 years. I have written previously of the music tradition in Athy, and the songs and ballads associated with the town. Those that spring to mind include ‘Lanigan’s Ball’, ‘Johnny I Hardly Knew You’ and ‘Tuberara’. A song that had escaped my notice until now is ‘Kathleen O’Regan’. It was composed in or about 1815 by John Whitaker and was first sung by a Mr. Webb at provincial theatres throughout England. The words were written by a Mr. Donne and an early review described the song as follows:- ‘the air is flowing and connected, and bears a stamp of originality not common in the vocal trifles of the day. The words are not destitute of merit; though the less we say of their wit, humour and poetry, the more Mr. Donne ought to be obliged to us.’ And so wrote an anonymous correspondent in the Monthly magazine in 1815 where it also confirmed that the song sheet could be purchased for one shilling and six pence. By 1st June 1815 ‘The Vocal’ magazine (a monthly publication) was listing in its own words ‘Choice, favourite, popular and celebrated songs in the English language, with those in all the new pieces, now singing and lately sung at Theatres Royal and minor places of amusement.’ The first song listed was the newly composed ‘Kathleen O’Regan’. It wasn’t long before the song crossed the Irish Sea and as early as April 1816 it was being performed in Dublin by a Mr. Webb. He performed it in conjunction with a play called ‘Botheration or a Ten Years Blunder’ which was described as a two act farce which had first been performed in May 1798 in Dublin. Amongst the songs that Webb sang associated with the play were ‘Get a Gone, Sir, None of your Blarney’ and the now mentioned “Sweet Kathleen O’Regan, the pride of Athy.” The song clearly had some lasting popularity as it featured in a number of publications featuring songs and ballads over the next half century. Dick & Fitzgerald, publishers New York, released in 1864 ‘The Arkansas Traveller’ songbook which featured the song, as it did in the “Vocal Library” published in 1822 which at the time was described as the largest collection of English, Scottish and Irish songs published in a single volume. Its inspiration or link to Athy is unknown, although it does strike me that the reference in the third verse where the lovestruck young man described how ‘war drove me on to where the battle was raging’ might suggest some origins in or links to the Napoleonic wars which had concluded the same month as the publication of the song. On the 18th June 1815 the Irish born Duke of Wellington, at the Battle of Waterloo, led the British forces to victory over Napoleon’s French army on the Belgian battlefield. Unlike many songs composed over two centuries ago the words appeared to have remained unchanged through all the various publications in which it appeared, and I reproduce here a ballad sheet from the mid-19th century. I must confess a personal interest in the ballad as my own late mother was herself a ‘Kathleen O’Regan’ from Ballykilleen, Cloonfad, Co. Mayo, but not the ‘Sweet Kathleen O’Regan, the pride of Athy’.

Athy Show Programme 1953

The County Kildare Agricultural Show which was an annual event in the Showgrounds, Athy has not been held for the last few years. I understand that it will not be held this year due to an insufficient number of volunteers on the organising committee. It’s a huge disappointment given the initial success of the show which was organised in the 1950s and later by Athy Show Society. The history of the Athy Show goes back many decades before that. An earlier disruption of the annual show schedule led to the reorganisation of the Society, with Leonard Craig as the Society’s new Secretary. I don’t have to hand any information of when the organising occurred, but before me is the 1953 Athy Show programme. That year’s show was held at Athy Showgrounds on Thursday, 9th July from 10am to 6pm. The Show Society’s Secretary in 1953 was Ivan Bergin of Maybrook, whose father J.J. Bergin, founder of the National Ploughing Association, was one of the 14 vice presidents of the society. The Society’s President was the Marquess of Kildare, while the local parish priest, Archdeacon McDonnell, was the sole patron. The Chairman was Michael Byrne, veterinary surgeon, with Charles Chambers and Michael Cunningham as joint Treasurers. The executive committee of the Athy Show Society consisted of 26 members representing a roll call of the most prominent business people in the town. Members of the Show Society made up 3 pages of the 1953 programme, amounting to almost 120 names headed by local industrial firms including Irish Wallboard Ltd. and I.V.I. Foundry. Notable names included amongst the membership listed were the Duchess of Westminister and Prince Aly Khan, while service during World War II no doubt accounted for two Lieutenant Colonels and several Majors who were also listed. Advertisements in that programme of 71 years ago threw up some interesting names of businesses and individuals which will probably not be familiar to the present generation. The Leinster Arms Hotel ‘fully licensed and with garage accommodation’ was managed by Miss P. Anglim. Hers is a name I have never before come across. Duthie Large Ltd. were main dealers for Ferguson tractors, as well as Massey Harris Bailers and Combines, while nearby neighbours Corcoran & Co. of Carlow were self-declared ‘champions for 125 years’ in the production of mineral waters. M. O’Brien advertised the Nags Head, Athy described as a ‘wholesale and family grocer, tea, wine, spirit and provision merchant’ while acting as official licensee to the Athy Show. Glespen Brothers Athy were ‘land and road trailer manufacturers’, while R.H. Meredith of Ballintubbert was agent for Claas Combines in counties Kildare, Carlow, Leix and North Kildare. Jacksons of 58 Leinster St., Athy were authorised distributors for Aga cookers, as well as advertising the Hillman Minx saloon for £550, a convertible coupe for £625 and the Commer Utility for £580. They described these models as ‘nippy in traffic and easy to park, with superlative riding comfort over all surfaces.’ Jacksons were also authorised dealers for Aga cookers, while J. Fleming’s sawmills looked after everyone’s needs in terms of gates, ladders and hay carts. The earlier mentioned I.V.I. Foundry was part of Industrial Vehicles (Ireland) Ltd. which were main Morris dealers, while Maxwells Garage were main dealers for Volkswagon cars and vans. John O’Gorman had his main Ford and Fordson dealership in Crookstown, while Shaw & Sons Ltd., ‘Agents for all makes of radio and electrical appliances’ were even then the leading retail drapers in Athy. Michael Anthony, The Square, Athy, Auctioneer and Valuer, was contactable by phone at Athy 16. The industrial exhibition which formed part of the Athy Show included the following Athy businesses: Burtown Nurseries, Shaw & Sons Ltd., Mr. M. Kelly of Leinster Street, Jackson Brothers, I.V.I. Foundry, Doyle Brothers, Irish Wallboard, Messrs Hutchinson & Hay who were Electrical Appliance Dealers, Willie Large of Rheban Castle exhibiting rowing and motor boats, Duthie Larges, R.H. Meredith, Pearsons Luggacurran, Glespen Brothers, John O’Gorman and Patrick Hennessy of Bray garage. The show and the industrial exhibition ended with a show dance in a marquee in the Showgrounds that same night, with music provided by Brose Walsh, with catering by Miss C. Lawlor of Portarlington. Admission twelve shillings and six pence, while the programme itself cost one shilling. What was originally called ‘The Athy Show’ evolved over time to become the County Kildare Agricultural Show. It’s rather a pity that the annual show which was an enjoyable part of the town’s summer events is on hold while awaiting another possible revival. Let’s hope that this happens in time for next year’s show. Honor McCulloch, a benefactor and friend of Athy Heritage Centre and the Shackleton Museum, died during the past week. Honor first contacted me several years ago regarding her willingness to donate a vintage motor car to the Heritage Centre. The car was then on loan to a Transport Museum in England. We corresponded and eventually met resulting in the vintage car being brought across the Irish Sea to be permanently exhibited in Athy’s Heritage Centre. Honor soon thereafter came to live in Athy and made many welcome contributions to the development of the Centre. I intend to write at a later date of Honor’s role in the development of the Heritage Centre/Museum and her timeless work in maintaining St. John’s Cemetery here in Edmund Rice Square.