Alfred Haughton of Ardreigh House

Almost 35 years ago while working on the restoration of Ardreigh House as a family home workmen came across the names of what I assumed were the original men who had built the house. Those men wrote their names on floor joists between the basement and the first floor with the year 1850. This led me to believe that just a year after the Great Famine that left over one million Irish dead Alfred Haughton, a Quaker from Carlow, had built the house on the site of the medieval Ardreigh Castle overlooking the deserted medieval village of Ardreigh. Alfred Haughton also wrote his name on the wall of what was later to be the dining room before he had it decorated with favoured Victorian wallpaper of the time. Alfred was a son of Samuel Haughton and his third wife, Henrietta Osborne. The Haughton family were mill owners in Carlow and I have always assumed that the Ardreigh Mill which Ardreigh House overlooked was built the same time as the house. However, some notes written by Alfred Haughton in 1835 raised the question of whether the Ardreigh Mill, and indeed Ardreigh House, was built much earlier than the 1850s. A directory for Athy in 1846 showed amongst the ‘nobility, gentry and clergy’ Alfred Haughton of Ardreigh. This might tend to support the belief that both the mill and the house were built earlier than I had originally thought. 1835 was an eventful year for the Haughtons as recorded by Alfred in his review of the year. Just six years previously ‘an Act for the relief of his Majesty’s Roman Catholic subjects’ was passed in the Westminster Parliament and having received the Royal assent allowed Catholics to enter Parliament and have access to a variety of State and military positions. The Royal Commission of Enquiry, established in 1833 under the Chairmanship of the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, reported two years later that upwards of 75% of the labourers in Ireland were without regular employment. Three years later the Athy Literary Magazine carried a letter which claimed that Athy had ‘able bodied labourers at our corners, hoards of beggars at our doors, disease and famine in the hovels of the poor’. Athy was a town where wealth and abject poverty lived side by side and the Peace Preservation Force of the time would have had little impact on crime prevention. Was it to protect those inside houses such as Ardreigh House that windows were provided with strong wooden window shutters with iron bars to keep the shutters closed from the inside? Alfred Haughton in his 1835 writing refers to an intrusion into his home in Ardreigh. ‘In the spring of the year a ruffian came into my house at night and would have killed me but the Omnipotent enabled me to trust in him and gave me courage and firmness.’ The intruder was later identified as local Athy man Henry Rainsford whom the local newspapers reported was charged and convicted on 9th July 1835 at the Kildare assizes. He was sentenced to death by hanging. Later the death sentence was commuted to transportation for life. Henry Rainsford was transported to New South Wales, Australia on the ship ‘Hive’ which left Cobh on 24th August 1835 with 250 convicts on board. He left behind his wife Bridget and two children, Elizabeth aged 4 years and John, a one-year-old baby. The ship ran aground when entering Jervis Bay south of Sydney during the night of December 9th after a journey of almost three and a half months. With the loss of one crew member the rest of the crew and the convicts reached the shore and eventually arrived at their destination in New South Wales on Christmas Eve. Today Ardreigh House still has the original window shutters and the iron bars which were not sufficient to protect Alfred Haughton 189 years ago. Even closer to our time Ardreigh House, like several other similar houses in South Kildare, was raided for arms by the I.R.A. during the War of Independence. Alfred Haughton died in 1858 and Ardreigh Mill and Ardreigh House were subsequently purchased by the Hannon family who like the Haughtons were mill owners in Carlow and elsewhere. What happened Henry Rainsford I do not yet know but the story of his wife Bridget and his two young children who were left behind in Athy will hopefully be told at another time.

Eye 906

I travelled on the new road leading from Gallowshill to the M9 motorway over the Easter weekend and marvelled at the previously unseen landscapes which the changing geography of the district has now opened up for us. The previously circuitous route via Shanrath and Foxhill leading to the village of Ballitore has been replaced with a direct route which leaves what was once the meandering track way of medieval man and beast, like a modern day castaway. Almost, but not quite superfluous, the ancient roadway now serves as a way of passage to dwelling houses which over the decades sprang up amidst the quietness of a rural setting.

The geography of this part of South Kildare has been changed in much the same way as the original road from Athy to Dublin was changed two hundred years or so ago to give us the straight stretches of roadway on either side of the Moat of Ardscull two hundred years or so ago. The old Dublin Road ran a few hundred yards to the east of the Moat but why it was changed I do not know. As the old road approached Athy it passed through the lands of Gallowshill, as did its 18th century replacement and as still does the new 21st century roadway.

Gallowshill was then a much more important part of the town’s geography than it is today. As the name confirms it was the site of the town’s gallows which stood as a permanent reminder of the fate which awaited those who infringed the law. Property rights in the 17th and 18th centuries and earlier were far more important than the right to life and the death penalty was applied rigorously for what might now appear to have been the most minor of offences. The path to Gallowshill was a well trodden one as the unfortunate miscreants were brought to the public place of execution where afterwards their bodies were left on the gallows as a deterrent to others.

A decade or so ago when excavations were being carried out on sandpits at Gallowshill a number of skeletal remains were found. In all probability these were the remains of some unfortunates who breathed their last on the town gallows at Gallowshill. Now as we approach the new Gallowshill roundabout we can be forgiven for overlooking the history of a place which in another age struck fear and loathing in the hearts of so many. Its story may never be fully known.

On another side of the town, this time out on the Carlow Road, there remains another new roadway awaiting completion. The Ardreigh bypass, which was the subject of much comment after the costly rediscovery of the medieval village of Ardreigh, will hopefully be finished before the year is out. In the meantime the archaeologists who spent so much time and money on excavating the Ardreigh site have provided a multi volume preliminary report on their findings.

The findings indicated that the Ardreigh site was of regional and possibly national importance. As in Gallowshill where the road alignment was changed over the centuries, it was clear that the medieval village of Ardreigh was served by a road which ran to the east of the present roadway.

A quite enormous amount of medieval material and artefacts was unearthed at Ardreigh during the archaeological excavations which commenced in 2000 and initially lasted for just over three years. The site was not worked on again until 2007 and was finally completed approximately a year later. In addition to medieval material the site also gave up evidence of prehistoric life, including a Neolithic stone axe head, as well as several sherids of prehistoric pottery and flint tools. One of the most important finds on the excavated site was an intact late Bronze Age pot. The findings all point to the Ardreigh site being a settlement dating from prehistoric through to medieval times.

The existing graveyard at Ardreigh was always assumed to have been the more modern successor of an ancient burial ground and the finding of nearly 1300 skeletal remains outside the eastern boundary wall of the graveyard confirms that the commonly held belief was indeed correct. The ‘Lost’ graveyard would appear to have held an unusually large number of child skeletons, an obvious indication of the high mortality rate in medieval times. Where however was the explanation for the five skeletons found buried outside the medieval graveyard boundary? Three skeletons were buried in the same grave which might indicate individuals executed for some criminal offence or other. The traditional Christian practice of burying corpses on their backs with their heads to the west and their eyes to the east was practiced during the life of the Ardreigh settlement. Incidentally it is a practice which was and is still followed in Old St. Michael’s cemetery but not in new St. Michaels where corpses are buried in a north south orientation.

The finding of the remains of large lime kilns, lime storage pots and industrial hearths, together with corn drying kilns, fragments of quern stones and the remains of some medieval structures points to Ardreigh having been the site of a substantial settlement. Its importance in terms of Irish archaeology awaits the outcome of further studies including carbon dating and Ardreigh may well prove to have had an early Christian existence. No matter what further findings are made Ardreigh has provided a unique collection of artefacts which adds enormously to the heritage resources of the area. The concern must be that those artefacts can eventually be restored to this area to help us redefine and clarify our prehistoric and medieval past.

The skeletal remains which were removed from the site for analysis will presumably be eventually returned to Ardreigh for re-internment. Would it be too much to hope for the recreation on the ‘idle’ land between the old and new road of the Ardreigh medieval village as found by the archaeologists?

My thanks to the readers who contacted me about the cast of Mary Mullans’ play, ‘The Turn of the Wheel’. Unfortunately no one has yet turned up a photograph of the cast, although I believe that such a photograph exists. If you can help me in my quest I would be delighted to hear from you.

Eye on the Past 717

Jimmy Bolger, like myself, is not a native son of Athy. Nevertheless his links with the town go back so far, over 70 years in fact, to justify the abandonment of any claim to being “a blow in”. Jimmy was born in Graiguenamanagh in 1929, the son of Peter Bolger and his wife Kathleen Codd, both of whom worked as gardener and housekeeper respectively for one of the big houses which had survived the scorched earth policy of the Republican Movement in the aftermath of the War of Independence. The Bolger family came to Athy in 1933 to work for Ainsley Verschoyle who had sometime before bought Ardreigh House from local Solicitor Bob Osborne. For the next twelve years or so the Bolgers lived in the gate lodge of Ardreigh House before moving to a number of different addresses in and around Athy after Peter Bolger left Verschoyle's employment to take up gardening work with the Hosie and Shaw families. I was intrigued to hear Jimmy recall his family living in Stanhope Street in the residence attached to the public house owned by Scanlons. They were there for five or six years until Scanlons sold the public house to Noonans and from where Michael Noonan himself recently retired after many years in the business which had been first started by his father who had previously been a member of the Garda Siochana.

Jimmy attended the school in the local Christian Brothers where he recalls the diminutive Br. Nelson who was universally known as “Breezy”, Brothers Egan and Farrell and the two lay teachers, Paddy Spillane and Liam Ryan. Fellow pupils included Tommy O'Rourke, Jimmy Connell, Kevin Walsh, all of whom co-incidentally lived in Stanhope Street, Michael Egan of Leinster Street, Fergus Hayden, Des Noonan and Frank Duffy.

In the late 1940's Jimmy left school to take up an apprenticeship in the hardware and grocery business of Thompson's of Castledermot. One of the commonly sought after positions for young men and women of the day, shop apprenticeships had only then witnessed a change in the age old system where those wishing to be apprenticed to the retail trade paid what were relatively speaking large sums for the privilege of taking up such apprenticeships. It seems rather strange to us in this day and age that a young man or woman availing of the opportunity to train as an assistant in a grocery or hardware shop had to pay a lump sum to the shopkeeper and to work without pay for perhaps the first year of a five or six year apprenticeship. The system had changed during the Second World War and by the time Jimmy Bolger got his first job apprentices received in addition to free board the princely sum of five shillings a week in wages payable monthly in arrears. Five and a half years in the grocery and hardware business in the village of Castledermot provided a good grounding in retailing but more importantly made Jimmy aware of the problems which were part and parcel of Irish provincial life in the early 1950's and of the generosity of spirit which prevailed amongst the sometimes tough commercial patrons of Irish shopkeeping. Nowadays accustomed as we are to the supermarket where everything is checked out and paid for on the spot it is hard to imagine a time when giving and taking credit was almost an essential part of retailing, necessitating the keeping of “the book” into which purchases were noted on a daily basis.

Monday mornings in the grocery business of the late 1940's were spent in weighing out and packing the tea, sugar, flour and butter which in the war years and for some time afterwards were in short supply. Jimmy particularly remembers a time when rationing of some food stuffs was still in vogue and when bread tasted as he described it, “like sawdust”.

In the early 1950's Jimmy left Thompsons and went to work for Floods of Leinster Street. Tom Flood was a Dublin man who had bought what was the Railway Hotel in the 1920's. He carried on a very successful business and became a member of the local Urban District Council, being first elected to that body in June 1934. He died in October 1950 and his son Frank ran the business for a number of years and it was while Frank Flood was in charge that Jimmy Bolger worked in the Leinster Street premises. He was there for about three years when he emigrated to England to be with his girlfriend, local girl Moira Walsh, whose father was porter in the Provincial Bank in Duke Street. He got work in the co-op in Harleden, London and following promotion to Assistant Manager he and Moira got married in Athy in August 1955. Irish workers, despite having made valuable contributions to the industrial life of Britain during and after the war, were still badly treated on the English mainland. “No Irish need apply” was still a common feature of advertisements, whether for jobs or accommodation and Jimmy and his new bride were only too well aware of the discrimination against the Irish when they went looking for a flat. They eventually succeeded but the arrival of their first child prompted the return of mother and child to Athy as English landlords added children to their list of unwanted tenants which for so long had included “Irish and blacks”.

Moira, who was born at Geraldine Road, went back to Athy and within a few months Jimmy who returned for summer holidays got a holiday job in M.P. O'Briens of Edenderry which lasted for six months and effectively decided him against returning to England.

His sister Brigid had started with the I.V.I. Foundry in Athy in 1936 as a secretary to its founder Harry Hosie and twenty years later Jimmy joined the firm as a store man and later took on the role of sales representative on the retirement of Jim Tierney of Emily Row. He was to remain with the I.V.I. until 1973 when he purchased the Pipe Shop from Mrs. Mahon. Three years later he sold the business and when Jim McEvoy acquired what was formerly the Railway Bar at the top of Leinster Street Jimmy went to help him out for a few weeks but he remained there for ten years.

The I.V.I. was the first local industry to start up in Athy in the wake of the decline and ultimate demise of the indigenous brick making industry. For decades brick making provided the only constant, if irregular employment, in and around Athy, apart from farm work and work on the Canals. Captain Hosie as I believe he then was, started Industrial Vehicles Ireland Ltd. in or around 1926 and the business developed and prospered so much that in the 1950's more than 150 men were employed in addition to sales and office staff. It was a substantial element in the early industrial life of Athy and the story of the I.V.I. and its founder who after the Second World War returned as Colonel Hosie, having lost his only son Terry in that war, is a story which I hope to return to at another time.

During his years in the I.V.I. Jimmy also worked part-time for a number of local publicans including John O'Brien of the Railway Bar, his sister Molly O'Brien of the Nags Head and Jim Nelson of Leinster Street. His time with Nelsons coincided with the annual holidays of Paddy Cole, the Carbery man who spent almost twenty five years with Jim Nelson and who after Jim died emigrated to England. I wonder if any of my readers know what ever happened Paddy Cole.

My first memories of Jimmy Bolger centered on the C.Y.M.S., then located at the corner of Stanhope Street. I was reminded of the importance of that club in the life of the young and not so young men of Athy in the 1960's and when in Youghal last week I came across a very vibrant and active C.Y.M.S. operating out of quayside building which on a Sunday afternoon was as busy as I can remember our C.Y.M.S. was forty years ago. Sadly the C.Y.M.S. in Athy disappeared without trace some years after it moved from its original location in Stanhope Street to facilitate the building of St. Michael's Parish Church.

Fundraising for that church commenced in the 1950's under the guidance of senior curate Fr. McLaughlin and continued in the early 1960's under Fr. Corbett, who organised variety shows put on in St. John's Hall. Jimmy Bolger was very active in those shows, helping to organise them and acting as Master of Ceremonies. Some of the local businesses which took part in the variety shows which ran over a period of four years from about 1959 onwards included the Asbestos factory, Bachelor's factory, Bord na Mona factory, I.V.I. Foundry and “the shops”, the last being the combined efforts of the local shop workers and their friends, many of whom from a programme I have of one of their shows never worked in a shop in their life. It was all good fun which gave plenty of enjoyment to the locals and gathered together some funds for the church which opened in 1964.

The man from Graiguenamanagh, like myself, came to Athy when he was a few years old. Our paths crossed, even if decades apart, when I came to live in the house where Ainsley Verschoyle once lived and where probably the young Jimmy Bolger played amongst the gun dogs which I believe once roamed freely around the grounds of Ardreigh House. His story is part of the social patchwork of a town which in recent years has seen an unprecedented influx of newcomers who like Jimmy and myself will hopefully in time become an integral part of our town and its people.

Declan Wall & Paddy Eaton

For the second week in succession I have had to put off the article I had intended to write about the Carbery family of St. Patrick’s Avenue. The passing of two men of my acquaintance, one in relatively old age, the other at the far end of the age spectrum, both dying within 12 hours of each other, prompts the article this week.

Declan Wall was just 33 years of age when he died in tragic circumstances shortly after returning from the Circuit Court in Naas where he had shared some time with my son Seamus. Indeed both had lunch together that same day and Seamus returned to the office in the late afternoon, little realising the awful tragedy that would later overtake his companion.

Declan was a young barrister whose advocacy skill and commanding Court presence marked him out as a rising star amongst his colleagues on the Eastern circuit. His early years at the Bar, like those of his bewigged junior colleagues were spent building up contacts, amassing knowledge and know-how, all in preparation for a legal career which held out much promise for the future. It was not to be and Declan’s death caused great sorrow amongst his colleagues and friends. Our sympathies go to his wife Fiona, his mother and the Wall family.

Within hours of Declan’s death I heard the not unexpected news that my good friend Paddy Eaton had passed away. Paddy had been unwell for some time but yet when I last visited him, only a week or so ago, he was bearing up well and was as cheerful as ever. I knew Paddy ever since he returned to his hometown of Athy after many years in Birmingham. A master painter, who like his father before him acquired and the skill and good taste of a craftsman, Paddy took pride in his work.

Verschoyles old house in Ardreigh was perhaps one of the last place to benefit from his craft work. I know he took great pleasure in restoring the doors and woodwork of that old house which had suffered greatly after years of subletting and apartment living. The internal walls of the house built for Samuel Haughton, the Quaker miller of Ardreigh Mills, immediately after the Great Famine were also to benefit from Paddy’s attention to detail. Almost 20 years after he had devoted so much time and skill to re-decorating Ardreigh House his workmanship is still as fresh and appealing as it was two decades ago.

Paddy was the second generation of the Eaton family to take up the painting trade. His father Martin worked for Newcombe Empey Sign and Ornamental Painter and Gilder of Leinster Street and Paddy who was born in 1934 began his apprenticeship with the same firm in 1948. He was just 14 years of age and earned 7 shillings and 6 pence per week which is the modern equivalent of 37½ cent. Despite his youth it was his second job, Paddy having spent the previous year working in Tom McHughs foundry in Janeville Lane. The youngster of 13 years of age had started working in the foundry when his father fell ill and Paddy as the oldest in the family took on the responsibility of earning a wage to help his parents and siblings through what were very difficult times.

Paddy talked to me some years ago of his time working for Tom McHugh and mentioned the names of some of his fellow workers such as Mannix Thompson, Frankie Aldridge, Des Donaldson and Robbie Lynch of Shrewleen Lane. Tom McHugh was one of two brothers who operated foundries in Athy – the other foundry being based in Meeting Lane. Paddy described Tom as the ‘best floor moulder’ in the country who worked the sandboxes with an artistry which belied his down-to-earth appearance, tracing intimate designs in the red sand which came from Dan Neill’s field on the Carlow Road.

Working in the Foundry at such a young age was contrary to the law relating to school attendance but in the harsh economic climate of the post War years, the local Garda Sergeant, who happened to be my own father, took a benign attitude to the youngsters school absence. At 14 years of age Paddy was free to take up an apprenticeship with Newcombe Empey and for four years served his time, the latter part of which was as an ‘improver’.

The economic difficulties currently facing the country will no doubt disimprove before they get better and those of us not acquainted with the economic stagnation and the unemployment of the 1950s will come to appreciate what young men like Paddy Eaton faced during those dark days. The emigrants boat held out the only hope for many at a time when jobs were scarce and where those lucky to be in employment earned little more than enough to keep body and soul together. Paddy Eaton was one of the many hundreds men and women who had no alternative but to leave their hometown in search of work in the 1950s. Sally Oak, Birmingham would in time be home to Paddy and many more of Irish descent who found work in car manufacturing and in the huge engineering works of that city. Having trained as a painter Paddy continued to work at this craft, even while employed full time in a Birmingham factory. Working on his own account at the weekends added long hours to the working week and Paddy continued to do this for many years until a heart attack prompted him to cut back on his work schedule.

He returned to Ireland and to Athy following his early retirement and it was then that I first got to know Paddy. The craft skills acquired almost 50 years previously were never to leave him. His training in mixing paints, in the preparation of surfaces for painting and in the other detail which marked him out as a craftsman required a patience and an attention to detail which suited his temperament. A courteous even-tempered man, he enjoyed most of all his pint and ruefully admitted to over indulging on some occasions. However, Paddy was always courteous, always pleasant and ever good natured. The hard times he had experienced as a youngster of 13 years working in the adult world were never allowed to colour his attitude to those he met. He was immeasurably proud of his son Patrick and his daughter Shirley who in recent years returned to live and work in Birmingham City where they were born. He is survived by his wife Mary, his two children and two grandchildren.

Ar dhéis Dé go raibh a nanamacha.

Remembrance Sunday

Sitting in my study writing this week’s column, I have before me a list compiled from past editions of the Kildare Observer and Leinster Leader of men from Co. Kildare killed in World War 1. The bulky computerised list does not contain the names of all the 567 men from the county who died in the 1914-’18 war. Listed only are those men whose deaths were reported in the local newspapers and the surprise is how many were never publicly recorded. One name which immediately catches my attention is that of Norman Hannon of Ardreigh House, Athy, who died in 1915. Further on, the same list records the name John Hannon of Ardreigh House who died in 1916. They were brothers.

How poignant to reflect that 77 years later the Hannon family are no longer in Athy and the house which Norman and John left to enlist is home to another generation and another family whole allegiances and background are so different from theirs.

The Hannon brothers were joined in death before the end of the war by their first cousins Henry Hannon and Thomas Hannon, both of Millview House, Athy. Their premature deaths were to leave their ageing parents without successors and this, in part, was the reason for the ultimate failure of the once thriving Hannon mills at Ardreigh and Duke Street in Athy.

On the same list I find the names Thomas Stafford and Eddie Stafford of Athy, two brothers, whose death in the fighting fields of France must have brought unimaginable grief and despair to their parents. But what of the Kelly family of Meeting Lane whose three sons, John, Eoin and Denis, were never to return home to Athy. No words can describe the sense of loss suffered by young and old alike whose lives had been touched by those young men whose lives were sacrificed on the Western Front.

Anthony Byrne and his brother Joe of Chapel Lane were another two uniformed men who set off on the train from Athy Railway Station enveloped in the camaraderie and excitement of the time, having said goodbye to their family. They also died fighting in the war to end all wars.

The list goes on and on. Throughout Co. Kildare the daily despatches from the War Office were awaited with fear and apprehension. Death had no respect for rank or age. Every street suffered losses. Few homes escaped the dreadful carnage which enveloped a generation which was never to grow old.

The men of Athy and Co. Kildare who fought in World War I were soon forgotten in the emerging nationalism of the 20th century. Times have changed ever so slowly. From the rather shameful neglect of over 70 years there has began to emerge an acceptance and an appreciation of a lost generation’s sacrifice. As individuals and as a nation we have learned to acknowledge that bravery wears many uniforms and is not confined solely to the daring and sometimes heroic escapades of guerrilla fighters of the Irish War of Independence, whom we have always honoured.

For the last two years a growing number of local people have given public expression to their respect and reverence for the men of Athy who died in World War I. On Remembrance Sundays in 1991 and ’92 ceremonies of commemoration were held in St. Michael’s Cemetery, Athy over the graves of those World War I soldiers who are buried there.

On Sunday, November 14th at noon, there will again be an opportunity for us all to remember in prayer and poetry those men. St. Michael’s cemetery will be the venue. Your attendance would be a fitting way of paying your respects. Elsewhere, you will read of the lectures and other events forming part of the remembrance weekend in Athy on November 13th and 14th. If you can attend any or all of these, please do so.