Mary Leadbeater and Ballitore

The village of Ballytore, immortalised in print by Mary Leadbeater, is about to embark on a FAS Scheme designed to restore the writer’s house in the centre of the village. Lying vacant and derelict for many years the Leadbeater house at the corner of the village square has been perilously close to demolition on several occasions but now it’s future seems assured.

Mary Leadbeater, daughter of Richard and Elizabeth Shackleton, was born in Ballytore in December 1758. Her father was master of the Quakers school which his own father, Abraham Shackleton had founded. Ballytore, which derives it’s name from Baile, meaning town, and Toghter corrupted to Tore, meaning a bog, was first settled towards the end of the 17th Century by two Quakers, Abel Strettle, a Dublin Merchant and John Barcroft of Mountmellick, Co. Laois. In time it was to become an important centre of Quakerism and Quaker meetings are still regularly held in the restored Quaker Meeting House.

In 1726 a young Yorkshire Quaker, Abraham Shackleton, opened a boarding school in the village. Famous former pupils of the Ballytore School included Edmund Burke, Parliamentarian, who joined the school in 1741, Paul Cullen, the first Irish Cardinal, a pupil for 4 years from 1813 and Napper Tandy, the Irish Revolutionary who attended the school in 1749.

Richard Shackleton’s daughter, Mary, married William Leadbeater in June 1791. Her sister Sarah married Thomas Chandlee, a linen draper in business in Athy. Chandlee was largely responsible for the building of the Quaker meeting house in Meeting Lane, Athy in 1780.

Mary Leadbeater published a number of books during her lifetime, the first in 1794 titled “Extracts and Original Anecdotes for the Improvement of Youth”. This has been described as one of the earlier attempts to provide light and instructive literature for young people. In 1808 “Poems by Mary Leadbeater” was published in Dublin and London. She was more successful with her prose writing than with poetry and within 3 years she had published “Cottage Dialogues”. The characters in this little book are two women, Rose and Nancy, who speak in the idiom of the Irish peasant, one the careless idle person, the other an industrious frugal housewife. It proved extremely popular and ran to several editions and three separate series. In 1813 was published “The Landlord’s Friend”, a sequel to “Cottage Dialogues” before Mary Leadbeater and Elizabeth Carleton co-authored “Tales for Cottagers accommodated to the Present Conditions of The Irish Peasantry” which was published in 1814.

Nothing further was published by Mary Leadbeater until 1822 when “Cottage Biography” and “Memoirs and Letters of R. and E. Shackleton” appeared. R. and E. Shackleton were her parents, Richard who died in 1792 and Elizabeth who passed away in 1804. Elizabeth Shackleton was the daughter of Henry and Deborah Fuller of Fuller’s Court, Ballytore, and grand-daughter of John Barcroft, one of the original proprietor’s of the lands at Ballytore. The last book published in Mary Leadbeater’s lifetime was “Biographical Notice of Members of the Society of Friends who were resident in Ireland” which went on sale in 1823. Within 3 years Mary Leadbeater was dead. She was buried in the Quaker graveyard in Ballytore.

During the greater part of her life Mary Leadbeater kept a diary recording the events and people of her native village. This was published in 1862 as the first Volume of “The Leadbeater’s Papers” and it gives us an important and well written account of life in Ballytore between 1766 and 1818. The diary entries concerning the 1798 Rebellion are especially important being an impartial observer’s account of the events of that time. The Second Volume of the same publication consists of some of the extensive correspondence which Mary Leadbeater conducted with a number of important people. Apart from Edmund Burke’s letters it includes her correspondence with the poet George Crabbe and Melessina Trench, mother of Archbishop Richard Trench of Dublin. Archbishop Trench was a cousin of Rev. Frederick Trench, Rector of St. Michael’s, Athy, the last Sovereign of Athy whose untimely death following an accident in 1860 led to the removal of Preston’s Medieval Gate, then located in Offaly Street. George Crabbe was an English poet whose most famous works, “The Village” and “The Parish Register” are important poetic portraits of late 18th century village life.

The works of Mary Leadbeater, popular at the beginning of the last century, are now almost forgotten and except for the reproduction some years ago of an edited version of Volume One of the Leadbeater papers by the Stephen Scroop Press, her works have not been re-published.

Quakers Records Relating to Famine Relief in County Kildare

I attended a very pleasant function last week in the Quaker Meeting House, Ballytore which now doubles as the Village Library. Hosted by the County Kildare Famine Commemoration Committee the occasion was the opening of an exhibition on Quaker Famine Relief in County Kildare and the publication of a very limited edition of a two volume work of the same title.

Rob Goodbody of the Rathmichael Historical Society did the honours on the night, officially opening the exhibition and giving his listeners an interesting insight into Quaker Relief in the County. With the name Goodbody it comes as no surprise that he himself is a member of the Society of Friends and is therefore well placed to deal with the Society's contribution during the famine years. Indeed he has published two booklets on the topic entitled "A Suitable Channel" and "On The Borders of the Pale". I had not met Rob Goodbody until that evening but I was familiar with his published works and knew of his involvement with the Rathmichael Historical Society. Married to a granddaughter of Rex Hannon, formerly of Ardreigh, Athy, you can well imagine my interest in his talk given that a Hannon once sat in the very room in which I am presently penning this piece.

The exhibition itself was a delightful if somewhat eclectic insight into the social life of the Quaker community in Ballytore in South Kildare with particular emphasis on their involvement in local famine relief work. The printed volumes prepared by FAS trainees under the direction of Mary Carroll and Karl Kiely contain all the County Kildare correspondence extracted from the Society of Friends Relief of Distress papers which are stored in the National Archives, Dublin. They have reproduced the originals of these letters and prepared transcripts for ease of use. The letters cover the entire County but of particular interest to us are the letters and returns relating to Athy and South Kildare. For instance on the 16th January 1847 the local Relief Committee for Athy forwarded an application for assistance addressed to the Central Relief Committee of the Society of Friends. Its signatories included Thomas Jameson, Clerk of the Workhouse, Rev. Thomas Greene, C.C., Hon. Sec. of the Relief Committee and Mark Cross described as Chairman of the Sub-Committee of whom I wrote recently as the builder of houses in Janeville and Connolly Lane in 1872. Other signatories were Sam Eves, Robert Molloy and Patrick Commins.

The application indicated that 2,000 persons in 450 families in the Athy area were in need of public relief. Only one third of the able bodied labourers in the area were employed at an average wage of one shilling per day. The other two thirds, or 5,000, men were employed on Public Works. Despite this all the men employed were barely able in most cases to provide one meal a day for their families. The lack of food gave rise to numerous cases of dysentery in the area as did the use of turnips for human consumption.

As at January 1847 the sum of £320 had been raised by way of private subscriptions towards relief of distress in the area. However no Government grants had been received nor had any relief agency offered help to the Athy people. Of the sum collected locally a total of £12 had been donated by absentee land owners from South Kildare. The monies collected had been used to purchase Indian cornmeal, rice and straw for bedding.

A soup kitchen was set up in the town on 6th June 1847 but just before that on the 28th of May, Fr. Thomas Greene, C.C., submitted another application to the Central Relief Committee of the Society of Friends on behalf of the Athy area. He confirmed that the Public Works which had given employment in the area had been suspended two weeks previously. The local Relief Committees weekly expenses had increased from £40 to £110 as a result. He also advised that the British Relief Association had opened a store in the town supplying Relief Committees within a twenty mile radius of the town with Indian meal at £17 per tonne. There was approximately 600 tonnes of meal available for sale with the price to Relief Committees pitched at about 6% below the normal market price. At the same time the price of rice had rocketed to £30 per tonne and had ceased to be supplied.

A meeting of all land owners was arranged for the beginning of June 1847 to encourage them to give employment to local men as by now it was estimated that almost 3,000 persons were in need of help from the Relief Committee. Fr. Greene referred to the lack of employment in the area and pointed out that the only work available was in the local brickyards. "The vast majority of the men are idle, wandering around in search of relief", he wrote.

Copies of the Volumes from which I have extracted the above information will be available in all Libraries in the County. They offer a rare insight into the misery and hardship of the famine times and offer a poignant reminder of a past which up to now had been lost to us.

Booklet on Quakerism in Ballitore

Kildare Heritage Project set up some time ago to computerise all genealogical records relating to Co. Kildare has produced an interesting booklet on the Quakers of Ballytore. The work of a number of young people on a FÀS Employment Scheme, the booklet brings the reader through a brief review of the sites and the historical figures associated with Quakerism in the South Kildare village. Starting with a note on the history and development of Quakerism in Ireland we are told that the Quakers were the first large religious organisation to allow women to preach. Whether in furtherance of gender equality or not I do not know but the members were also not prepared to remove their hats in female company. The wonderful eccentricity of what is here described as their “plain dull clothes” marked them as a people apart. Mary Leadbetter’s long poem entitled “A view of Ballytore taken from Mount Bleak,” written in 1801 is reproduced by mercifully only its first 23 lines. Mary, better known as a prose writer and biographer of village life in Ballytore during and after the 1798 Rebellion is perhaps one of Ballytore’s principal claims to fame. There is no doubt at all about the place of Ballytore School in Irish history. The school where such diverse characters as Edmund Burke, Henry Grattan, Napper Tandy and the future Cardinal Paul Cullen were educated was founded by Mary Leadbetter’s grandfather, Abraham Shackleton, in 1726. It closed down in 1836 but the importance of that small provincial school lived on not only in folk memory but in the writings of statesmen who had shared their early school days with the Masters of Ballytore.

The meeting house which still stands remains today a place of meeting for members of the Society of Friends who come from far and near on the first and third Sundays of each month. Many of the buildings identified with the Quaker settlement are still to be found in the village of Ballytore. One can sense the history of the place as you pass from the Mill at Griese Bank and the adjoining house, home of Abraham Shackleton, the last Shackleton headmaster of Ballytore along the road to the Meeting House. Across the fields can be seen Fuller’s Court and Ballytore House, built by descendants of John Barcroft and Abel Strettle, the original settlers of Ballytore. The home of William and Mary Leadbetter in the Square is now the site of building activity as yet another FÀS sponsored scheme helps to revive another important element of the heritage of the Quaker village. All these buildings get mention in the heritage project booklet but surprisingly the last resting place of the local Quaker families is apparently overlooked. Their graveyard, once surrounded by what was described by Mary Leadbetter as “rising hills encompassed round, fair hills which rear the golden brow and smile upon the vale below”, is now sharing the view with a newly erected bungalow. The family names of those buried are a roll call of the Quaker movement in Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries. Shackleton, Chandlee, Webb, Haughton and Leadbetter are but some of the names discernible on the tombstones in this eerie place of grace where the bones of those who gave life to Ballytore now repose. Those involved in the production of this small booklet are to be congratulated on their efforts. The re-awakening of our forgotten past is always welcome, no more so than in this year of remembrance for the Great Famine from which time the Quakers of England and Ireland are owed a debt which can never be repaid by the people of Ireland.

Griffith - Wesley - Kebble in Athy

A few weeks ago I wrote of how seldom Athy had been noticed by travellers to Ireland during the 18th and 19th centuries. Understandably those early travellers had confined themselves to Dublin, Cork and other large centres of population, while Killarney and Connemara were also strongly favoured. Those who passed through Athy and recorded their journeys were usually men of religion who in their evangelising tours through Ireland obviously saw much worthy of their attention in the South Kildare town.

One of the earliest such travellers/evangelists was the English born Quaker John Griffith who visited Ireland for the first time in 1749. He attended Quaker meetings throughout the country during his three month visit including in his itinerary Rathangan, Carlow, Castledermot, Ballytore and Athy. Of Athy he wrote "the meeting was very small and true religion very low". While he does not say so it can reasonably be assumed that the meeting took place in a meeting room which the local Quakers rented from one of their members Thomas Weston. In 1732 Weston had agreed to "set Friends a large meeting room and a stable for £3.00 a year and keep them in repair".

Griffith's comments about the small meeting in Athy confirms our knowledge of the first Quaker community of the town which had established a meeting as early as 1671. Unlike their counterparts in Timahoe who erected a meeting house in 1704 and the Ballytore Quakers who did so four years later the Athy Quakers did not feel it necessary to provide a purpose built meeting house until 1780.

Griffith made a second visit to Ireland in March 1760 and in company with his good friend Abraham Shackleton of Ballytore he again attended Quaker meetings throughout the country until he returned to England on the 20th of May. He wrote in his journal on the 20th of March, 1760:- "I had a good serviceable meeting in Athy and the next day another at Rathangan".

Before the 18th century ended another famous visitor was to pass through Athy. This time it was John Wesley who on Saturday, the 25th of April, 1789 made the journey from Maryborough (Portlaoise) to Carlow via Athy. He did not preach in Athy having risen at 7.30a.m. for prayers before taking the Chaise at 7.45a.m. to arrive in Carlow at 1.30p.m. His journal merely recorded the fact that he passed through our town but regrettably we cannot lay claim to the great John Wesley having preached in Athy.

The next visitor of note was John Kebble, English Poet and Divine, who with his wife were the guests of Rev. Frederick Trench and Lady Helena Trench at Kilmoroney House, Athy, in August 1841. Kebble who had published the "Christian Year" in 1827 is generally acknowledged as the primary author of the Oxford Movement of which Newman was the leader. Appointed Professor of Poetry in Oxford in 1831 Kebble preached a sermon in the University Chapel, Oxford on the 14th of July, 1833 in which he asserted the Church of England's claim to a heavenly origin and opposed the abolition of ten Irish Bishoprics. It was this sermon later published as "National Apostasy" which inspired others in Oxford to seek to revive High Church principles in the Church of England which up to then was regarded as stagnant.

Associated with Kebble and Newman in the Oxford movement was Arthur Perceval, brother of Helena Trench of Kilmorony House. It's interesting to note that Rev. Frederick Trench who was Rector in Athy apparently supported the Oxford movement and for a time sought to observe the Saints Days and Holy Days by holding services in the local Church in Athy. Kebble and his wife stayed a number of days in Kilmorony and one of Kebble's biographers notes that "they seem to have well employed their time for a few days in seeing much that was interesting".

Athy may not have received much attention from early travellers to this country but it can claim that the Quaker John Griffith, the Methodist John Wesley and the Anglican John Kebble crossed paths in the unlikely setting of the South Kildare town.

Quakers

The Society of Friends whose members are commonly referred to as Quakers was founded in England in 1647 by George Fox. First established in Ireland in 1654 by William Edmundson the Society grew to prominence with the visit to this country in 1669 of its founder. The Society's structure was based on weekly local meetings of which one was founded in Athy in 1672, predating the better known Ballitore meeting by 35 years. Little is known of Quakerism in Athy until the latter part of the 18th century. The earliest extant record is of a Quaker provincial meeting held in Richard Boyes house in Athy on the 20th May, 1706. Some of the Quaker families of that time were the Jessops, the Skellys, the Hudsons, the Rushworths and the Haughtons of Rheban.

Quakers were generally merchants, a commercial activity favoured by Dissenters and Catholics alike who were denied access to the professions and State employment. Thomas Rushworth, a Quaker merchant of Athy who died in 1675 was perhaps typical of his time. He owned three tenements in the town and when he died he left in addition to shop goods, 36 barrels of malt, 19 dozen tanned calf skins, goat skins and pelts. Another local quaker was Thomas Weston who died in 1709 leaving a mill and millhouse in Athy to his son Thomas, together with "a field called Moneene near Athy". Graham Bradford was another Quaker resident of Athy whose name is recorded for posterity in the records of the Borough Council of Athy. He was a Freeman of the town who was deprived of his office in 1738 for committing perjury. He was pilloried and subsequently transported to the American colonies. The pillory was an instrument of punishment consisting of a wooden frame with holes through which the head and hands of the offender were placed. The culprit had to stand up while in the pillory where he was at the mercy of the local people who could throw rubbish at him or otherwise ridicule him. It was generally used as a punishment for such offenses as forgery, perjury or cornering the market and putting up the price of goods.

Although established in Athy since 1672 the Society of Friends did not have a permanent meeting house until 1780 when one was built on the site of the present Dispensary in Meeting Lane. Thomas Chandlee, whose wife Deborah was a sister of Mary Ledbetter of Ballitore literary fame, was the prime mover in the building of the Athy meeting house. Having moved to Athy from Dublin in 1775 to establish a linen drapery business in Duke Street he encouraged his fellow Quakers to provide a permanent meeting place in the town which was completed in 1778 at a cost of £129=5=10.

The erection of the meeting house did not make any appreciable difference to the continued development of Quakerism in Athy. Indeed the Quaker community was soon to go into decline and in 1812 the last annual collection for Quaker purposes was taken up in the town. It amounted to a mere 15/2 while a similar collection in Ballitore Village where there was a vibrant Quaker community amounted to £9.17.0. Quaker records make no reference to Athy after that date. The legacy of the Quaker community has long vanished from the area but in nearby Ballitore the Society of Friends have recently re-commenced its meeting which is held on the first and third Sunday of every month.