Athy's Noteworthy Persons - John Vincent Holland / Fr. John Miley, Thomas Kelly / Eamon Malone / William Conner

Recently I was asked who in my opinion was the most noteworthy person ever to have walked the streets of Athy.  How I wonder does one rate the many interesting persons who at one time or another passed this way, many of whom like the monastic buildings recently rediscovered in Letterkenny have been forgotten for generations past.  Many names spring to mind, some of whom have featured in past Eye’s on the Past while others have yet to appear.  Soldiers have always had a prominent position in Irish history and two local men from opposite sides, as it were, could well justify inclusion in any call up of noteworthy citizenry of Athy.

Victoria Cross Medal winner John Vincent Holland, hero of an infantry attack on enemy positions in Guillemont during the 1914/1918 War undoubtedly merits mention.  On the other hand Eamon Malone, Commander of the Carlow/Kildare I.R.A. Brigade during the War of Independence deserves inclusion.  Malone’s name is today remembered in Malone Place, one of the Town Council’s most recent housing developments situated off Woodstock Street.  Another man of the military mode, was  Seamus Malone, no relation of Eamon, a native of County Limerick who spent a few years teaching in the local Christian Brothers School in the early 1920’s.  Seamus, a  brother of Tomas Malone of the East Limerick Flying Column was involved in the Volunteer movement and was in Howth helping to unload the Asgard of guns purchased in Germany by Roger Casement.  Malone was later imprisoned in Frongoch but on his release resumed his involvement with the Republican movement which continued until his death in 1959.  He was the driving force behind the reforming of the Athy Gaelic Football Club in the early 1920’s and as a school teacher he championed the cause of the Young Emmets as the Club was then called.  I hope to devote a future Eye on the Past to Seamus Malone, one of the many extraordinary men to have passed through our town.

One of the religious entrants for the title of most noteworthy person of the past is Narraghmore born John Miley who as a Catholic Priest accompanied Daniel O’Connell on his last trip abroad.  Miley who was born in 1799 attended the Ballitore Quaker School and after studying in Maynooth College and Rome was ordained to the priesthood.  He was an accomplished preacher and while a curate in the Pro Cathedral, the Liberator, Daniel O’Connell, sought the permission of Archbishop Murray for Miley to accompany him on his trip to Rome in 1847.  Fr. Miley was with O’Connell when he died and in accordance with O’Connell’s wishes he took the casket containing his heart to Rome before conveying the Liberators body back to Ireland.  Fr. Miley delivered the funeral oration on Daniel O’Connell in the Pro Cathedral, Dublin.  He was appointed Director of the Irish College Paris in 1849 and during much of his ten years in that position the Narraghmore man was embroiled in controversy involving Fr. Patrick Lavelle, the outspoken supporter of Irish Nationalism.  The Ballitore born Archbishop of Dublin, Paul Cullen, eventually felt obliged to recall Fr. Miley from the Irish College and he returned to become Parish Priest of Bray where he died two years later.  Miley was a noteworthy character of his time who like so many of his peers was soon consigned to the unread pages of Irish history.

Similarly overlooked after years in the forefront of Irish land agitation was William Conner of Inch, Athy.  He first came to prominence with the publication of his pamphlet entitled “A letter to the people of Ireland on the disturbances of 1822”.  Conner had a most interesting lineage being the illegitimate son of Arthur O’Connor and a cousin of the Irish born Chartist Fergus O’Connor.  The earlier mentioned Arthur O’Connor was part of the first Leinster Directory of the United Irishmen but resigned in 1798 and went to England where he was arrested and imprisoned.  On his release he went to France where he was appointed a General by Napoleon Bonaparte.  His son William used the surname Conner and although a property owner of considerable means, he devoted his time and energy to campaigning on behalf of Irish landless tenants against the rack-renting system.  In his second pamphlet published in 1832 entitled “The Speech of William Conner against Rack-Rents etc. Delivered at a Meeting in Inch” Conners outlined his ideas on the land question - fair rent and fixity of tenure.  Conner addressed meetings around the country and he was possibly the first Irishman imprisoned for his agrarian views.  He published several more pamphlets on the Irish land question and greatly influenced that other land reformer, James Fintan Lalor.  Conner’s land reform views were ultimately adopted by the British Prime Minister, Gladstone, and to the Inch, Athy man must go accolade of Father of the three F’s - Fair Rents, Fixity of Tenure and Freedom of Sale. 

Fr. John Miley and William Conner will hopefully feature in future Eye’s on the Past, but the man whom I chose as the most noteworthy person of the past has appeared in this column before.  He is Thomas Kelly, son of a High Court Judge, who was ordained to the Church of England but left that Church to found his own religious group known as the “Kellyites”. 

Thomas Kelly was an acquaintance of John Walker and John Nelson Darby, two fellow priests of the established Church who like Kelly were to turn away from the Church of England.  Walker founded the “Walkerites” who had a presence in Dublin up to the 1940’s while Darby was the principal party in the founding of the “Plymouth Brethren”.  Kelly founded the “Kellyites” and soon had followers, not only in his hometown of Athy but also in Blackrock and Great George’s Street, Dublin, Portarlington, Wexford and Waterford. 

Thomas Kelly was a hymnologist of some merit and during his lifetime he published eight editions of his hymns entitled “Hymns on Various Passages of Sacred Scripture”.  The first edition in 1804 contained 96 hymns and the final edition which appeared 49 years later had a grand total of 767 hymns, all written by Thomas Kelly.  Several of his hymns such as “The Heart that Once was Crowned with Thorns” and “We sing the Praise of Him who died” are still included in Church hymnals to this day. 

Kelly was also the author of several pamphlets including “A letter addressed to the Roman Catholics of Athy occasioned by Mr. Hayes Seven Sermons”.  Another pamphlet of special interest to Athy folk was printed in 1809 under the title “Some Account of James Byrne of Kilberry in the County of Kildare addressed principally to the Roman Catholic inhabitants of Athy and its neighbourhood”.  In 1834 the Kellyites in Athy numbered approximately 40 and they met every Sunday in their Duke Street Chapel.  Thomas Kelly who married Elizabeth Tighe of Rosanna, Co. Wicklow lived at Kellyville but generally went to Dublin every second Sunday to take service in the Great George’s Street Chapel.  He died on Monday, 14^th May 1855 while staying with his son-in-law in Pembroke Place in Dublin, and was buried in Ballintubbert.  With his passing the Kellyites disappeared as a separate Church group as its members rejoined the ranks of the established Church, and in some cases the Methodist Church.

Thomas Kelly was the first noteworthy local man from the past whom I rediscovered as a result of my research.  After decades of neglect his name again became a familiar one to students of our local history.  For me Rev. Thomas Kelly will always have a special place in the story of our town.

Memoirs of Caroline Kelly Daughter of Thomas Kelly

One of the most remarkable men to come out of the history of Athy and district was the Reverend Thomas Kelly of Kellyville Ballintubbert. He was born in 1769 the son of Thomas Kelly a one time Catholic Barrister, who had become a member of the Church of England in order to obtain judicial preferment. Thomas Kelly the junior went to London in order to study law but instead changed his mind and took Holy Orders in 1792. Ordained to the Church of England he returned to Dublin where, despite his youth and relative inexperience, he proved a popular preacher. However, he soon fell out of favour with Archbishop Fowler of Dublin who prohibited him from preaching in any church in the Dublin archdiocese. Archbishop Fowler died in 1801 so the prohibition was probably some few years after Kellys ordination and just before the turn of the 19th Century.

Thomas Kelly still attracted a large following and in a period where different groups such as the Walkerites and the Brethern, later the Plymouth Brethern, established themselves outside the mainstream Anglican Church, Kelly founded the Kellyites.
A man of independent means, who had made a good marriage with Ms Tighe, of Rosanna, Co Wicklow, Kelly was able to establish a number of meeting houses in Dublin, Athy, Portarlginton, Wexford and Waterford.

I was reminded of Thomas Kelly when I recently came across a copy of his daughter’s memoirs published for private circulation in August 1902. Caroline Theodosia Kelly’s recollections were recorded during August and Sept. 1901 at No. 2 Eaton Square, Monkstown, just 5 years before she died at an advanced age. They are of interest for the insight they gave into the lives of the people of Ballintubbert around the time of the Great Famine and for that reason I give the following lengthy extract from them:-

“Amongst the poorest, there were several original characters, such as were to be met with only in the old-fashioned Irish country districts, before the day of railways and telegraphs.At the top of the “Quarry” field resided a very old man, Paddy Fennan, and his wife. He remembered as a boy helping when the modern part of Kellyville House was built by my grandfather, Judge Kelly. The wife remembered being a housemaid during his life time, and used to say that the guests always left a shilling for the housemaid between the sheets when they were leaving. They were a very clean and tidy old couple, and Mrs Fennan’s girdle cakes were much appreciated by the younger generation.

There were, the blacksmith’s family, the Murphys, and that of the carpenter, the
Carberys. Old Dan Carbery was an excellent skilled mechanic, and his sons and
grandsons still follow the trade, some of the latter in America. He dressed in the old-
fashioned style, with knee-breeches, knitted stockings, and blue cloth coat with brass
buttons.

There was a herdsman of the name of John Gorman, who was quite an authority. His
favourite manner of drawing attention to any person or thing was, “Look at that, now”.
He was a most warm-hearted man, but endowed with the coarsest brogue I think I ever
heard.

There was a little gamekeeper of the name of Tom Branigan, who was a good rabbit shot,
and had a very dry manner, and was generally more silent than Irishmen of his kind. He
married at an advanced age, and, in consequence, as is the custom in Ireland, had on his
wedding night to go through the ordeal of a great deal of what is called “booing”,
accompanied by the blowing of horns.

There were cottages belonging to families, such as the Whelans, Regans, etc., which,
though constructed with thick walls of stone and clay, and thatched with straw, and
having mud floors, were always clean and tidy, so that no one could object to visit or sit
down in them.

An old man of the name of Tom Cushion lived in a cottage on the road to Athy, whose
conversation we much enjoyed. One day I was improving the occasion, as I thought, by
talking to him on some instructive subject, when he remarked with a straight look, “It’s a
muthering pity”, Miss, that ye weren’t male born.” Once I asked him to let me have a
little gravel from his sand-pit for my garden; his answer, in the fullness of his heart,
when I wanted to pay for it, was “Ye shall have it sponta-a-neous as the leaves grow on
the trees. ”He was one of the very few Roman Catholics of his position who read through
his Bible continually, and talked freely about it.

I must not omit to describe a character that was well known in the whole countryside, and
who rarely passed a week without being seen and given food at our door. I mean Mary
Grady, who was an example of Irish county early life to be met nowhere else. She had
married and had a large family, but the poor thing had a disordered brain, brought on
through illness or disappointment. She lived with her husband, mother and six children,
in a cabin on the Ballyadams bog. The dwelling was of the poorest and most elementary
description; her husband was a day labourer, and, although she was rarely at home and
spent her days wandering over the country far and wide, the children all grew up well and
healthy. On one occasion when talking to Mary Grady she said how fond the poor girls
were of me.”Oh,” I said (in joke), “it was only for the money they get,” to which she
responded: “Die to-morrow, and see what a grand funeral ye’d have.”

Her restlessness of brain forced her from house to house, and from town to town, and her
life, passed in repartee and wild conversation or altercation with those who laughed at
her, or pitied or disliked her, produced a flow of vigorous language, and filled her with a
vast amount of local gossip, upon which she discoursed, or which she retailed, greatly to
the amusement of the young and old of all ranks who would listen to her.

Her genius for quaint saying and for coining quaint words and funny names was
wonderful. For fully 40 years she wandered over parts of Kildare and Queen’s County,
and there were few houses of any kind where she was not pretty sure to get something to
eat, and, if it was a dinner, she especially enjoyed what she called the “top finish”, which
in ordinary language is the “sweet thing”.

Reverend Thomas Kelly died on 15th May 1955 aged 86 years and was buried in the
Kelly family vault in the grounds of Ballintubbert church.

On Thursday I will be leading a history walk of Athy starting in Emily Square at 7pm as
part of the Seachtain na Gaeilge activities. Join me on my journey down the history of
Athy as seen through its buildings and the people who once walked the streets of our town.

Leighton Buzzard

I was reminded of the power and universality of music when attending Mass in Leighton Buzzard, an English town in Bedfordshire last weekend. Rev. Thomas Kelly, a native of Ballintubbert, Athy, who died in 1855 left us a huge number of Church hymns, one of which broke pleasantly into life as the small congregation sang Kelly’s “The head that once was crowned with thorns”. The Little Church of the Sacred Heart, tucked neatly and unobtrusively behind a row of terraced houses in the small English town, echoed to words and music which no doubt were often heard in the Kellyite Meeting House in Duke Street during Kelly’s lifetime.

The beautiful narrow boats, moored on the Grand Union Canal, which cuts through Leighton Buzzard and neighbouring Linslade, were another reminder of my home town where the Grand Canal, like its English counterpart, helped to transform a once quiet country town. I have no reason to believe that Rev. Thomas Kelly ever set foot in this small town in Bedfordshire, where last Sunday, some of the locals were offering up their Sabbath tribute using the words of the man who often preached from the pulpit of St. Michael’s Anglican Church in Athy.

Later that day, I stopped off at a local country pub a few miles outside Aylesbury, another town on the Grand Union Canal, immortalised as the home of the “Aylesbury Duck”. The “Wool Pack” was the name of the Inn, which, in the best English Landlord tradition, offered a good substantial meal, as well as liquid refreshment, for the weary traveller. The name Wool Pack is of course a reference to the wool trade, which for centuries was the mainstay of English rural prosperity. The process of converting the wool from fleece into cloth varied little over the centuries. Fleece was graded and packed into wool sacks which were of a regulated size. Each wool sack was suspended from a roof beam and two wool packers were employed to stand into the huge wool sack using their feet to tread down each layer of fleece. When filled, the packers stepped out backwards, sewing up the sacks which was then marked ready to be carted away. The name Wool Pack generally referred to the barn where this activity was carried out. I am reminded that in Wolfhill there is a pub with the name “The Wolf Pack”, perhaps a corruption of the better known Wool Pack, but maybe also a reference to the placename Wolfhill, once a woodland countryside where wolves proliferated in the early middle ages.

Later that day I met an interesting man fast approaching his 82nd year whose late brother was the first Australian Ambassador to Ireland. John Roberthaun, a book publisher now retired, travelled on bicycle from what he referred to as “Londonderry” to Cork in the Summer of 1936. He passed through the Irish midlands on undulating roads with little or no motorised traffic. The colourful scenery made a lasting impression on the young man, who almost 60 years later still recalls the green swarth which cloaked the countryside and the abundant hedgerows which traversed the countryside in what Dick Warner would refer to as “corridors of wilderness”.

Approaching Athy from the Dublin direction he cycled over the railway bridge, where the steam train passed under as it travelled twice daily to and from Dublin with its multi-class passengers. This was the age of the second and third class passengers who shared nothing in common with the first class passengers but the engine which pulled their carriages. A foreign visitor on bicycle was an unusual sight in Athy of the 1930’s and no doubt he aroused the curiosity of the locals as he dismounted at McGrath’s Tea Rooms in Leinster Street, to partake of dinner consisting of bacon, cabbage and potatoes.

Whites Castle in the centre of the town “at the foot of the bridge” and the Town Hall in Emily Square, are the only local buildings John Roberthaun recalled from that short visit so many years ago. The Irish countryside made an indelible impression on the young visitor which the intervening years have not tended to dull. He regrets never having the opportunity to retrace his youthful journey.

Earlier that morning in the same Church where I heard Thomas Kelly’s hymn, the Parish Priest conducted a Mass service which was a rare treat. He communicated with his small congregation in a way which was endearing and captivating, embracing visitors and locals alike in the camaraderie and warmth of a service which was uplifting and appealing. When I spoke to him later to discover that he was an Anglican-born convert or revert to Catholicism, I could not help drawing comparisons with Thomas Kelly, the Anglican, who left the Church of England to found his own religious sect.

I wondered did he ever imagine that 140 years after his own death, his hymns would continue to find a place in Catholic as well as Anglican worship throughout the English speaking world? Last Sunday I recalled an earlier visit to Kelly’s last resting place in Ballintubbert, Co. Laois and acknowledged that no matter where we may travel there is always someone, some place or something to remind us of our own place. Such was my experience last weekend in Leighton Buzzard.