‘History of the World in
One Hundred Objects’ was the title of a recent bestselling
book which enlivened the retelling of history in an interesting and novel
way. It soon gave way to a series
currently running in the Irish Times of the ‘History
of Ireland in One Hundred Objects’, the objects in this case being
artefacts to be found in the National Museum.
I wasn’t surprised therefore to be presented recently with a challenge
by my eldest son Seamus to write of the History of Athy by reference to a
limited number of objects. It struck me
that if 100 objects were sufficient to deal with world history, or indeed the
history of Ireland, then surely the history of our relatively small urban
settlement on the banks of the river Barrow could be more than adequately
covered by say twenty five objects. And
so having arbitrarily set this figure of twenty five as the appropriate one for
telling the story of Athy I set about identifying the objects which would be
the best vehicles to carry the text of a town’s history from foundation to
modern times.
Firstly, the word ‘object’
would have to be defined and its dictionary definition ‘a material thing that can be seen or touched’ more than adequately
met my requirements, it allows me to utilise buildings and documents or
artefacts as visual props to highlight aspects of the town’s history. Now the difficult part of the task facing me
was identifying the twenty five objects which of necessity must have a
connection with Athy and its people. The
period to be covered stretched back eight hundred years to the time of the
foundation of the village of Athy and even further if one was to relate the
story of the river crossing which was the forerunner of the first settlement.
Perhaps the easiest part of the task would be identifying local
buildings, existing or in ruins. The
compiling of a list of possible inclusions in the final twenty five objects
must, of course, give us many entries later to be discarded. So the initial list of objects should be far
wider than the final twenty five and so in terms of buildings, I could include several such as
Woodstock Castle, White’s Castle, Crom-a-Boo Bridge, St. Vincent’s Hospital
etc.
There are many more buildings or parts thereof which could or
perhaps should be included and I await readers suggestions as to further
inclusions.
Identifying suitable ‘material
things which can be seen or touched’ is likely to pose greater problems than
that posed by the identifying of appropriate buildings. One such object which came to my notice
within the past few weeks was a document which issued following the laying of
the cornerstone of Athy’s Jail on the Carlow Road by the Duke of Leinster on
the 20th day of June 1826. It
was returned to Athy from Australia and added significantly to what I already
knew about the Town Jail which was opened in 1830.
Other documents appropriate for inclusion in the list of twenty five
are the pamphlets published in the 1640s concerning Ireland’s involvement in
the English Civil War. First amongst
those pamphlets is one printed in London in 1641 which as the title page states
was ‘Sent into England by Mr. Hierome,
Minister of God at Athigh in Ireland’. The eight page pamphlet includes a
pictorial depiction of ‘Athigh’
surrounded by town walls and in the background a Church.
But the objects to be chosen for the list while having to be
historically significant do not have to be rare or indeed immeasurable in terms
of cost. For instance, World War 1 death
plaques of which over two hundred were received in homes in the South Kildare
area must, I feel, be one of the final twenty five chosen objects. It would allow the story of the 1914-1918 War
to be told and how that war impacted on Athy and district.
There are so many other objects for consideration and inclusion in
the final list of the twenty five that it would seem appropriate to seek the
assistance of everyone interested in history to help compile that list.
Let me have your suggestions as to objects which bearing in mind the
definition should be included in the list of twenty five objects to tell the
story of the Town of Athy. Give me a
list of any number of objects and all suggestions received before the end of
January will be included in a future article before the twenty five final
objects are chosen and are written about.
