“It’s not on any map, true places never are…”, was the claim made in Moby Dick. A historian should disagree, but even the historian knows that the history he traces is to some extent a work of the imagination. Dates and facts only provide the contours of the historical map; to evoke the past the historian generally has to trespass on the territory of fiction, so this week I’ll pay it my dues. In this Eye on the Past, historians’ stories make way for the rival images of poets and novelists (and even a stray photographer).
A diary is not quite fiction and not quite history, so it provides a convenient enough beginning. The first approach to any place is through the eye of the outsider, so we can take Chevalier de Latocnaye’s account of his visit to Athy in 1796 as a first impression of the town.
“I went to Athy, from whence every day there is a service of public boats to Dublin. At the entrance to the village I was stopped by four or five persons who asked for charity - they explained that it was to be used to give decent burial to a poor wretch who had died of hunger. I replied that since he was dead he wanted nothing. This answer did not appear to satisfy them, and so I contributed to the funereal pomp, the occasion being, perhaps, the only one in which the poor fellow’s friends were interested in his concerns.”
Brewer, passing through Athy on his travels around Ireland in 1825 described Athy :-
“Athy, although now decayed, was formerly a place of considerable importance. Its declining state is lamentably contrasted with local circumstances peculiarly favourable to its prosperity. The surrounding country is well adapted to tillage. The Grand Canal, and great southern road to Cork, connect it with the metropolis; and the river Barrow, on which it is seated, is navigable to the opulent trading port of Waterford. These advantages, however, have proved insufficient to retard the decay of a town, unquestionably of high reputation at an early period of national history.”
These passing glances provide a unique approach to late-eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Ireland, one which is particularly appropriate since the travel journal was characteristic of Irish literature of this time. An unsettled partner to imperial Britain, Ireland offered a strange, and sometimes disturbing, aspect to the English traveller, who presented it in his writing (if in sympathetic mood) as an exotic, tragic country. However, the numerous London publications advertised as ‘travels in Ireland’ were only one consequence of a habit of looking at Ireland as an unfamiliar and somehow unknowable place. Even Irish novelists, largely reliant on London publishers and an English readership, presented the places and the people most familiar to them as they would to a stranger – footnotes included. The ‘true places’ they represented in their fiction were not validated as such by sparking recognition or sympathy in the reader, but because the author insisted on their basis in fact, and typically overloaded the novel of the time with footnotes and explanations of local custom. ‘True places’ they may have aspired to present, but they provided a map and a key.
And then, to skip a bit further into the future, there came this: “Why is Kildare like the leg of a man’s trousers? Because it’s got Athy in it.” Maybe not the most auspicious debut in twentieth-century fiction, but having thrown this squib into A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce ensured the immortality of a Kildare town whose unpronouncability would prevent generations of American undergraduates from ever getting the joke. However, if it seems that Athy has degenerated from a place to be travelled through into a bad pun, its next most famous appearance in Irish literature should redress the balance. Patrick Kavanagh’s poem Lines written on a seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin, bequeathed both a ‘canal-bank seat for the passer-by’, which sits on the bank of the Grand Canal at Baggot Street Bridge, and these lines:
A swan swims by, head low, with many apologies
And look! a barge comes bringing from Athy
And other far-flung towns, mythologies.
And so Athy is once more a place, and not only a place of fact, but a bringer of mythologies. It may have seemed remote to Kavanagh as he sat by the Grand Canal in Dublin, but Athy was hardly ‘far-flung’. Nevertheless, if Kavanagh could imagine such familiar country as mythological territory, then perhaps other writers could find the ‘true places’ of the imagination by turning back to the familiarity of things known at first-hand.
Having skirted around Athy with the outsider, one writer appears who knows the town and its hinterland as an insider. John MacKenna’s fiction owes some debt to Kavanagh’s fondness for the familiar - with the exception of his novel Clare, he has never stepped outside the environs of Kildare. Readers of his books encounter a litany of local place-names, and anyone who knows Castledermot, or Kilkea, or Offaly Street can find their own perceptions of these places, the histories and associations which have gathered in their own mind, displaced by his fictional reality. And yet the invasion can hardly be resented because the stories which replace them (however momentarily) do not seem out of place. Instead, they can have an uncanny resonance – centring on personal, private events rather than the clash and clamour that is more often taken as the stuff of history, these stories are documents of their own kind.
Which brings me to my final link, and the one that’s closest to factual history – the documentary photograph. On publication of John Minihan’s collection of photographs of Athy, Shadows from the Pale, many Athy people revisited old scenes and old faces in John’s photographs, and a selection of these, taken over a period of thirty years, hangs in the town library. I wonder though, how many see the Athy they know reflected in his collection, because the strangest of truisms is that the places most familiar to us can at times seem equally as foreign. The series of photographs documenting the wake of Katie Tyrell most obviously highlights an aspect of life in the town that is long gone, but in any case it is difficult to look at these photographs with an insider’s eye and not feel, if only for a moment, slightly estranged by them. Perhaps the impression is created by looking at the landscape of the town only slightly altered from its present state, so that a quick glance can trick the onlooker into taking a thirty-year old shot as a recent photograph. Or perhaps an assumed familiarity is disturbed by a view of the place that’s undeniably exact, but still almost imperceptibly (if inevitably) foreign to a personal impression.
However, the different images of a local place that a novelist, or a photographer, or a diarist produce can only take their power from the way they interact with our own imagined places. To find a place that’s not on any map is not usually within the historian’s remit, but now and again it’s these imagined places that yield the truer sense of history.
Thursday, February 22, 2001
Gertie Gray
If you are a regular reader of this column you will know that Offaly Street and the families who lived there hold a special place in my memories which stretch back into the hazy 1940’s and the better remembered decade which followed. I still recall the families that lived in our street but with each passing year the jigsaw of memory loses yet another piece.
Last week another link with Offaly Street was lost with the passing of Gertie Gray of Pairc Bhride. Gertie was the daughter of Tom and May McHugh who lived at No. 8 Offaly Street. I understand that Tom and his brother Matt were originally from Co. Donegal and came to Athy via Abbeyleix where they worked in a local foundry. The McHugh brothers established two foundries in Athy, Matt opening his in Meeting Lane while Tom set up his business in Janeville Lane at the back of Offaly Street.
Tom and his family lived for a few years in Butlers Row before moving into No. 8 Offaly Street sometime in the late 1930’s where their landlord was Myles Whelan of Fortbarrington. The hardships and health hazards of those days were reflected in the high mortality rate which Irish towns including Athy experienced before and after the Second World War. There were few families in Offaly Street which did not experience the loss of a young child or even an adult son or daughter during that period and Tom and May McHugh suffered two bereavements in a short space of time. Their daughter Annie died aged 26 years in September 1938 and in May 1940 their eldest son John who was married to Molly O’Rourke died at 30 years of age. They were survived by six siblings, including Gertie who died last week. The eldest daughter May was later to marry Tommy Whelan of Levitstown and they lived in St. Patrick’s Avenue up to 1960 when the entire Whelan family emigrated to England. At Gertie’s funeral last week I met her nephew Oliver Whelan who now operates a successful foundry business in Luton, as did his Grand-father Tom in Janeville Lane so many years ago.
Another daughter Barbara McHugh married Bill Tobin and they lived in Ballylinan where tragically Barbara died in childbirth. Bill who had previously returned from America before marrying Barbara or “Babs” as she was known later returned to New York where I believe he has since died. Following the death of his brother John, Tommy McHugh was the oldest surviving son of the McHugh family and it was Tommy in whom his father Tom invested his hopes for the future. Tommy was a skilled foundry man whose first job was with his father Tom in the Janeville Lane foundry. There he worked with local men such as Mannix Thompson and Des Donaldson, both of whom would later join the I.V.I. Foundry in Leinster Street. Coincidentally Des’s sister Maureen who married John J. Cardiff was buried this week, and many of you will remember his brother Sidney Donaldson who was tragically killed many years ago while attending a car race in the Curragh. Tommy McHugh later took up a position with the newly-opened IVI factory where he was Paddy Timpson’s pre-decessor and where like Paddy he was an extremely important part of the local foundry team. Tommy subsequently left Athy and opened a foundry in Pollerton Road, Carlow from where his mother May originally came and in the latter years of his life he was the manager of the Unidare Foundry in Finglas, Dublin.
The only surviving member today of Tom and May McHugh’s family is their son Matt whom I had the privilege of meeting when he attended his sister Gertie’s funeral. Matt who left Athy in 1942 travelled from Harrow in London where he is now living in retirement. He is still remembered after all those years and both Denis Smyth and Jimmy Kelly who lived in Offaly Street recalled Matt by his nickname of 60 years ago. In a town where everyone has a nickname Matt was known as “Scatcha”, a name without any provenance or apparent meaning, but a name which confirmed that Matt belonged to a close-knit community where affection was evidenced in the language of the ordinary people. He was just sixteen years of age when he left wartime Athy to join the RAF in Belfast and he was 17 years old when he married Cecilia Maher of Clonmel. He spent 7 years in the RAF, serving in India and elsewhere, and he last worked as a chauffeur for the Wimpy Group in England. When he left Athy 59 years ago Matt left behind in the family home in Offaly Street two younger sisters, Gertie and Una. Una later emigrated to England where she married and lived in Sheffield until she died.
Gertie was the only member of Tom and May McHugh’s family to live out her life in Athy where she played an active part in the Parish Choir, the local ICA Guild and the Musical Society. She is survived by her husband Eamonn and family to whom our sympathy is extended.
The McHugh Foundries of Janeville Lane and Meeting Lane flourished at a time when foundry work was an important industry in Athy. The IVI Foundry established by Captain Hosie was the largest foundry in its day, but much needed employment was to be found also at Bergins Foundry and also that operated by Duthie Larges. The local St. Michael’s Cemetery has many examples of the skillful work of the Athy Foundries of the past and amongst them can be found the metal crosses which came from the Janeville Lane Foundry of Tom McHugh.
Time has moved on. Tom McHugh’s foundry is no more and its site will soon form part of a car park for the hotel planned on the site of the 13th century Dominican Friary.
Last week another link with Offaly Street was lost with the passing of Gertie Gray of Pairc Bhride. Gertie was the daughter of Tom and May McHugh who lived at No. 8 Offaly Street. I understand that Tom and his brother Matt were originally from Co. Donegal and came to Athy via Abbeyleix where they worked in a local foundry. The McHugh brothers established two foundries in Athy, Matt opening his in Meeting Lane while Tom set up his business in Janeville Lane at the back of Offaly Street.
Tom and his family lived for a few years in Butlers Row before moving into No. 8 Offaly Street sometime in the late 1930’s where their landlord was Myles Whelan of Fortbarrington. The hardships and health hazards of those days were reflected in the high mortality rate which Irish towns including Athy experienced before and after the Second World War. There were few families in Offaly Street which did not experience the loss of a young child or even an adult son or daughter during that period and Tom and May McHugh suffered two bereavements in a short space of time. Their daughter Annie died aged 26 years in September 1938 and in May 1940 their eldest son John who was married to Molly O’Rourke died at 30 years of age. They were survived by six siblings, including Gertie who died last week. The eldest daughter May was later to marry Tommy Whelan of Levitstown and they lived in St. Patrick’s Avenue up to 1960 when the entire Whelan family emigrated to England. At Gertie’s funeral last week I met her nephew Oliver Whelan who now operates a successful foundry business in Luton, as did his Grand-father Tom in Janeville Lane so many years ago.
Another daughter Barbara McHugh married Bill Tobin and they lived in Ballylinan where tragically Barbara died in childbirth. Bill who had previously returned from America before marrying Barbara or “Babs” as she was known later returned to New York where I believe he has since died. Following the death of his brother John, Tommy McHugh was the oldest surviving son of the McHugh family and it was Tommy in whom his father Tom invested his hopes for the future. Tommy was a skilled foundry man whose first job was with his father Tom in the Janeville Lane foundry. There he worked with local men such as Mannix Thompson and Des Donaldson, both of whom would later join the I.V.I. Foundry in Leinster Street. Coincidentally Des’s sister Maureen who married John J. Cardiff was buried this week, and many of you will remember his brother Sidney Donaldson who was tragically killed many years ago while attending a car race in the Curragh. Tommy McHugh later took up a position with the newly-opened IVI factory where he was Paddy Timpson’s pre-decessor and where like Paddy he was an extremely important part of the local foundry team. Tommy subsequently left Athy and opened a foundry in Pollerton Road, Carlow from where his mother May originally came and in the latter years of his life he was the manager of the Unidare Foundry in Finglas, Dublin.
The only surviving member today of Tom and May McHugh’s family is their son Matt whom I had the privilege of meeting when he attended his sister Gertie’s funeral. Matt who left Athy in 1942 travelled from Harrow in London where he is now living in retirement. He is still remembered after all those years and both Denis Smyth and Jimmy Kelly who lived in Offaly Street recalled Matt by his nickname of 60 years ago. In a town where everyone has a nickname Matt was known as “Scatcha”, a name without any provenance or apparent meaning, but a name which confirmed that Matt belonged to a close-knit community where affection was evidenced in the language of the ordinary people. He was just sixteen years of age when he left wartime Athy to join the RAF in Belfast and he was 17 years old when he married Cecilia Maher of Clonmel. He spent 7 years in the RAF, serving in India and elsewhere, and he last worked as a chauffeur for the Wimpy Group in England. When he left Athy 59 years ago Matt left behind in the family home in Offaly Street two younger sisters, Gertie and Una. Una later emigrated to England where she married and lived in Sheffield until she died.
Gertie was the only member of Tom and May McHugh’s family to live out her life in Athy where she played an active part in the Parish Choir, the local ICA Guild and the Musical Society. She is survived by her husband Eamonn and family to whom our sympathy is extended.
The McHugh Foundries of Janeville Lane and Meeting Lane flourished at a time when foundry work was an important industry in Athy. The IVI Foundry established by Captain Hosie was the largest foundry in its day, but much needed employment was to be found also at Bergins Foundry and also that operated by Duthie Larges. The local St. Michael’s Cemetery has many examples of the skillful work of the Athy Foundries of the past and amongst them can be found the metal crosses which came from the Janeville Lane Foundry of Tom McHugh.
Time has moved on. Tom McHugh’s foundry is no more and its site will soon form part of a car park for the hotel planned on the site of the 13th century Dominican Friary.
Thursday, February 8, 2001
Jenny Hegarty
“We’ll be excommunicated”. I spoke in jest to my fellow Christian and former neighbour Ricky Kelly as we both exited from St. Michael’s Church at the top of Offaly Street. “Weren’t we terrible eejits to live for so long under the half baked notion that attending a Protestant neighbours funeral would lead to eternal damnation.” There was nothing further to say. We walked on in silence, not giving voice to the collective shame which once marked Irish country lives separated by religious differences of an obscure and doubtful origin. The occasion was the Sunday afternoon funeral of Jenny Hegarty who died at 84 years of age after spending the last 69 years of her life in Athy.
“Miss Hegarty” is how she was known to the hundreds, nay, the thousands of customers she served while in charge of the wool and haberdashery department in Shaws of Duke Street. My mother who herself came to Athy in 1945 did all her shopping in Shaws and Miss Hegarty was a name I came to recognise when as a young lad I was dispatched to return some item or other to Shaws store. For you see my mother was of the old style of shopper who prodded, tested and tried every individual article on sale before parting with her hard earned money.
The wool and haberdashery department was perhaps the most visited department of Shaws store during the 1940’s and 1950’s and for a very good reason. Almost every Irish housewife knitted, sewed and darned. Pullovers, stockings and gloves were the mainstay of the hand knitter whose requirements were always attended to by Miss Hegarty. Do you remember the winter nights spent in winding balls of wool from the hanks in which they were sold in the shops. I hated that boring job of holding the hanks of wool between my outstretched arms while my mother patiently and with a dexterity born of years of experience, calmly wound the balls of wool. That same wool would soon find a shape and a purpose between the knitting needles which were taken out each night after tea plates and cups had been washed and put away. Miss Hegarty was the acknowledged wool expert who helped and advised the vast array of females for whom knitting was a pastime or in many cases, as with my own mother, a necessary form of self help sofar as the family finances were concerned. Jenny was her name, a fact of which I was not aware until her Death Notice appeared in the newspaper. Indeed I am sure many of those same people she had served so well over the years were also unaware of her first name for to all and sundry she was simply “Miss Hegarty”.
She came to Athy in 1932 soon after she left school to take up a position with Sam Shaw in Duke Street. A native of Portarlington she had one brother, Harry Hegarty, who many of my readers will remember as a rural postman serving the Wolfhill area. Harry died 22 years ago and at the time lived, as did Jenny, at 3 Duke Street which is now the offices of the Irish Permanent Building Society. When Jenny first came to Athy she lived in with the other lady assistants in the living quarters attached to Shaws store. Some of the other girls who in their younger days worked in Shaws with Jenny included Etta Eacrett, Anna Breakey, Frances Dobson, Ann Cole, Florrie Bass, Muriel Lazenbey and Miss Leggett. Jenny spent 51 years in the wool and haberdashery department of Shaws and throughout much of that time she was the staff member who trained every new assistant who joined the Duke Street store. It was to Jenny’s counter that the new arrivals were invariably directed on their first day for it was her experience and kind manner which provided the perfect qualifications for passing on to each newcomer the Shaw ethos of sales and service.
Jenny retired almost 18 years ago, all the time living with her brother’s family at No. 3 Duke Street and moving with them in 1993 to Burtown. To everyone who knew her, whether as Miss Hegarty or Jenny, she was the consummate lady, always courteous, always helpful and in her own way an institution in the town where she had lived since 1932. The Sunday afternoon funeral in St. Michael’s was attended by persons representative of the different religious creeds in the town. It was fitting that it was so, for after all Miss Hegarty was known to so many and was liked by everyone she came in contact with during her many years in Athy. May she rest in peace.
Recalling the part played by Shaws in bringing so many young girls to Athy over the decades it strikes me that here is a fruitful field of study for some urban sociologist. Just imagine what the Shaws employment practice meant to the local Protestant Churches in terms of renewal. Many of the girls who joined the firm later married locally at a time when the Ne Temere Decree was still a prohibitive presence in Irish life. However that’s a matter for research for another day, and perhaps by someone other than the present writer.
I got several phone calls following last weeks article with particular reference to Gilbert Carey. Many thanks to all who contacted me. I now have more than sufficient information to pass on to my enquirer from Manchester. However, I need your assistance in relation to another matter. Kevin Kerwin has written to me from Florida with regard to possible family connections in the South Kildare area. His great grand-father Daniel Kirwan, a blacksmith whose own father was James Kirwan of Duke Street, emigrated to America in 1843. Any information helpful to Mr. Kerwin’s enquiry can be passed on through me.
“Miss Hegarty” is how she was known to the hundreds, nay, the thousands of customers she served while in charge of the wool and haberdashery department in Shaws of Duke Street. My mother who herself came to Athy in 1945 did all her shopping in Shaws and Miss Hegarty was a name I came to recognise when as a young lad I was dispatched to return some item or other to Shaws store. For you see my mother was of the old style of shopper who prodded, tested and tried every individual article on sale before parting with her hard earned money.
The wool and haberdashery department was perhaps the most visited department of Shaws store during the 1940’s and 1950’s and for a very good reason. Almost every Irish housewife knitted, sewed and darned. Pullovers, stockings and gloves were the mainstay of the hand knitter whose requirements were always attended to by Miss Hegarty. Do you remember the winter nights spent in winding balls of wool from the hanks in which they were sold in the shops. I hated that boring job of holding the hanks of wool between my outstretched arms while my mother patiently and with a dexterity born of years of experience, calmly wound the balls of wool. That same wool would soon find a shape and a purpose between the knitting needles which were taken out each night after tea plates and cups had been washed and put away. Miss Hegarty was the acknowledged wool expert who helped and advised the vast array of females for whom knitting was a pastime or in many cases, as with my own mother, a necessary form of self help sofar as the family finances were concerned. Jenny was her name, a fact of which I was not aware until her Death Notice appeared in the newspaper. Indeed I am sure many of those same people she had served so well over the years were also unaware of her first name for to all and sundry she was simply “Miss Hegarty”.
She came to Athy in 1932 soon after she left school to take up a position with Sam Shaw in Duke Street. A native of Portarlington she had one brother, Harry Hegarty, who many of my readers will remember as a rural postman serving the Wolfhill area. Harry died 22 years ago and at the time lived, as did Jenny, at 3 Duke Street which is now the offices of the Irish Permanent Building Society. When Jenny first came to Athy she lived in with the other lady assistants in the living quarters attached to Shaws store. Some of the other girls who in their younger days worked in Shaws with Jenny included Etta Eacrett, Anna Breakey, Frances Dobson, Ann Cole, Florrie Bass, Muriel Lazenbey and Miss Leggett. Jenny spent 51 years in the wool and haberdashery department of Shaws and throughout much of that time she was the staff member who trained every new assistant who joined the Duke Street store. It was to Jenny’s counter that the new arrivals were invariably directed on their first day for it was her experience and kind manner which provided the perfect qualifications for passing on to each newcomer the Shaw ethos of sales and service.
Jenny retired almost 18 years ago, all the time living with her brother’s family at No. 3 Duke Street and moving with them in 1993 to Burtown. To everyone who knew her, whether as Miss Hegarty or Jenny, she was the consummate lady, always courteous, always helpful and in her own way an institution in the town where she had lived since 1932. The Sunday afternoon funeral in St. Michael’s was attended by persons representative of the different religious creeds in the town. It was fitting that it was so, for after all Miss Hegarty was known to so many and was liked by everyone she came in contact with during her many years in Athy. May she rest in peace.
Recalling the part played by Shaws in bringing so many young girls to Athy over the decades it strikes me that here is a fruitful field of study for some urban sociologist. Just imagine what the Shaws employment practice meant to the local Protestant Churches in terms of renewal. Many of the girls who joined the firm later married locally at a time when the Ne Temere Decree was still a prohibitive presence in Irish life. However that’s a matter for research for another day, and perhaps by someone other than the present writer.
I got several phone calls following last weeks article with particular reference to Gilbert Carey. Many thanks to all who contacted me. I now have more than sufficient information to pass on to my enquirer from Manchester. However, I need your assistance in relation to another matter. Kevin Kerwin has written to me from Florida with regard to possible family connections in the South Kildare area. His great grand-father Daniel Kirwan, a blacksmith whose own father was James Kirwan of Duke Street, emigrated to America in 1843. Any information helpful to Mr. Kerwin’s enquiry can be passed on through me.
Thursday, February 1, 2001
Bits and Pieces
Chris Corlett, an Archaeologist with Dúchas and recently appointed Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries Ireland gave a first class lecture to an appreciative audience in the Leinster Arms Hotel last Thursday night. His subject was “The Sacred Mountain” known to you and me as Croagh Patrick, located just a few miles away from Westport in County Mayo. He illustrated his presentation with slides and the resulting interesting insight into the legends and archaeology of St. Patrick’s Mountain was well received. Arranged under the auspices of South Kildare An Taisce and Athy Museum Society the lecture was the first in a series which will continue next month with a talk by the recently appointed Heritage Centre Manager, Margaret O’Riordan on the Holy Wells of Ireland.
One of the many interesting letters received by me since Christmas was from Bill Wheeler who lives in Mosely near Birmingham seeking information on a friend of his from Athy with whom he has lost contact. In 1943 Bill Wheeler and Gilbert Carey from Athy joined the British Royal Air Forces as 16 year old aircraft apprentices. They served together until July 1947 at RAF Halton and St. Athan after which they were sent to different units and lost contact with each other until 1951. That year Bill Wheeler was serving in Canada and received a letter from Gilbert which was posted in New York and had been sent to Bill via his own mother who was living in England. That’s the last Bill heard of his Athy friend Gilbert Carey. Bill had previously met Gilbert’s older sister Eileen who worked as a Nurse in a hospital in Totteridge in London, and an older brother Jim Carey who was also in the RAF. If any of my readers can give me any information as to Gilbert Carey or his family I will be pleased to pass it on to his old friend Bill Wheeler.
Writing of soldiers reminds me of a photograph which appeared in the Saturday Herald on 10th June, 1916. The accompanying text read “This is a photograph of Private Michael Bowden (Standing) and Private John Byrne taken at Limburg Lahn in Internment Camp, Germany. Private Bowden previous to the outbreak of the War was a local postman in Athy, Co. Kildare and Private Byrne was head gardener to Mr. Holland, Vetinerary Surgeon, Athy. They were taken prisoners early in 1914.”
I have often wondered what happened to Michael Bowden and John Byrne. Did they survive the War and if so did they return to their native Athy. Does anybody know what happened to them. I would be delighted to get further information on both of these men.
I received a telephone call from a reporter on an Irish Sunday newspaper a few days ago following up a reference in another local paper to my recent piece on the marriage of local girl Bridget Dowling with Alois Hitler, brother of the infamous Adolf Hitler. His interest in the little known association between South Kildare and the German führer was equaled only by my surprise on hearing a recent claim made to me that Auvril and Wilbur Wright, the World’s most famous aeronauts were grandsons of a man who had emigrated from South Kildare at the beginning of the 19th century. My good friend Richard Corrigan, an indefatigable genealogical researcher, was my informant but the evidence to support a County Kildare connection is still subject to verification. More about that again.
Last weeks news regarding the proposed new hotel on the Abbey site at the rear of Emily Square is most welcome. That area has seen many developments over the centuries stretching back to 1253 when the riverside site was the location of the very first Dominican Monastery in Athy. The Friars Preachers, as the Dominicans were known, were a Mendicant Order who survived on the charity of those amongst whom they lived and served. The Monastery of St. Dominic was a substantial complex of buildings and included at the time of the Reformation in the 1540’s a Church, a Bell tower, a chapter house, a dormitory, a large hall, three chambers, a kitchen, a cemetery, an orchard and a garden containing one acre. The Monastery also had ownership of two fishing weirs in the town, six cottages and ten acres of arable land.
The Monastery itself covered an area which ran from the Barrow River to the corner of the present Emily Row and from there up the present Offaly Street returning to the River Barrow via Janeville Lane which is at the side of St. Michael’s Church. The large building or rather two buildings which now occupy the original Dominican Monastery site probably conceal within their grounds the last remaining evidence of the 13th century monastic buildings. Before work commences on the building of the new hotel I hope that adequate time will be set aside to allow for a comprehensive archaeological examination of this ancient monastery site.
Watching the work on the footpath over the Crom-a-Boo bridge last week prompted me to marvel at the excellent bridge builders of the 18th century. Built a few years before the 1798 Rebellion and designed to carry horse-drawn carriages of that era the bridge still continues to carry traffic into it’s third century. But nowadays the traffic is heavy vehicular traffic which could not have been envisaged by those who planned and built the bridge over 200 years ago. Isn’t the strength and sturdiness of that ancient bridge a lasting monument to the foresight, design excellence and workmanship of the men who worked all of those years ago without the modern equipment and facilities available today.
Its near neighbour White’s Castle which has stood guard over that bridge and its predecessors on the River Barrow for almost 600 years is sadly showing that old age puts everyone and everything at risk. The fabric of the building has been deteriorating for some time and in particular what appears to be early 19th century additions in brick are a cause of considerable concern. Whites Castle on account of its location and historical associations is one of the more important buildings in Athy and one can only hope that either the Town Council or the Department of Arts and Culture will move to acquire Whites Castle and thereby ensure its future.
One of the many interesting letters received by me since Christmas was from Bill Wheeler who lives in Mosely near Birmingham seeking information on a friend of his from Athy with whom he has lost contact. In 1943 Bill Wheeler and Gilbert Carey from Athy joined the British Royal Air Forces as 16 year old aircraft apprentices. They served together until July 1947 at RAF Halton and St. Athan after which they were sent to different units and lost contact with each other until 1951. That year Bill Wheeler was serving in Canada and received a letter from Gilbert which was posted in New York and had been sent to Bill via his own mother who was living in England. That’s the last Bill heard of his Athy friend Gilbert Carey. Bill had previously met Gilbert’s older sister Eileen who worked as a Nurse in a hospital in Totteridge in London, and an older brother Jim Carey who was also in the RAF. If any of my readers can give me any information as to Gilbert Carey or his family I will be pleased to pass it on to his old friend Bill Wheeler.
Writing of soldiers reminds me of a photograph which appeared in the Saturday Herald on 10th June, 1916. The accompanying text read “This is a photograph of Private Michael Bowden (Standing) and Private John Byrne taken at Limburg Lahn in Internment Camp, Germany. Private Bowden previous to the outbreak of the War was a local postman in Athy, Co. Kildare and Private Byrne was head gardener to Mr. Holland, Vetinerary Surgeon, Athy. They were taken prisoners early in 1914.”
I have often wondered what happened to Michael Bowden and John Byrne. Did they survive the War and if so did they return to their native Athy. Does anybody know what happened to them. I would be delighted to get further information on both of these men.
I received a telephone call from a reporter on an Irish Sunday newspaper a few days ago following up a reference in another local paper to my recent piece on the marriage of local girl Bridget Dowling with Alois Hitler, brother of the infamous Adolf Hitler. His interest in the little known association between South Kildare and the German führer was equaled only by my surprise on hearing a recent claim made to me that Auvril and Wilbur Wright, the World’s most famous aeronauts were grandsons of a man who had emigrated from South Kildare at the beginning of the 19th century. My good friend Richard Corrigan, an indefatigable genealogical researcher, was my informant but the evidence to support a County Kildare connection is still subject to verification. More about that again.
Last weeks news regarding the proposed new hotel on the Abbey site at the rear of Emily Square is most welcome. That area has seen many developments over the centuries stretching back to 1253 when the riverside site was the location of the very first Dominican Monastery in Athy. The Friars Preachers, as the Dominicans were known, were a Mendicant Order who survived on the charity of those amongst whom they lived and served. The Monastery of St. Dominic was a substantial complex of buildings and included at the time of the Reformation in the 1540’s a Church, a Bell tower, a chapter house, a dormitory, a large hall, three chambers, a kitchen, a cemetery, an orchard and a garden containing one acre. The Monastery also had ownership of two fishing weirs in the town, six cottages and ten acres of arable land.
The Monastery itself covered an area which ran from the Barrow River to the corner of the present Emily Row and from there up the present Offaly Street returning to the River Barrow via Janeville Lane which is at the side of St. Michael’s Church. The large building or rather two buildings which now occupy the original Dominican Monastery site probably conceal within their grounds the last remaining evidence of the 13th century monastic buildings. Before work commences on the building of the new hotel I hope that adequate time will be set aside to allow for a comprehensive archaeological examination of this ancient monastery site.
Watching the work on the footpath over the Crom-a-Boo bridge last week prompted me to marvel at the excellent bridge builders of the 18th century. Built a few years before the 1798 Rebellion and designed to carry horse-drawn carriages of that era the bridge still continues to carry traffic into it’s third century. But nowadays the traffic is heavy vehicular traffic which could not have been envisaged by those who planned and built the bridge over 200 years ago. Isn’t the strength and sturdiness of that ancient bridge a lasting monument to the foresight, design excellence and workmanship of the men who worked all of those years ago without the modern equipment and facilities available today.
Its near neighbour White’s Castle which has stood guard over that bridge and its predecessors on the River Barrow for almost 600 years is sadly showing that old age puts everyone and everything at risk. The fabric of the building has been deteriorating for some time and in particular what appears to be early 19th century additions in brick are a cause of considerable concern. Whites Castle on account of its location and historical associations is one of the more important buildings in Athy and one can only hope that either the Town Council or the Department of Arts and Culture will move to acquire Whites Castle and thereby ensure its future.
Thursday, January 25, 2001
John Worthly (2)
When John Wortley moved to Lambe’s fruit farm at Bolton Hill, Moone in 1957 there were 55 acres under fruit. This was to increase under his management to 175 acres, and raspberries, strawberries, blackcurrants, gooseberries, redcurrants and apples provided the basis for many full-time and part-time jobs during the economic hard times of those years. I remember the lorries which left Emily Square in the early hours of the summer mornings bringing the fruit pickers to Bolton Hill. But for my early morning duties as a Mass server I would not have expected to have shared such early hours with the good women and youngsters who clambered up on the lorries for the short journey to the fruit farm. During the six weeks of the fruit picking season which coincided with the school holidays, upwards of 500 young boys and girls were employed at the Bolton Hill Fruit Farm. “The youngsters were the best pickers” says John, while the older women from Athy, Carlow and Castledermot made up the majority of the full-time staff on the farm.
John recalls some of those wonderful hard-working women from forty years ago. Teresa Roycroft, Nellie Fennell and her sister Mrs. Casey, Mrs. Brennan, Lilly Moore, “Nonie” Kelly, Mrs. McFadden, Josie Burke and Maggie Robinson to mention but a few. They all gathered in the town square in time to catch the 7.30am lorry to Bolton Hill where they started work at 8.00am, finishing at 6.00pm in the evening. The O’Keeffe’s including Mick, John Joe, Eamon and Tony were the drivers employed by Lambes, both on and off the fruit farm. In his early years on the job John failed to understand the difficulties that can arise when county allegiances come to the fore. On one such occasion the Athy women and the women from Carlow came to blows. The occasion was marked by the use of sturdy wooden fruit boxes as weapons by both sides in a futile attempt to batter their opponents into submission. Peace was eventually restored and thereafter only guaranteed so long as the battling women were kept apart. This was achieved by judiciously allocating each group to pick fruit in different and well separated areas of the farm.
In the late 1950’s Lambe Brothers required more and more fruit for their jam- manufacturing process, and sought to extend strawberry growing into the south east of Ireland. John toured County Wexford with a local horticultural adviser on a strawberry-growing mission but got little or no co-operation from the local farmers. Only one Clonroche-based farmer took up the offer and his immediate success in growing strawberries soon encouraged many others to get involved, in time creating the phenomenal success story which is the current Wexford Strawberry industry.
Barleyhill Farm was originally owned by Johnny Moran who sold it to Lambe Brothers in or about 1942 and Johnny then took on the job of farm manager. He was replaced 12 years later by John Wortley. The other Lambe Fruit Farm at Fontstown was purchased around the same time from Mr. Goodwin [Snr.] and was managed by Alo Lawler and later still by his son Dermot.
John Wortley retired on the last day of 1977, moving with his family to the Fontstown Farm where they lived for two years in the mews house. From there he started his landscaping business which was to occupy him for the next twelve years. His first landscaping contract was with the Marine Hotel in Sutton Cross in Dublin where after six weeks work he found himself with a profit of only £6.00. It was for him a valuable if expensive lesson in costing and estimating, but a lesson he would never forget. The Wortley family moved to Oldcourt in 1980 where John built a house in a field purchased from local farmer Jimmy Livingstone. At that time John was involved in producing wood carvings which he is quick to point out are all hand carved and owe nothing to the lathe. He has been working in wood since the mid-1970’s, having earlier executed stone carvings when he worked and lived in the English Cotswolds.
John’s success as a wood carver has seen his work included in art exhibitions throughout the region. His reproductions in different types of wood of the Irish fauna is particularly striking, and is a big favourite with the many persons who over the years have acquired examples of John’s work. Now retired from landscaping and gardening, John, at 84 years of age continues to produce wood carvings, while indulging in his other hobby of breeding and showing prized poultry.
John whose parents were members of the Plymouth Brethern describes himself as a non-conformist. I was particularly interested to hear of his connection with the Plymouth Brethern founded by John Nelson Darby, a one time associate of Athy man Reverend Thomas Kelly of Kellyite fame. John’s un-prepossessing manner belies a wealth of experience on farms as far apart as Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire and Greenstone Point in the west of the Scottish Highlands. The farmer cum artist has spent 47 years in south Kildare, more years than he spent in his native country and by his pleasant and gentlemanly manner has endeared himself to everyone fortunate enough to have met him over the years.
John recalls some of those wonderful hard-working women from forty years ago. Teresa Roycroft, Nellie Fennell and her sister Mrs. Casey, Mrs. Brennan, Lilly Moore, “Nonie” Kelly, Mrs. McFadden, Josie Burke and Maggie Robinson to mention but a few. They all gathered in the town square in time to catch the 7.30am lorry to Bolton Hill where they started work at 8.00am, finishing at 6.00pm in the evening. The O’Keeffe’s including Mick, John Joe, Eamon and Tony were the drivers employed by Lambes, both on and off the fruit farm. In his early years on the job John failed to understand the difficulties that can arise when county allegiances come to the fore. On one such occasion the Athy women and the women from Carlow came to blows. The occasion was marked by the use of sturdy wooden fruit boxes as weapons by both sides in a futile attempt to batter their opponents into submission. Peace was eventually restored and thereafter only guaranteed so long as the battling women were kept apart. This was achieved by judiciously allocating each group to pick fruit in different and well separated areas of the farm.
In the late 1950’s Lambe Brothers required more and more fruit for their jam- manufacturing process, and sought to extend strawberry growing into the south east of Ireland. John toured County Wexford with a local horticultural adviser on a strawberry-growing mission but got little or no co-operation from the local farmers. Only one Clonroche-based farmer took up the offer and his immediate success in growing strawberries soon encouraged many others to get involved, in time creating the phenomenal success story which is the current Wexford Strawberry industry.
Barleyhill Farm was originally owned by Johnny Moran who sold it to Lambe Brothers in or about 1942 and Johnny then took on the job of farm manager. He was replaced 12 years later by John Wortley. The other Lambe Fruit Farm at Fontstown was purchased around the same time from Mr. Goodwin [Snr.] and was managed by Alo Lawler and later still by his son Dermot.
John Wortley retired on the last day of 1977, moving with his family to the Fontstown Farm where they lived for two years in the mews house. From there he started his landscaping business which was to occupy him for the next twelve years. His first landscaping contract was with the Marine Hotel in Sutton Cross in Dublin where after six weeks work he found himself with a profit of only £6.00. It was for him a valuable if expensive lesson in costing and estimating, but a lesson he would never forget. The Wortley family moved to Oldcourt in 1980 where John built a house in a field purchased from local farmer Jimmy Livingstone. At that time John was involved in producing wood carvings which he is quick to point out are all hand carved and owe nothing to the lathe. He has been working in wood since the mid-1970’s, having earlier executed stone carvings when he worked and lived in the English Cotswolds.
John’s success as a wood carver has seen his work included in art exhibitions throughout the region. His reproductions in different types of wood of the Irish fauna is particularly striking, and is a big favourite with the many persons who over the years have acquired examples of John’s work. Now retired from landscaping and gardening, John, at 84 years of age continues to produce wood carvings, while indulging in his other hobby of breeding and showing prized poultry.
John whose parents were members of the Plymouth Brethern describes himself as a non-conformist. I was particularly interested to hear of his connection with the Plymouth Brethern founded by John Nelson Darby, a one time associate of Athy man Reverend Thomas Kelly of Kellyite fame. John’s un-prepossessing manner belies a wealth of experience on farms as far apart as Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire and Greenstone Point in the west of the Scottish Highlands. The farmer cum artist has spent 47 years in south Kildare, more years than he spent in his native country and by his pleasant and gentlemanly manner has endeared himself to everyone fortunate enough to have met him over the years.
Thursday, January 18, 2001
John Worthly (1)
I first came across John Wortley nineteen years ago. More correctly I saw his wood carvings before I met the genial Englishman who has made his home in Ireland for the past 47 years. His story is of one man’s attachment to land, an attachment which has endured ever since he left the employment of a wholesale stationers in 1933. He was living in Surrey, just south of Croydon, at the age of 16 years when he started a poultry business. He recalls buying a 12 horsepower Morris car for £12.10s soon afterwards for his egg round, but energy and hard work was not then sufficient guarantee of commercial success. He soon gave up the uneven struggle but determined to stay working within the agricultural sector. Just before the start of World War II he spent six months without pay on a farm in Shropshire to gain experience of farmwork. His first job was as a stockman and as a driver to a farmer who fell foul of the drunk driving laws of the time. The farm was in Bichester, Oxfordshire, a noted hunting centre on the edge of the Vale of Aylesbury. While he was there World War II broke out but John as a farm manager was not accepted in the regular army and instead he joined the Air Raid Precaution Service. His next farm job was in Leicestershire where John started work each morning milking cows at 4.30am, finishing at 10.00pm, a routine endured for two days at a stretch, with every third day off. In June 1941 John married Joan whom he had met in art college some years previously. John was earning 48 shillings per week and provided with a farm house which the young couple shared with another farm worker and his family.
During the World War English agriculture was subjected to compulsory tillage control and War Agricultural Committees took control of farms which were not worked efficiently. For a time in early 1943 John worked as a farm foreman for the Duke of Bedford at Woburn Abbey, now well known as a major tourist attraction in the Bedfordshire countryside. When the farm manager was sacked by the Duke, John was offered his job, but only part of the house previously occupied by the departing manager. John showing a determined streak, took himself to another position, this time with the Land Settlement Association near Jarrow.
An industrial town on the River Tynne, Jarrow was associated with the unemployment and social unrest of the 1920’s. It was from Jarrow that unemployed men began the long march to London in 1926 to demand jobs from the Conservative Government. John’s job as farm manager and machinery officer with the Land Settlement Association was to work closely with the former miners and ship builders who were allocated land by the Commission.
He spent two years amongst the Jarrow folk before moving in 1947 to Great Raveley in Cambridgeshire when offered a job by the former manager of the Woburn Estate. John was now earning £400 a year with a house provided, two pigs to kill, free fuel, vegetables, firing and a car provided. A period of relative prosperity followed which soon gave way to thoughts of owning and working his own agricultural holding. So it was that in 1949 John bought a 20 acre croft in Scotland with rights on 7,000 acres of commonage. Crofting developed following the Highland Clearances of the late 18th and 19th centuries which compelled Scottish tenants to abandon their homes and to adopt a subsistence lifestyle as crofters on the fringes of the barren Scottish coastline. Each croft consisted of a small holding with grazing rights on common pasture. It was a way of life which led to poverty, emigration and the eventual de-population of the Scottish Highlands.
The Wortley croft was at Greenstone Point, a cold, wet, and windy outcrop of moorland 90 miles north west of Inverness. The nearest village was Aultbea. The local school was 8 miles distance while the local doctor had to make a return journey of 90 miles if he was required to attend the Wortley household. It was to Greenstone Point that John, Jean and their two children, Frances and Andrew made the long arduous journey from Cambridgeshire just four years after the end of World War II. Jean and the children travelled by train, arriving at a station 35 miles distance from their new home while John travelled from Great Raveley just south of Petersborough with all the family furniture in a small truck. The journey was made at a slow speed without an overnight stop with John and the truck driver alternating as drivers. They set out on a Monday early in the morning and finally reached their destination at 12noon the following Wednesday after a journey of over 700 miles.
Greenstone Point was and is an isolated Gaelic-speaking area where severe gales lash the landscape and the persistent rainfall buffeted by the wind seems to fall almost horizontally. Barley and potatoes were grown on the 20 acre holding, with certified shallots for seed purposes providing a particularly good crop in what was a virus-free area. The barley was used for feeding cattle, six of which were kept together with three milking cows. An annual trip was made to Dingwall Market over 100 miles away to sell the cattle and buy in calves. The eight mile daily trip to the one-roomed school in Laide, a crofting village on Grunard Bay, was made courtesy of the local travelling grocer. He collected the Wortley children and the children of their far flung neighbours for school, took the orders for the daily rations and returned children and the pre-ordered groceries that same afternoon. The seemingly idyllic setting of the 20 acre croft brought with it hardships and deprivations unimagined when viewed from the comfort and security of a farmstead in Cambridgeshire and inevitably the isolated farming experiment was brought to an early conclusion. The croft was put up for sale and the Wortley family moved southwards to Buckinghamshire where in 1952 John got a job as a farm labourer and what he describes as a tiny cottage to accommodate his family.
In 1954 John and the family were on the move again, this time to Ireland to take up a job as farm manager on the Tipping Estate at Bellungan Castle near Dundalk. Once the summer residence of the Dublin Castle rulers Bellungan Castle was in the 1950’s home to Evan Tipping, the famous Welsh operatic singer. John stayed for three years before moving southwards to County Kildare.
At 40 years of age John Wortley moved to Barleyhill in Moone to manage a 500 acre farm owned by Lambe Brothers, jam manufacturers of Dublin. Here he was to spend the second half of his career and unlike the many and varied moves made in his earlier years, Barleyhill and later Oldcourt would provide a more stable background for the one time crofter and his family…..[TO BE CONTINUED]…..
During the World War English agriculture was subjected to compulsory tillage control and War Agricultural Committees took control of farms which were not worked efficiently. For a time in early 1943 John worked as a farm foreman for the Duke of Bedford at Woburn Abbey, now well known as a major tourist attraction in the Bedfordshire countryside. When the farm manager was sacked by the Duke, John was offered his job, but only part of the house previously occupied by the departing manager. John showing a determined streak, took himself to another position, this time with the Land Settlement Association near Jarrow.
An industrial town on the River Tynne, Jarrow was associated with the unemployment and social unrest of the 1920’s. It was from Jarrow that unemployed men began the long march to London in 1926 to demand jobs from the Conservative Government. John’s job as farm manager and machinery officer with the Land Settlement Association was to work closely with the former miners and ship builders who were allocated land by the Commission.
He spent two years amongst the Jarrow folk before moving in 1947 to Great Raveley in Cambridgeshire when offered a job by the former manager of the Woburn Estate. John was now earning £400 a year with a house provided, two pigs to kill, free fuel, vegetables, firing and a car provided. A period of relative prosperity followed which soon gave way to thoughts of owning and working his own agricultural holding. So it was that in 1949 John bought a 20 acre croft in Scotland with rights on 7,000 acres of commonage. Crofting developed following the Highland Clearances of the late 18th and 19th centuries which compelled Scottish tenants to abandon their homes and to adopt a subsistence lifestyle as crofters on the fringes of the barren Scottish coastline. Each croft consisted of a small holding with grazing rights on common pasture. It was a way of life which led to poverty, emigration and the eventual de-population of the Scottish Highlands.
The Wortley croft was at Greenstone Point, a cold, wet, and windy outcrop of moorland 90 miles north west of Inverness. The nearest village was Aultbea. The local school was 8 miles distance while the local doctor had to make a return journey of 90 miles if he was required to attend the Wortley household. It was to Greenstone Point that John, Jean and their two children, Frances and Andrew made the long arduous journey from Cambridgeshire just four years after the end of World War II. Jean and the children travelled by train, arriving at a station 35 miles distance from their new home while John travelled from Great Raveley just south of Petersborough with all the family furniture in a small truck. The journey was made at a slow speed without an overnight stop with John and the truck driver alternating as drivers. They set out on a Monday early in the morning and finally reached their destination at 12noon the following Wednesday after a journey of over 700 miles.
Greenstone Point was and is an isolated Gaelic-speaking area where severe gales lash the landscape and the persistent rainfall buffeted by the wind seems to fall almost horizontally. Barley and potatoes were grown on the 20 acre holding, with certified shallots for seed purposes providing a particularly good crop in what was a virus-free area. The barley was used for feeding cattle, six of which were kept together with three milking cows. An annual trip was made to Dingwall Market over 100 miles away to sell the cattle and buy in calves. The eight mile daily trip to the one-roomed school in Laide, a crofting village on Grunard Bay, was made courtesy of the local travelling grocer. He collected the Wortley children and the children of their far flung neighbours for school, took the orders for the daily rations and returned children and the pre-ordered groceries that same afternoon. The seemingly idyllic setting of the 20 acre croft brought with it hardships and deprivations unimagined when viewed from the comfort and security of a farmstead in Cambridgeshire and inevitably the isolated farming experiment was brought to an early conclusion. The croft was put up for sale and the Wortley family moved southwards to Buckinghamshire where in 1952 John got a job as a farm labourer and what he describes as a tiny cottage to accommodate his family.
In 1954 John and the family were on the move again, this time to Ireland to take up a job as farm manager on the Tipping Estate at Bellungan Castle near Dundalk. Once the summer residence of the Dublin Castle rulers Bellungan Castle was in the 1950’s home to Evan Tipping, the famous Welsh operatic singer. John stayed for three years before moving southwards to County Kildare.
At 40 years of age John Wortley moved to Barleyhill in Moone to manage a 500 acre farm owned by Lambe Brothers, jam manufacturers of Dublin. Here he was to spend the second half of his career and unlike the many and varied moves made in his earlier years, Barleyhill and later Oldcourt would provide a more stable background for the one time crofter and his family…..[TO BE CONTINUED]…..
Thursday, January 11, 2001
Jim Brosnan
Go deo deo aris ni rachad go caiseal.
Ag diol na ag reic mo shlainte
Na ar mhargadh na saoire im shui cois balla
Im’scaoinse ar leataoibh sraide
Bodairi na tire ag tiocht ar a gcapall
Da fhiafrai an bhfuilim hiralta
O! teanam chun siuil, ta an cursa fada
Seo ar siul an Spailpin Fanach.
Learnt by rote many years ago in the local Christian Brothers School, the words of An Spailpin Fanach were brought to mind again as I attended, last week, the funeral of Jim Brosnan. Jim was a native of Listowel, Co. Kerry, a town immortalised in print by Fr. Anthony Gaughan whose book on the history of that town is a classic of local history. Of course Listowel remains famous for its annual races which fit neatly in the Irish Sporting Calender in the week following the All Ireland Football Final in September. For the readers of Irish fiction and those familiar with Irish Theatre, Listowel will be well known as the home of the literary triumvirate John B. Keane, Bryan McMahon and Seamus Wilmot. The latter two are now dead while the evergreen John B. is now retired but still writing.
It was from the same community which gave us Keane, McMahon and Wilmot that Jim Brosnan came and it was from there that he travelled to South Kildare as a young man of 22 years of age in 1952. He travelled with a number of Kerry men to work on the bog at Ballydermot and when his colleagues returned to the south west coast county Jim stayed behind in the short grass county where he was to make his home for the following 49 years. Jim, who remained a batchelor worked for a number of local farmers after he had finished with Bord Na Mona and they were all represented at Jim’s graveside last week.
Ned Whelan of Mountbrook, Hugh Colgan of Kildangan and Tim Fitzpatrick of Richardstown, Kildangan were some of Jim’s employer’s during the 1950’s and early 1960’s before he went to work for the Brennan family of Bray, Athy. Jim was to remain with the Brennan’s for almost 30 years. In more recent times Jim, a son of the soil from the Kingdom was a constant presence in and around the Streets of the Anglo Norman town which in its history and associations was a world apart from his native place. He returned to Listowel each year, his annual visit timed to coincide with the Listowel Races. Years of absence from his native County gave Jim a Kildare accent, or so his sister believed not realising that to the Kildare man’s ear, Jim had retained to the last, the rich mellifluous accent which was as recognisable as the McGillicuddy Reeks from which it was sourced.
Jim got a good send off from the townspeople last week and Fr. Caffrey’s sermon at the funeral mass that Sunday when he spoke of life as an unfolding mystery was a reassuring and timely reminder of the singular importance and value of every person in our community.
The winter months produce a flood of letters not all of which I can deal with as quickly as I should. One such letter, I recently received was from the Heritage Service of the Department of Arts which is responsible for the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage (NIAH). The N.I.A.H. is carrying out a systematic survey of the Architectural Heritage of Ireland and currently they are engaged in County Surveys to record a selection of artefacts, buildings and structures of post 1700 vintage. They are about to commence their survey of County Kildare and would be interested in hearing from anyone with suggestions as to buildings etc. in this area suitable for inclusion in their survey as representative of the better elements of the built heritage of the County. Any suggestions or comments sent to me will be passed on to the survey team.
Of the many letters I received recently, most of them relating to family history research, one was of particular interest. It was from a Dublin based Journalist with an interest in local history who has unearthed a link between an Irish woman and Adolf Hitler. The connection stems from the marriage of Bridget Dowling to Hitler’s brother Alois in 1910 when Bridget was 18 years of age. Last July a local person passed on to me a copy of an article which appeared in the Irish Independent on the 15th July 2000 written by Myles McWeeney under the headline “The amazing story of the Irish Hitlers”. McWeeney who incidentally is not the journalist who wrote to me recently, claimed that Hitler’s sister in law, Bridget Dowling was the daughter of William Dowling “originally from Athy”. I believe that William Dowling may have been a son of Martin and Elizabeth Dowling of Crookstown, Ballytore and was born some time in the 1850’s or the 1860’s. Is there anybody who can throw a light on the Dowling’s of Crookstown, their son William or indeed their grand-daughter Bridget whose place in history is assured as a result of her marriage to an unknown German man in 1910.
Ag diol na ag reic mo shlainte
Na ar mhargadh na saoire im shui cois balla
Im’scaoinse ar leataoibh sraide
Bodairi na tire ag tiocht ar a gcapall
Da fhiafrai an bhfuilim hiralta
O! teanam chun siuil, ta an cursa fada
Seo ar siul an Spailpin Fanach.
Learnt by rote many years ago in the local Christian Brothers School, the words of An Spailpin Fanach were brought to mind again as I attended, last week, the funeral of Jim Brosnan. Jim was a native of Listowel, Co. Kerry, a town immortalised in print by Fr. Anthony Gaughan whose book on the history of that town is a classic of local history. Of course Listowel remains famous for its annual races which fit neatly in the Irish Sporting Calender in the week following the All Ireland Football Final in September. For the readers of Irish fiction and those familiar with Irish Theatre, Listowel will be well known as the home of the literary triumvirate John B. Keane, Bryan McMahon and Seamus Wilmot. The latter two are now dead while the evergreen John B. is now retired but still writing.
It was from the same community which gave us Keane, McMahon and Wilmot that Jim Brosnan came and it was from there that he travelled to South Kildare as a young man of 22 years of age in 1952. He travelled with a number of Kerry men to work on the bog at Ballydermot and when his colleagues returned to the south west coast county Jim stayed behind in the short grass county where he was to make his home for the following 49 years. Jim, who remained a batchelor worked for a number of local farmers after he had finished with Bord Na Mona and they were all represented at Jim’s graveside last week.
Ned Whelan of Mountbrook, Hugh Colgan of Kildangan and Tim Fitzpatrick of Richardstown, Kildangan were some of Jim’s employer’s during the 1950’s and early 1960’s before he went to work for the Brennan family of Bray, Athy. Jim was to remain with the Brennan’s for almost 30 years. In more recent times Jim, a son of the soil from the Kingdom was a constant presence in and around the Streets of the Anglo Norman town which in its history and associations was a world apart from his native place. He returned to Listowel each year, his annual visit timed to coincide with the Listowel Races. Years of absence from his native County gave Jim a Kildare accent, or so his sister believed not realising that to the Kildare man’s ear, Jim had retained to the last, the rich mellifluous accent which was as recognisable as the McGillicuddy Reeks from which it was sourced.
Jim got a good send off from the townspeople last week and Fr. Caffrey’s sermon at the funeral mass that Sunday when he spoke of life as an unfolding mystery was a reassuring and timely reminder of the singular importance and value of every person in our community.
The winter months produce a flood of letters not all of which I can deal with as quickly as I should. One such letter, I recently received was from the Heritage Service of the Department of Arts which is responsible for the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage (NIAH). The N.I.A.H. is carrying out a systematic survey of the Architectural Heritage of Ireland and currently they are engaged in County Surveys to record a selection of artefacts, buildings and structures of post 1700 vintage. They are about to commence their survey of County Kildare and would be interested in hearing from anyone with suggestions as to buildings etc. in this area suitable for inclusion in their survey as representative of the better elements of the built heritage of the County. Any suggestions or comments sent to me will be passed on to the survey team.
Of the many letters I received recently, most of them relating to family history research, one was of particular interest. It was from a Dublin based Journalist with an interest in local history who has unearthed a link between an Irish woman and Adolf Hitler. The connection stems from the marriage of Bridget Dowling to Hitler’s brother Alois in 1910 when Bridget was 18 years of age. Last July a local person passed on to me a copy of an article which appeared in the Irish Independent on the 15th July 2000 written by Myles McWeeney under the headline “The amazing story of the Irish Hitlers”. McWeeney who incidentally is not the journalist who wrote to me recently, claimed that Hitler’s sister in law, Bridget Dowling was the daughter of William Dowling “originally from Athy”. I believe that William Dowling may have been a son of Martin and Elizabeth Dowling of Crookstown, Ballytore and was born some time in the 1850’s or the 1860’s. Is there anybody who can throw a light on the Dowling’s of Crookstown, their son William or indeed their grand-daughter Bridget whose place in history is assured as a result of her marriage to an unknown German man in 1910.
Thursday, December 28, 2000
Sr. Angela and Sr. Paul
In the cold of a dark January evening, we walked behind the coffined remains of Sr. Angela as the hearse wound its way down Church Road on the first stage of its journey to the Parish Church. A community’s shame was in some measure erased by the coming together of so many local men and women to pay tribute to one of their own who 46 years ago joined the Sisters of Mercy. For shame it was we felt when we heard of the dastardly deed which culminated in the sudden death of Sr. Angela. Born Maudie Flanagan in Rathangan in 1926, her parents were Richard Flanagan, a native of Stanhope Street, Athy and Mary Cahill, a nurse from Tramore in County Waterford. Richard was former Master of the Athy Union and as such had been in charge of the Poorhouse which was opened in Athy on the 9th January 1844 as part of the Poor Law system established under the Irish Poor Relief Act of 1838. Bridie, Attracta, Dickie and Eileen Flanagan were born in the Masters quarters before Richard Flanagan left Athy to take up employment in Rathangan in or about 1924. Four more members of the family were born in Rathangan, Maudie, Angela, Danny and Tessie. In 1931, the Flanagan family returned to Athy on being appointed tenants of a new house in St. Patrick’s Avenue which had just been built by D. & J. Carbery Limited for Athy Urban District Council.
Maudie, after completing her schooling with the Sisters of Mercy in Athy took up a nursing career and qualified in Bedford Royal Infirmary, England. She later returned to Ireland to gain further qualifications and experience in Peamount Hospital and in September 1955, she entered the religious life as a postulant in the Convent of Mercy, Athy. Her first profession took place in April 1958 and as Sr. Angela, she continued her work as a Sister of Mercy and as a nursing sister in St. Vincent’s Hospital until she retired in 1991. During her 36 years in St. Vincent’s Hospital she tended, as did her colleagues, to the sick, the infirm and the elderly.
In those few sentences are encapsulated the life and career of Sr. Angela, a member of the congregation of the Sisters of Mercy which has served the town of Athy and several generations of its people since the first Sisters of Mercy arrived here in 1851. Then their primary mission was to provide an education for young Catholic children just 22 years after the granting of the Act of Catholic Emancipation. It was a mission the Sisters of Mercy would continue to pursue long after the Irish State had developed an educational policy and structures geared to the needs and aspirations of the Irish people. It was but one of the many roles undertaken by the Sisters of Mercy in the intervening 150 years. Their stewardship of the County Home now St. Vincent’s Hospital was one of those new roles. In the 1870’s when there were no nurses employed in the workhouse, the Sisters began to visit patients in the Workhouse Infirmary on Sunday afternoons. Before long, the Board of Guardians made a request to the Superioress of the local Convent for nuns to take over responsibility for the Infirmary. This they did and in time the position of Matron was to be held by successive members of the Sisters of Mercy and most recently by Sr. Dominic and Sr. Peig.
But the legacy of the Sisters of Mercy is to be found not only in the primary and secondary schools of our town or in St. Vincent’s Hospital. It is to be seen also in the women, who as young girls were educated in St. Michael’s National School or St. Mary’s Secondary School. The well spring of affection for the Sisters of Mercy is based on experiences born in the classrooms of yesteryear and those who experienced the guiding hand of the good Sisters can never forget their kindness.
The Missionary spirit of the Sisters of Mercy, freed in recent years from the straight jacket of rules largely devised in the previous century, allowed members of the local Convent to become actively involved in other areas of charitable work. The local Wheelchair Association owes much to the dynamism of Sr. Carmel while the Travellers Club is forever indebted to Sr. Rosarii. The Youth Clubs were grateful for the involvement of Sr. Joseph and Sr. Carmel O’Leary while the courage and foresight of Sr. Consilio in her work for alcohol and drug addiction is widely acknowledged. These are just some of the many ways in which the local Sisters of Mercy continued to contribute to the well-being of local community here in Athy.
Last week as we walked behind the remains of Sr. Angela we were not to know that within days we would re-trace our steps to follow the remains of Sr. Paul. One of three Cosgrave sisters from Co. Galway who entered the religious life in the local Convent of Mercy Sr. Paul was a well-loved member of the Mercy congregation. She taught in St. Mary’s Secondary school until she retired 20 years ago and for many years was an active member of Athy’s Art Group. She was pre-deceased by her own family members, Sr. Rose and Sr. Xavier.
The loss of two members of the Mercy Sisters within the same week has been a sad blow for the local community. Last year saw the Convent of Mercy close for the last time as the aging community of nuns left to take up a new life living amongst the local people of which they had been a part for so many years. Last week a parting hymn, Salve Regina, was sung for the second time within a few days at the graveside in St. Michael’s new cemetery. Those of us who stood in silence nearer to the wall separating the cemetery from the Glebe lands of an earlier age could not but realise that an era in which the Sisters of Mercy had paid a prominent part is slowly but inexorably coming to an end.
Maudie, after completing her schooling with the Sisters of Mercy in Athy took up a nursing career and qualified in Bedford Royal Infirmary, England. She later returned to Ireland to gain further qualifications and experience in Peamount Hospital and in September 1955, she entered the religious life as a postulant in the Convent of Mercy, Athy. Her first profession took place in April 1958 and as Sr. Angela, she continued her work as a Sister of Mercy and as a nursing sister in St. Vincent’s Hospital until she retired in 1991. During her 36 years in St. Vincent’s Hospital she tended, as did her colleagues, to the sick, the infirm and the elderly.
In those few sentences are encapsulated the life and career of Sr. Angela, a member of the congregation of the Sisters of Mercy which has served the town of Athy and several generations of its people since the first Sisters of Mercy arrived here in 1851. Then their primary mission was to provide an education for young Catholic children just 22 years after the granting of the Act of Catholic Emancipation. It was a mission the Sisters of Mercy would continue to pursue long after the Irish State had developed an educational policy and structures geared to the needs and aspirations of the Irish people. It was but one of the many roles undertaken by the Sisters of Mercy in the intervening 150 years. Their stewardship of the County Home now St. Vincent’s Hospital was one of those new roles. In the 1870’s when there were no nurses employed in the workhouse, the Sisters began to visit patients in the Workhouse Infirmary on Sunday afternoons. Before long, the Board of Guardians made a request to the Superioress of the local Convent for nuns to take over responsibility for the Infirmary. This they did and in time the position of Matron was to be held by successive members of the Sisters of Mercy and most recently by Sr. Dominic and Sr. Peig.
But the legacy of the Sisters of Mercy is to be found not only in the primary and secondary schools of our town or in St. Vincent’s Hospital. It is to be seen also in the women, who as young girls were educated in St. Michael’s National School or St. Mary’s Secondary School. The well spring of affection for the Sisters of Mercy is based on experiences born in the classrooms of yesteryear and those who experienced the guiding hand of the good Sisters can never forget their kindness.
The Missionary spirit of the Sisters of Mercy, freed in recent years from the straight jacket of rules largely devised in the previous century, allowed members of the local Convent to become actively involved in other areas of charitable work. The local Wheelchair Association owes much to the dynamism of Sr. Carmel while the Travellers Club is forever indebted to Sr. Rosarii. The Youth Clubs were grateful for the involvement of Sr. Joseph and Sr. Carmel O’Leary while the courage and foresight of Sr. Consilio in her work for alcohol and drug addiction is widely acknowledged. These are just some of the many ways in which the local Sisters of Mercy continued to contribute to the well-being of local community here in Athy.
Last week as we walked behind the remains of Sr. Angela we were not to know that within days we would re-trace our steps to follow the remains of Sr. Paul. One of three Cosgrave sisters from Co. Galway who entered the religious life in the local Convent of Mercy Sr. Paul was a well-loved member of the Mercy congregation. She taught in St. Mary’s Secondary school until she retired 20 years ago and for many years was an active member of Athy’s Art Group. She was pre-deceased by her own family members, Sr. Rose and Sr. Xavier.
The loss of two members of the Mercy Sisters within the same week has been a sad blow for the local community. Last year saw the Convent of Mercy close for the last time as the aging community of nuns left to take up a new life living amongst the local people of which they had been a part for so many years. Last week a parting hymn, Salve Regina, was sung for the second time within a few days at the graveside in St. Michael’s new cemetery. Those of us who stood in silence nearer to the wall separating the cemetery from the Glebe lands of an earlier age could not but realise that an era in which the Sisters of Mercy had paid a prominent part is slowly but inexorably coming to an end.
Thursday, December 21, 2000
Teddy Kelly
Last week, work colleagues of Teddy Kelly gathered in the offices of Athy’s second oldest industry to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of his joining the firm. Forty years ago it was Asbestos Cement Limited and the biggest employer in Athy, today, Tegral Building Products has a smaller but still very substantial workforce. I was slightly taken aback to learn that my friend Teddy had 40 years work experience under his belt until I realised with some astonishment that I myself had achieved the same milestone the previous week.
Teddy and I were pals from the time we were in short trousers. We both lived in Offaly Street at the time when vehicular traffic was minimal and presented no danger to young fellows who used the road as a playground. I can remember playing football with Teddy and others up and down Offaly Street without posing any difficulty for anyone, pedestrian or otherwise. Our watchful eyes were on the approach of the local Gardai in the form of either of our fathers or the St. Patrick’s Avenue contingent of Gardai on their way home for dinner. Football was not our only activity on the local Street. Pellet guns figure prominently in my memory of those days, especially on one occasion when I stood at Tuohy’s door facing Leopold Kelly who from Tom McHugh’s front door on the far side of the street took aim and fired a pellet gun at me. My left ear, for it was there I was hit, confirmed that indeed, the pellet gun was loaded and my earlier confident claim “I betcha its not loaded” seemed then so far off the mark, unlike Leopold’s assured aim.
Leopold Kelly later to be ordained a priest and to die tragically so young, was the leader of the Offaly Street gang and here I use the word “gang” not in any criminal sense but to describe a group of innocent fun loving ragamuffins whose lives revolved around each other. Teddy Kelly, Willie Moore, Tom Webster, Basil White and myself were the core group of the gang which in its more generous moods allowed the youngsters, Mickey Moore and Seamus Taaffe to tag along with us. I don’t think either of them were involved in the battle of Offaly Street when we defended our home base against an incursion from a group (from where I cannot now recall) who attacked us with well aimed stones. I still vividly recall that afternoon when with every conceivable size of stone, we pelted our assailants and they responded, both groups facing each other from opposite end of Offaly Street. There was a similar battle on the Crib Road (Church Road) near Dr. Kilbride’s, (now Dr. O’Neill’s) where the stones flew back and forth and Basil White ended up with a split head. The large lime trees which were then growing at either side of the Crib Road afforded cover for the combatents but proved inadequate for the luckless Basil White.
When I look back on those occasions, I wonder how we ever escaped with life and limb intact or indeed how we even managed to escape the critical notice of parents and adults generally. If the same thing happened today in Offaly Street or Church Road, the riot squad would be called and all the protagonists would end up in Court on assault charges and public order offences. Luckily enough, neither Teddy’s career or my own were blighted by our exuberant and combatitive attitude to life in our younger days.
Youthful energies in so far as Teddy Kelly and myself were concerned did not limit us to potential breaches of the common law in relation to assaults but also saw us stretching our credibility as law abiding citizens with our penchant for robbing local orchards. The glorious harvest of fruit always arrived just in time to banish the back to school blues which descended on us youngsters when after almost three months of summer freedom found ourselves corralled for another term of school lessons.
Sylvester’s Orchard at the end of Butler’s Row was our favourite target. The lush green undergrowth which marked years of neglect provided the perfect backdrop for the aging apple and pear trees which each year provided a fruitful bounty for eager young lads with time and opportunity on their hands. The orchard is now gone having given way to a scheme of Council houses but in the 1950’s was a haven enclosed by high walls. Those same walls provided no match for the agile and nimble team of fruit pickers who worked furtively and with tremendous speed. Not for us the leisurely paced motions of the legitimate fruit pickers in Lambe’s fruit farms. We had self imposed deadlines to meet which required pockets and turned up pullovers to be filled before speedily making our, hopefully unencumbered way, over the high wall at the back of the orchard. If our luck was in, and more often than not it was, the few minutes spent in frantic orchard raiding activity would give us a few hours measured enjoyment of healthy apple crunching. That’s how Teddy Kelly, now forty years in gainful employment spent his young days with his friends from Offaly Street.
He will remember the one occasion Mrs. Sylvester caught the youthful apple thieves in action and the mad scramble which ensued for the one well tracked exit over the high wall. Then it was everyone for himself, and the mad scramble for the wall and the freedom beyond, banished all thoughts of comradeship and togetherness which vanished with the twinkle of an eye or more appropriately with the swish of Mrs. Sylvester’s ash plant. In any event, the only hostage taken that day was the youngest member of the gang, my late brother Seamus who was grabbed by Mrs. Sylvester and duly paraded down Butler’s Row towards number 5 Offaly Street and my mother. Teddy and the rest of the gang by now had travelled as far away as possible from the scene of the crime hoping against hope that the young convict would not tell names. He didn’t have to. The make up of the Offaly Street gang was as well known as “Coy” Moore himself. All was well however, the cowering would be apple stealer was presented to his surprised mother (“surprised that he was caught, not that he was robbing an orchard”) and the traditional punishment was expected. In one of those almost surreal moments reminiscent of a lottery win, it so happened that a visitor from Mayo had arrived that day for a holiday with the result that the lucky young lad escaped all punishment.
Teddy and I were never caught although we came close to it one afternoon when in an unusual excursion well outside our normal territory, we found ourselves in Cyprian Holland’s orchard on the Dublin Road thinning the lush apples on the obviously overburdened fruit trees. We were tossing the results of our labours over the hedge to Tom Webster and Willie Moore who were standing outside on the Dublin Road. Suddenly we heard a roar, the disembodied voice coming from the same roadway “I know you Taaffe and Kelly, come out here immediately”. It was Garda Dunne, not the easiest man to encounter in such circumstances but we did not wait around for a formal introduction. We escaped through the hedge on the opposite side and high tailed it out of there in a panic. Fair dues to the same Garda Dunne, he did not appear to have mentioned our proclivity for apple stealing to our parents as the incident was never again mentioned.
I could go on recounting memories of times shared with Teddy Kelly and my friends in Offaly Street and maybe I will some other day. For the moment, let me wish the not so young former orchard robber and my good friend, Teddy Kelly many more happy years.
Teddy and I were pals from the time we were in short trousers. We both lived in Offaly Street at the time when vehicular traffic was minimal and presented no danger to young fellows who used the road as a playground. I can remember playing football with Teddy and others up and down Offaly Street without posing any difficulty for anyone, pedestrian or otherwise. Our watchful eyes were on the approach of the local Gardai in the form of either of our fathers or the St. Patrick’s Avenue contingent of Gardai on their way home for dinner. Football was not our only activity on the local Street. Pellet guns figure prominently in my memory of those days, especially on one occasion when I stood at Tuohy’s door facing Leopold Kelly who from Tom McHugh’s front door on the far side of the street took aim and fired a pellet gun at me. My left ear, for it was there I was hit, confirmed that indeed, the pellet gun was loaded and my earlier confident claim “I betcha its not loaded” seemed then so far off the mark, unlike Leopold’s assured aim.
Leopold Kelly later to be ordained a priest and to die tragically so young, was the leader of the Offaly Street gang and here I use the word “gang” not in any criminal sense but to describe a group of innocent fun loving ragamuffins whose lives revolved around each other. Teddy Kelly, Willie Moore, Tom Webster, Basil White and myself were the core group of the gang which in its more generous moods allowed the youngsters, Mickey Moore and Seamus Taaffe to tag along with us. I don’t think either of them were involved in the battle of Offaly Street when we defended our home base against an incursion from a group (from where I cannot now recall) who attacked us with well aimed stones. I still vividly recall that afternoon when with every conceivable size of stone, we pelted our assailants and they responded, both groups facing each other from opposite end of Offaly Street. There was a similar battle on the Crib Road (Church Road) near Dr. Kilbride’s, (now Dr. O’Neill’s) where the stones flew back and forth and Basil White ended up with a split head. The large lime trees which were then growing at either side of the Crib Road afforded cover for the combatents but proved inadequate for the luckless Basil White.
When I look back on those occasions, I wonder how we ever escaped with life and limb intact or indeed how we even managed to escape the critical notice of parents and adults generally. If the same thing happened today in Offaly Street or Church Road, the riot squad would be called and all the protagonists would end up in Court on assault charges and public order offences. Luckily enough, neither Teddy’s career or my own were blighted by our exuberant and combatitive attitude to life in our younger days.
Youthful energies in so far as Teddy Kelly and myself were concerned did not limit us to potential breaches of the common law in relation to assaults but also saw us stretching our credibility as law abiding citizens with our penchant for robbing local orchards. The glorious harvest of fruit always arrived just in time to banish the back to school blues which descended on us youngsters when after almost three months of summer freedom found ourselves corralled for another term of school lessons.
Sylvester’s Orchard at the end of Butler’s Row was our favourite target. The lush green undergrowth which marked years of neglect provided the perfect backdrop for the aging apple and pear trees which each year provided a fruitful bounty for eager young lads with time and opportunity on their hands. The orchard is now gone having given way to a scheme of Council houses but in the 1950’s was a haven enclosed by high walls. Those same walls provided no match for the agile and nimble team of fruit pickers who worked furtively and with tremendous speed. Not for us the leisurely paced motions of the legitimate fruit pickers in Lambe’s fruit farms. We had self imposed deadlines to meet which required pockets and turned up pullovers to be filled before speedily making our, hopefully unencumbered way, over the high wall at the back of the orchard. If our luck was in, and more often than not it was, the few minutes spent in frantic orchard raiding activity would give us a few hours measured enjoyment of healthy apple crunching. That’s how Teddy Kelly, now forty years in gainful employment spent his young days with his friends from Offaly Street.
He will remember the one occasion Mrs. Sylvester caught the youthful apple thieves in action and the mad scramble which ensued for the one well tracked exit over the high wall. Then it was everyone for himself, and the mad scramble for the wall and the freedom beyond, banished all thoughts of comradeship and togetherness which vanished with the twinkle of an eye or more appropriately with the swish of Mrs. Sylvester’s ash plant. In any event, the only hostage taken that day was the youngest member of the gang, my late brother Seamus who was grabbed by Mrs. Sylvester and duly paraded down Butler’s Row towards number 5 Offaly Street and my mother. Teddy and the rest of the gang by now had travelled as far away as possible from the scene of the crime hoping against hope that the young convict would not tell names. He didn’t have to. The make up of the Offaly Street gang was as well known as “Coy” Moore himself. All was well however, the cowering would be apple stealer was presented to his surprised mother (“surprised that he was caught, not that he was robbing an orchard”) and the traditional punishment was expected. In one of those almost surreal moments reminiscent of a lottery win, it so happened that a visitor from Mayo had arrived that day for a holiday with the result that the lucky young lad escaped all punishment.
Teddy and I were never caught although we came close to it one afternoon when in an unusual excursion well outside our normal territory, we found ourselves in Cyprian Holland’s orchard on the Dublin Road thinning the lush apples on the obviously overburdened fruit trees. We were tossing the results of our labours over the hedge to Tom Webster and Willie Moore who were standing outside on the Dublin Road. Suddenly we heard a roar, the disembodied voice coming from the same roadway “I know you Taaffe and Kelly, come out here immediately”. It was Garda Dunne, not the easiest man to encounter in such circumstances but we did not wait around for a formal introduction. We escaped through the hedge on the opposite side and high tailed it out of there in a panic. Fair dues to the same Garda Dunne, he did not appear to have mentioned our proclivity for apple stealing to our parents as the incident was never again mentioned.
I could go on recounting memories of times shared with Teddy Kelly and my friends in Offaly Street and maybe I will some other day. For the moment, let me wish the not so young former orchard robber and my good friend, Teddy Kelly many more happy years.
Thursday, December 14, 2000
Paddy McEvoy - Greyhound Trainer
Paddy McEvoy’s success with “Daws Dancer” in the 23rd Greyhound Derby at White City London in June 1953 was a unique occasion for both dog and trainer. “Daws Dancer”, not then yet two years old, was the youngest greyhound ever to win the English Derby and its trainer, Athy born Paddy McEvoy was the first County Kildare person to win this most coveted prize in greyhound racing.
The joy of Paddy’s success was shared with his many friends and in the suburbs of Ealing London, Fr. Tommy Doyle, formerly of Woodstock Street and John Blanchfield, formerly of Leinster Street were but two of those who celebrated Paddy’s success. John Blanchfield had a betting shop in Ealing where his brother Christy Blanchfield also worked. The Blanchfield’s sister Bella married Paddy Gibbons of St. Martin’s Terrace whose mother taught Paddy McEvoy to play the piano when he was a young lad and still living in Woodstock Street. Mrs. Gibbons who was a reporter for a local newspaper had two other sons, Frank who later married Josephine Horgan and Joe who died at a young age of TB. Now 83 years of age Paddy McEvoy still recalls how he envied Joe Gibbons who during the summer months lived in a tent in a field next to the present Tegral factory. Paddy was not then to know that Joe’s ill health required him to live in this way in a vain attempt to arrest the onward progress of the deadly TB.
In 1956 Paddy McEvoy had his second winner in an English Derby. By then he was attached to Clapton Stadium in the East End of London where he managed the racing kennels and trained dogs on his own behalf. The 1953 winner of the premier classic was “Dunmore King”. His final career total of three Derby winners was achieved with the success of “Palms Printer” at White City on 21st June, 1961. Paddy had attended dog trials in Shelbourne Park the previous November and bid 250 guineas for a dog which had impressed him in the morning trials. When the dog was withdrawn from sale Paddy contacted its owner Nick Breen of Ferns in Co. Wexford and agreed a price of £400 for Palms Printer to be delivered to him in London. He sold on the dog and successfully brought him through the first four rounds of the English Derby before achieving the satisfaction of winning his third English classic in the space of eight years.
Paddy and his family left London that same year and returned to Athy having bought a shop in Leinster Street. The shop now owned by Tom Jacob was home to the McEvoy family for the next four years and during that time Paddy had breeding kennels and a paddock built at Russellstown on the Dublin road. With the McEvoy family on their return to Ireland was the now retired winner of the 1953 Derby “Daws Dancer”. An affectionate dog, he was particularly fond of children and was apt to wander down town on occasions. Paddy always rewarded with a few sweets the youngsters who brought the Derby winner back to the shop. Only now he wonders if his generosity was in itself an encouragement to the youthful entrepreneurs to entice the over-friendly greyhound away from his base in the expectation of the usual sweet-toothed reward so beloved of youngsters.
In 1965 the shop was sold to Andy Conlon and the McEvoys returned to England, this time Paddy taking the management of Wimbledon Stadium. This was the most prestigious position available in the greyhound racing world, and that same year Paddy trained the winner of the Laurels. It was a success he repeated in 1968 while at the same time winning the Scurry Cup on two occasions. Dogs trained by Paddy McEvoy won many races over the years including the Produce Stakes in Catford but he can never forget his greatest racing disappointment in the same Produce Stakes final. On that occasion Paddy had four dogs in the six-dog final. However, they came in 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th and to this day Paddy cannot understand why the expected victory eluded him. For Paddy, a lifetime spent in breeding and training greyhounds has taught him that a greyhound can only be a good running dog if it is genuine, intelligent and speedy or as the late Pat Mehigan once described a greyhound in his sporting column,
“Head like a snake, neck like a drake,
Back like a beam, side like a bream,
Heart room in plenty allow -
Tail like a rat, feet like a cat,
And breast to the ground like a plough”.
When Paddy finally retired from greyhound racing in May 1993 Wimbledon Stadium Chairman John Cearns made a presentation to him following the last race at Wimbledon that evening calling Athy-born Paddy as “one of greyhound racings greatest trainers”. That same day “Sporting Life” in announcing Paddy’s retirement after 33 years as a greyhound trainer referred to him as “gentle, kind, helpful and a fountain of knowledge, he is one of the world’s leading experts on greyhound breeding with which he has been closely involved throughout his career”.
Paddy and his Australian-born wife Patricia returned to Athy where they continue to live. Their grown-up family of four are all living abroad, Jim, a Computer Consultant in England, Patrick, a dentist in California, Tim, a Company Director in England and Mary, a Public Relations Consultant in California.
The eighty-three year old Paddy has retained a remarkably sharp memory of Athy in the 1930’s. He recalls the times when working on the Curragh he cycled over there and back each day. Mick Johnson of Convent View was then in the Army and like Paddy cycled there each day, calling Paddy, then living in Geraldine, as he passed his house each morning. The young athletic Paddy would invariably catch up with and pass Mick at Booleigh. It was the same athleticism and power which on one occasion permitted Paddy as a young man to cycle to Baldoyle races for afternoon horseracing and from there to Shelbourne Park for an evening dog meeting, leaving for Athy at 10 o’clock at night.
While interviewing Paddy I went through a list of local greyhound owners stretching back over the last 65 years. Without a moment’s hesitation he recalled for me the names of the various dogs owned or trained by those named, indicating important races won and identifying the better dogs involved. I was intrigued to hear his account of Fr. Maurice Browne, who while a curate in Athy in the 1930’s owned a series of greyhounds, all of which he raced under the name “W. Twyford”. The reverend gentleman, later to be Parish Priest in Ballymore-Eustace and author of The Big Sycamore used the nom-de-plume to avoid the critical scrutiny of his Bishop who did not allow his clerics to indulge in such pastimes. The success of Joe Daly’s dog “Cheeky Robin” in the coursing derby in Clonmel was remembered, as was the duo of Nellie Holland and Grace Carty, one a Catholic, the other a Protestant who shared a belief in the efficacy of holy water in improving a dog’s performance in Shelbourne Park.
The stories of dogs, owners and trainers come easily to the man whose working
life revolved around the chasing of the hare and the explosive break from the trap of the noble and graceful greyhound.
The joy of Paddy’s success was shared with his many friends and in the suburbs of Ealing London, Fr. Tommy Doyle, formerly of Woodstock Street and John Blanchfield, formerly of Leinster Street were but two of those who celebrated Paddy’s success. John Blanchfield had a betting shop in Ealing where his brother Christy Blanchfield also worked. The Blanchfield’s sister Bella married Paddy Gibbons of St. Martin’s Terrace whose mother taught Paddy McEvoy to play the piano when he was a young lad and still living in Woodstock Street. Mrs. Gibbons who was a reporter for a local newspaper had two other sons, Frank who later married Josephine Horgan and Joe who died at a young age of TB. Now 83 years of age Paddy McEvoy still recalls how he envied Joe Gibbons who during the summer months lived in a tent in a field next to the present Tegral factory. Paddy was not then to know that Joe’s ill health required him to live in this way in a vain attempt to arrest the onward progress of the deadly TB.
In 1956 Paddy McEvoy had his second winner in an English Derby. By then he was attached to Clapton Stadium in the East End of London where he managed the racing kennels and trained dogs on his own behalf. The 1953 winner of the premier classic was “Dunmore King”. His final career total of three Derby winners was achieved with the success of “Palms Printer” at White City on 21st June, 1961. Paddy had attended dog trials in Shelbourne Park the previous November and bid 250 guineas for a dog which had impressed him in the morning trials. When the dog was withdrawn from sale Paddy contacted its owner Nick Breen of Ferns in Co. Wexford and agreed a price of £400 for Palms Printer to be delivered to him in London. He sold on the dog and successfully brought him through the first four rounds of the English Derby before achieving the satisfaction of winning his third English classic in the space of eight years.
Paddy and his family left London that same year and returned to Athy having bought a shop in Leinster Street. The shop now owned by Tom Jacob was home to the McEvoy family for the next four years and during that time Paddy had breeding kennels and a paddock built at Russellstown on the Dublin road. With the McEvoy family on their return to Ireland was the now retired winner of the 1953 Derby “Daws Dancer”. An affectionate dog, he was particularly fond of children and was apt to wander down town on occasions. Paddy always rewarded with a few sweets the youngsters who brought the Derby winner back to the shop. Only now he wonders if his generosity was in itself an encouragement to the youthful entrepreneurs to entice the over-friendly greyhound away from his base in the expectation of the usual sweet-toothed reward so beloved of youngsters.
In 1965 the shop was sold to Andy Conlon and the McEvoys returned to England, this time Paddy taking the management of Wimbledon Stadium. This was the most prestigious position available in the greyhound racing world, and that same year Paddy trained the winner of the Laurels. It was a success he repeated in 1968 while at the same time winning the Scurry Cup on two occasions. Dogs trained by Paddy McEvoy won many races over the years including the Produce Stakes in Catford but he can never forget his greatest racing disappointment in the same Produce Stakes final. On that occasion Paddy had four dogs in the six-dog final. However, they came in 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th and to this day Paddy cannot understand why the expected victory eluded him. For Paddy, a lifetime spent in breeding and training greyhounds has taught him that a greyhound can only be a good running dog if it is genuine, intelligent and speedy or as the late Pat Mehigan once described a greyhound in his sporting column,
“Head like a snake, neck like a drake,
Back like a beam, side like a bream,
Heart room in plenty allow -
Tail like a rat, feet like a cat,
And breast to the ground like a plough”.
When Paddy finally retired from greyhound racing in May 1993 Wimbledon Stadium Chairman John Cearns made a presentation to him following the last race at Wimbledon that evening calling Athy-born Paddy as “one of greyhound racings greatest trainers”. That same day “Sporting Life” in announcing Paddy’s retirement after 33 years as a greyhound trainer referred to him as “gentle, kind, helpful and a fountain of knowledge, he is one of the world’s leading experts on greyhound breeding with which he has been closely involved throughout his career”.
Paddy and his Australian-born wife Patricia returned to Athy where they continue to live. Their grown-up family of four are all living abroad, Jim, a Computer Consultant in England, Patrick, a dentist in California, Tim, a Company Director in England and Mary, a Public Relations Consultant in California.
The eighty-three year old Paddy has retained a remarkably sharp memory of Athy in the 1930’s. He recalls the times when working on the Curragh he cycled over there and back each day. Mick Johnson of Convent View was then in the Army and like Paddy cycled there each day, calling Paddy, then living in Geraldine, as he passed his house each morning. The young athletic Paddy would invariably catch up with and pass Mick at Booleigh. It was the same athleticism and power which on one occasion permitted Paddy as a young man to cycle to Baldoyle races for afternoon horseracing and from there to Shelbourne Park for an evening dog meeting, leaving for Athy at 10 o’clock at night.
While interviewing Paddy I went through a list of local greyhound owners stretching back over the last 65 years. Without a moment’s hesitation he recalled for me the names of the various dogs owned or trained by those named, indicating important races won and identifying the better dogs involved. I was intrigued to hear his account of Fr. Maurice Browne, who while a curate in Athy in the 1930’s owned a series of greyhounds, all of which he raced under the name “W. Twyford”. The reverend gentleman, later to be Parish Priest in Ballymore-Eustace and author of The Big Sycamore used the nom-de-plume to avoid the critical scrutiny of his Bishop who did not allow his clerics to indulge in such pastimes. The success of Joe Daly’s dog “Cheeky Robin” in the coursing derby in Clonmel was remembered, as was the duo of Nellie Holland and Grace Carty, one a Catholic, the other a Protestant who shared a belief in the efficacy of holy water in improving a dog’s performance in Shelbourne Park.
The stories of dogs, owners and trainers come easily to the man whose working
life revolved around the chasing of the hare and the explosive break from the trap of the noble and graceful greyhound.
Thursday, December 7, 2000
Paddy McEvoy - Greyhound Trainer
To train a winner of the English Greyhound Derby is a mark of greatness within the ranks of those whose sport is greyhound racing. To have done so on three occasions gives one a special place in the pantheon of sporting greats. It is an achievement which today can only be claimed by an Irishman - Athy man Paddy McEvoy, formerly of Woodstock Street and Geraldine Road. Born one year after the Easter Rising of 1916, Paddy, the son of local boatman James McEvoy, known locally as “Valley” McEvoy and his wife Margaret attended the Christian Brothers School in Athy. Classmates of his in the 1920’s included Tony and Des Whelan of Barrowhouse, Frank Carolan of Leinster Street, Tommy Prendergast, the younger brother of Paddy or “Darkie” Prendergast of horse-training fame and Mick Mullery. Now 84 years of age Paddy is living in retirement in Athy with his charming wife Patricia after a lifetime’s involvement in the training and breeding of greyhounds.
Paddy’s great grand-parents were some of the Landsdowne tenantry evicted from their Luggacurran holdings during the evictions in that area of the late 1880’s. Like so many more of those evicted they eventually moved into the town of Athy and lived in the house (now demolished) immediately next to the Catholic Curate’s thatched cottage in Woodstock Street. It was here that Paddy as a very young boy heard gunshots reverberating from the nearby military barracks as the IRA launched an attack during the War of Independence. Another memory from the old days in Athy is the jingle which in the 1920’s and later was part of the folk repertoire of the time.
“Oh Doctor dear Doctor dear Doctor John
Your Cod Liver Oil is so pure and so strong
I’m afraid of my life she’ll go down in the soil
If my wife stops drinking your Cod Liver Oil.
I got her a bottle for her just to try
The way she drank it you’d swear she was dry
I got her another, it vanished the same
Oh how can I ever keep up with this game.”
The doctor in question was Dr. John Kilbride, medical officer of health for Athy who spent four years in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the first World War. He was an energetic man whose concern for the local people was such that his was the prominent voice in promoting the need for better-class houses and improved town water and sewerage facilities in Athy at a time when disease regularly took it’s toll on the local community.
On leaving the Christian Brothers school Paddy joined local building contractors D. & J. Carbery of St. John’s Lane where he was apprenticed to carpenter Mick May who lived at St. Martin’s Terrace. Coincidentally, the Carbery firm had been set up following the eviction of Dan Carbery (Snr.) from his farm holding in Luggacurran at the same time as the McEvoys. On qualifying as a carpenter Paddy joined Mick May to work with a firm in Kildare town and later still joined the Board of Works in the Curragh, finally ending his carpentry career with Bord na Mona.
Paddy’s boyhood friend was Tommy Prendergast, commonly known as “The Red Lad” to distinguish him from his older brother Paddy Prendergast who was called “Darkie”. Tommy’s father was a horse trainer and animals including greyhounds were always part of the young Prendergast boys’ lives. So it was inevitable that the canal worker’s son from Woodstock Street joined his friend Tommy Prendergast in coursing greyhounds in the fields around Prussellstown. Paddy enjoyed the sport and soon acquired an interest in greyhound racing, getting his very first racing dog when as a school-boy he swapped his pet rabbits for a greyhound. Unknown to him his future was now to be intrinsically linked with the training and breeding of greyhounds, one of the most ancient of sporting animals whose association with the ancient Egyptians was noted as far back as 10,000 B.C. But first of all Paddy had to spend some years earning a living as a carpenter, and finally ended up working for Bord na Mona, erecting huts for workers during the Second World War.
Paddy’s record as a trainer officially started in 1938 while he was still employed as a carpenter. His first notable success was with a dog named “Shake Yourself”, previously owned by Sadie Lynch, formerly Sadie Young of Castlemitchell, wife of the local Provincial Bank Manager. The dog which was to be the first of many great greyhounds trained by Paddy McEvoy over the next forty five years, was of a nervous disposition. Paddy decided to breed from the dog and a succession of some brilliant greyhounds resulted. One of the better hounds from the litter was “Negroes Fire”, subsequently owned by Fingletons of Ballinclea which won many races on the track. Both bitch and daughter shared what was then a unique double when both won races on the same night in Harold’s Cross. Paddy’s success as a trainer and breeder did not go unnoticed and one day in 1945 local G.P. Dr. Jeremiah O’Neill brought a Brigadier Murray to Paddy’s house in Geraldine Road. “Would Paddy agree to meet Brigadier Critchley of the Greyhound Racing Association in the Hibernian Hotel in Dublin?” The all-expenses-paid trip to Dublin resulted in a job offer which the young part-time greyhound trainer could not refuse. The Racing Association was to open greyhound breeding kennels in Maudlins, Naas and invited Paddy to be its first manager. It was an offer too good to miss and so Paddy moved from Athy in 1945 to take up full-time employment in the sport to which he had been first drawn as a result of a boyhood friendship with Tommy Prendergast.
The kennels in Maudlins bred many dogs for the English market, but the success expected of many of the better dogs deserted them soon after they went across to England. Paddy was asked to investigate and quickly discovered that the dogs bred and reared in the best conditions possible in Ireland were not properly fed when sent abroad. The matter was soon resolved but Paddy was encouraged by Lord Brabazon and others to bring his skills across the Irish sea and so in 1950 he obtained his Private Trainers Licence and established his kennels at Longcross in Surrey. The next stage of Paddy’s career was about to start. He was not long there before he had his next winner, with the oddly named “Little Isle Cuchalainn”. Within a year he had a runner in the Greyhound Derby Final with “Rapid Choice”. Success, however, eluded him on that occasion but “Rapid Choice” was to provide Paddy with his first big successes in Britain when he won The Key at Wimbledon, the West Ham Summer Stakes and the Wembley Gold Cup, all in the same year. Paddy’s success with “Rapid Choice” was particularly pleasing for him as the dog had been bred by him at the Maudlins Kennels in Naas.
In 1953 the blue riband of greyhound racing was to fall to Paddy McEvoy of Athy when 10-1 chance “Daws Dancer” won the 23rd Greyhound Derby at White City, London. In winning the Derby that year Paddy’s dog emulated the immortal “Mick The Miller” as only the second dog to leave Ireland and win the British Greyhound Derby in the same year. “Mick The Miller” achieved his Derby success in 1929, the third year of the running of that famous race.
Paddy’s McEvoy’s star was now in the ascendancy, but as we shall find out next week, even greater success awaited him in the years ahead.
Paddy’s great grand-parents were some of the Landsdowne tenantry evicted from their Luggacurran holdings during the evictions in that area of the late 1880’s. Like so many more of those evicted they eventually moved into the town of Athy and lived in the house (now demolished) immediately next to the Catholic Curate’s thatched cottage in Woodstock Street. It was here that Paddy as a very young boy heard gunshots reverberating from the nearby military barracks as the IRA launched an attack during the War of Independence. Another memory from the old days in Athy is the jingle which in the 1920’s and later was part of the folk repertoire of the time.
“Oh Doctor dear Doctor dear Doctor John
Your Cod Liver Oil is so pure and so strong
I’m afraid of my life she’ll go down in the soil
If my wife stops drinking your Cod Liver Oil.
I got her a bottle for her just to try
The way she drank it you’d swear she was dry
I got her another, it vanished the same
Oh how can I ever keep up with this game.”
The doctor in question was Dr. John Kilbride, medical officer of health for Athy who spent four years in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the first World War. He was an energetic man whose concern for the local people was such that his was the prominent voice in promoting the need for better-class houses and improved town water and sewerage facilities in Athy at a time when disease regularly took it’s toll on the local community.
On leaving the Christian Brothers school Paddy joined local building contractors D. & J. Carbery of St. John’s Lane where he was apprenticed to carpenter Mick May who lived at St. Martin’s Terrace. Coincidentally, the Carbery firm had been set up following the eviction of Dan Carbery (Snr.) from his farm holding in Luggacurran at the same time as the McEvoys. On qualifying as a carpenter Paddy joined Mick May to work with a firm in Kildare town and later still joined the Board of Works in the Curragh, finally ending his carpentry career with Bord na Mona.
Paddy’s boyhood friend was Tommy Prendergast, commonly known as “The Red Lad” to distinguish him from his older brother Paddy Prendergast who was called “Darkie”. Tommy’s father was a horse trainer and animals including greyhounds were always part of the young Prendergast boys’ lives. So it was inevitable that the canal worker’s son from Woodstock Street joined his friend Tommy Prendergast in coursing greyhounds in the fields around Prussellstown. Paddy enjoyed the sport and soon acquired an interest in greyhound racing, getting his very first racing dog when as a school-boy he swapped his pet rabbits for a greyhound. Unknown to him his future was now to be intrinsically linked with the training and breeding of greyhounds, one of the most ancient of sporting animals whose association with the ancient Egyptians was noted as far back as 10,000 B.C. But first of all Paddy had to spend some years earning a living as a carpenter, and finally ended up working for Bord na Mona, erecting huts for workers during the Second World War.
Paddy’s record as a trainer officially started in 1938 while he was still employed as a carpenter. His first notable success was with a dog named “Shake Yourself”, previously owned by Sadie Lynch, formerly Sadie Young of Castlemitchell, wife of the local Provincial Bank Manager. The dog which was to be the first of many great greyhounds trained by Paddy McEvoy over the next forty five years, was of a nervous disposition. Paddy decided to breed from the dog and a succession of some brilliant greyhounds resulted. One of the better hounds from the litter was “Negroes Fire”, subsequently owned by Fingletons of Ballinclea which won many races on the track. Both bitch and daughter shared what was then a unique double when both won races on the same night in Harold’s Cross. Paddy’s success as a trainer and breeder did not go unnoticed and one day in 1945 local G.P. Dr. Jeremiah O’Neill brought a Brigadier Murray to Paddy’s house in Geraldine Road. “Would Paddy agree to meet Brigadier Critchley of the Greyhound Racing Association in the Hibernian Hotel in Dublin?” The all-expenses-paid trip to Dublin resulted in a job offer which the young part-time greyhound trainer could not refuse. The Racing Association was to open greyhound breeding kennels in Maudlins, Naas and invited Paddy to be its first manager. It was an offer too good to miss and so Paddy moved from Athy in 1945 to take up full-time employment in the sport to which he had been first drawn as a result of a boyhood friendship with Tommy Prendergast.
The kennels in Maudlins bred many dogs for the English market, but the success expected of many of the better dogs deserted them soon after they went across to England. Paddy was asked to investigate and quickly discovered that the dogs bred and reared in the best conditions possible in Ireland were not properly fed when sent abroad. The matter was soon resolved but Paddy was encouraged by Lord Brabazon and others to bring his skills across the Irish sea and so in 1950 he obtained his Private Trainers Licence and established his kennels at Longcross in Surrey. The next stage of Paddy’s career was about to start. He was not long there before he had his next winner, with the oddly named “Little Isle Cuchalainn”. Within a year he had a runner in the Greyhound Derby Final with “Rapid Choice”. Success, however, eluded him on that occasion but “Rapid Choice” was to provide Paddy with his first big successes in Britain when he won The Key at Wimbledon, the West Ham Summer Stakes and the Wembley Gold Cup, all in the same year. Paddy’s success with “Rapid Choice” was particularly pleasing for him as the dog had been bred by him at the Maudlins Kennels in Naas.
In 1953 the blue riband of greyhound racing was to fall to Paddy McEvoy of Athy when 10-1 chance “Daws Dancer” won the 23rd Greyhound Derby at White City, London. In winning the Derby that year Paddy’s dog emulated the immortal “Mick The Miller” as only the second dog to leave Ireland and win the British Greyhound Derby in the same year. “Mick The Miller” achieved his Derby success in 1929, the third year of the running of that famous race.
Paddy’s McEvoy’s star was now in the ascendancy, but as we shall find out next week, even greater success awaited him in the years ahead.
Thursday, November 30, 2000
Flu Epidemic 1919 - Late Noel Finn
The flu knocked me for six over the Christmas break but mercifully modern medical science came to my rescue allowing me to enjoy the festivities. How different it was when the flu epidemic struck Ireland in 1918 while the First World War was still raging. I was reminded of this while going through back issues of the Irish Independent for the last years of the Great War where daily accounts were given of the fatalities resulting from the flu. Entire families were wiped out and soldiers who had miraculously survived the War succumbed to the dreadful disease for which there was then no known cure. The daily newspapers referred to the flu epidemic which first started in Belfast, as a plague, and cautioned its readers to take the following precautions.
“Don’t use public telephones. If fairly young and strong ride outside rather than inside trams. Don’t get wet feet - if you do, walk home, if possible, to avoid packed conveyances. Wear warm loose woollen clothing. Drink hot milk or lemonade when going to bed.”
Such was the state of medical knowledge just over eighty years ago. Another report which caught my eye was in the Irish Independent of Tuesday, 3rd December 1918.
“The first cases that Dr. T.J. Browne, Medical Inspector to the Local Government Board met outside Belfast were in Athy about the end of July when workmen who had gone there from Belfast were stricken with the disease which the doctors thought was typhus fever.”
Athy suffered great loss of life during the flu epidemic of 1918 and the flu vaccine which was even then being tested came too late to save many people. Indeed Dr. Brown, the Local Government Board Medical Inspector made a point of declaring that “the vaccine treatment was as yet more or less in the experimental stage and it was hardly proper for the Local Government Board to recommend it.”
In November 1918 the local Urban District Council asked the Board of Guardians who had charge of the local Poorhouse to engage more nurses to attend to the sick poor during the influenza epidemic. At the same time the Councillors extended thanks on behalf of the townspeople to Miss M. Murphy, Emily Square and Miss Brigid Darby of Leinster Street for “their unselfish attention bestowed without hope of monetary reward and irrespective of class or creed on our afflicted townspeople during the present terrible epidemic.” It would appear that the two good ladies were instrumental in forming a “Committee of Ladies to the Sufferers from the Influenza Epidemic in the town” whose members visited the poor people and provided them with food and drink. Amongst those who died in Athy at that time was Thomas Keating, a native of Kilcarroll, Kilrush in Co. Clare who was employed as a Customs Officer in the town. I am uncertain as to why customs officials were based in Athy but whatever it was, it indicated a level of commercial activity to which we have not been accustomed for some time. What about the workmen who came from Belfast to Athy in 1918? I surmise but perhaps incorrectly that they were engaged in the building of the Wolfhill Railway Line.
Another man whose links with Athy are unclear was John Roache, a Private in the 1st Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Some years ago a medal won by Private J. Roache for the D. Company Hockey League in 1911 was found in the back garden of a house in Pairc Bhride. John Roache won the medal while his Battalion was stationed in India where it had gone in January 1910. The Dublin Fusiliers remained there until they were brought back to bolster the British Expeditionary Force in France during World War I. The Battalion arrived back in Plymouth Harbour just four days before Christmas 1914. John Roache, Regimental Number 9070 was killed in action in France on 1st March, 1917. The Irish War Memorial records state that he was born in Dublin and I cannot find any connection with Athy to explain why his hockey medal was found in a local back garden some years ago. Can anyone help to throw some light on Private John Roache and his connections, if any, with Athy?
Just before Christmas I attended the funeral in Naas of Noel Finn, a retired local Government official who was the first of many superiors I worked under during the first half of my working life. I was a scrawny red-haired brass-necked youngster fresh out of school when I presented myself in January 1961 at the County Council offices located in what was the former Fever Hospital in Naas. I can still recall that first day when I was brought into the County Secretary’s general office and given a few welcoming words by the then County Secretary Johnny Mullaney before starting my first task. It was, would you believe, to repair to the boiler house and there to rummage through a few sacks of envelopes in a vain search for a postal order which was apparently missing from a letter. I can’t recall if I managed to find the elusive postal order but I certainly earned my keep that day.
Thereafter I was assigned to the Health Section which was under the control of Noel Finn, the youngest staff officer in the Council at a time when staff officerships were seldom in the offering. Indeed the total compliment of staff officers in the County Council at that time was three, Jimmy Tully and John Miley being the other two.
Noel Finn was a superb public official, a man blessed with intelligence allied with energy and enthusiasm which he brought whole-heartedly to bear on his job. He was kind and considerate to his staff and well I remember the way in which he sought to pass on his knowledge and experience to me as the youngest member of his team. In those days medical cards (we remember them as blue cards - why I don’t know) were a very important part of family support at a time when many earned incomes as well as welfare benefits bordered, more than they do now, on the poverty line. Noel had to recommend to the County Manager whether Medical Card Applications should be granted or refused and although the final decision was the County Managers, the Staff Officers recommendation was invariably followed. Noel went through each of the Applications with a thoroughness and a fairness which impressed me as I stood alongside his desk while he explained to me in each case the basis of his recommendations. This was his way of training a young clerical officer who even then had little hope of aspiring to the rank of Staff Officer.
Later on when Pat Herity and myself took ourselves off each night to attend night classes in Earlsfort Terrace, Noel was on most nights a fellow passenger in the Volkswagen Beetle which shuttled us between Naas and Dublin. Noel was then stepping out with his future wife Nancy. After I left the Local Government service I met Noel at various meetings over the years and always saw in him the same energy and enthusiasm I first noticed all those years ago. He was a superb Local Government official, who recognised the importance of public service in the life of local communities and who always sought to use his experience and knowledge for the benefit of the people he served. May he rest in peace.
“Don’t use public telephones. If fairly young and strong ride outside rather than inside trams. Don’t get wet feet - if you do, walk home, if possible, to avoid packed conveyances. Wear warm loose woollen clothing. Drink hot milk or lemonade when going to bed.”
Such was the state of medical knowledge just over eighty years ago. Another report which caught my eye was in the Irish Independent of Tuesday, 3rd December 1918.
“The first cases that Dr. T.J. Browne, Medical Inspector to the Local Government Board met outside Belfast were in Athy about the end of July when workmen who had gone there from Belfast were stricken with the disease which the doctors thought was typhus fever.”
Athy suffered great loss of life during the flu epidemic of 1918 and the flu vaccine which was even then being tested came too late to save many people. Indeed Dr. Brown, the Local Government Board Medical Inspector made a point of declaring that “the vaccine treatment was as yet more or less in the experimental stage and it was hardly proper for the Local Government Board to recommend it.”
In November 1918 the local Urban District Council asked the Board of Guardians who had charge of the local Poorhouse to engage more nurses to attend to the sick poor during the influenza epidemic. At the same time the Councillors extended thanks on behalf of the townspeople to Miss M. Murphy, Emily Square and Miss Brigid Darby of Leinster Street for “their unselfish attention bestowed without hope of monetary reward and irrespective of class or creed on our afflicted townspeople during the present terrible epidemic.” It would appear that the two good ladies were instrumental in forming a “Committee of Ladies to the Sufferers from the Influenza Epidemic in the town” whose members visited the poor people and provided them with food and drink. Amongst those who died in Athy at that time was Thomas Keating, a native of Kilcarroll, Kilrush in Co. Clare who was employed as a Customs Officer in the town. I am uncertain as to why customs officials were based in Athy but whatever it was, it indicated a level of commercial activity to which we have not been accustomed for some time. What about the workmen who came from Belfast to Athy in 1918? I surmise but perhaps incorrectly that they were engaged in the building of the Wolfhill Railway Line.
Another man whose links with Athy are unclear was John Roache, a Private in the 1st Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Some years ago a medal won by Private J. Roache for the D. Company Hockey League in 1911 was found in the back garden of a house in Pairc Bhride. John Roache won the medal while his Battalion was stationed in India where it had gone in January 1910. The Dublin Fusiliers remained there until they were brought back to bolster the British Expeditionary Force in France during World War I. The Battalion arrived back in Plymouth Harbour just four days before Christmas 1914. John Roache, Regimental Number 9070 was killed in action in France on 1st March, 1917. The Irish War Memorial records state that he was born in Dublin and I cannot find any connection with Athy to explain why his hockey medal was found in a local back garden some years ago. Can anyone help to throw some light on Private John Roache and his connections, if any, with Athy?
Just before Christmas I attended the funeral in Naas of Noel Finn, a retired local Government official who was the first of many superiors I worked under during the first half of my working life. I was a scrawny red-haired brass-necked youngster fresh out of school when I presented myself in January 1961 at the County Council offices located in what was the former Fever Hospital in Naas. I can still recall that first day when I was brought into the County Secretary’s general office and given a few welcoming words by the then County Secretary Johnny Mullaney before starting my first task. It was, would you believe, to repair to the boiler house and there to rummage through a few sacks of envelopes in a vain search for a postal order which was apparently missing from a letter. I can’t recall if I managed to find the elusive postal order but I certainly earned my keep that day.
Thereafter I was assigned to the Health Section which was under the control of Noel Finn, the youngest staff officer in the Council at a time when staff officerships were seldom in the offering. Indeed the total compliment of staff officers in the County Council at that time was three, Jimmy Tully and John Miley being the other two.
Noel Finn was a superb public official, a man blessed with intelligence allied with energy and enthusiasm which he brought whole-heartedly to bear on his job. He was kind and considerate to his staff and well I remember the way in which he sought to pass on his knowledge and experience to me as the youngest member of his team. In those days medical cards (we remember them as blue cards - why I don’t know) were a very important part of family support at a time when many earned incomes as well as welfare benefits bordered, more than they do now, on the poverty line. Noel had to recommend to the County Manager whether Medical Card Applications should be granted or refused and although the final decision was the County Managers, the Staff Officers recommendation was invariably followed. Noel went through each of the Applications with a thoroughness and a fairness which impressed me as I stood alongside his desk while he explained to me in each case the basis of his recommendations. This was his way of training a young clerical officer who even then had little hope of aspiring to the rank of Staff Officer.
Later on when Pat Herity and myself took ourselves off each night to attend night classes in Earlsfort Terrace, Noel was on most nights a fellow passenger in the Volkswagen Beetle which shuttled us between Naas and Dublin. Noel was then stepping out with his future wife Nancy. After I left the Local Government service I met Noel at various meetings over the years and always saw in him the same energy and enthusiasm I first noticed all those years ago. He was a superb Local Government official, who recognised the importance of public service in the life of local communities and who always sought to use his experience and knowledge for the benefit of the people he served. May he rest in peace.
Thursday, November 23, 2000
John Henry's History of Athy
During the years of the Great Famine John Henry, a citizen of Athy, began to write his history of the town which he called Athy and its Recollections. An extract from his history appeared in the local newspaper The Eastern County’s Herald on St. Patrick’s Day 1849. His manuscript which he subsequently presented to the Duke of Leinster makes for interesting reading, even if some of his claims for the medieval town cannot be substantiated.
The following extract relating to the castle and bridge of Athy are from Henry’s manuscript.
“The castle never appears to have been an extensive building, one square tower, with the usual out works was found sufficient to command the bridge, for which purpose it was evidently erected, but by whom there are now no means of ascertaining. It may however be reasonably concluded that it was built about the time of the first bridge, and that it underwent alterations and improvements from time to time, suitable to the advanced state of military science, and to the taste or necessities of the parties who successively occupied it. Its position will at once discountenance the supposition that it was erected at an early period to protect the town, and it is equally improbable that it was built to command the ford. Such structures were very rarely used for purposes of the kind, and would be almost unnecessary at the ford of Athy, because Ardreigh, Dunbrin and Maganey fords lay only a little to the southward, and Barrowford, Shrowland and Bertfords within the short distance to the north, none of which were defended by a castle, although they were nearly as available to be passed as that of Athy. There was no ford at Woodstock, for the river there must have always formed a deep pool, on the margin of which the Castle of Woodstock was built, for the sake of the additional security such a position afforded.
From a careful examination of the materials available for enquiry, it is pretty certain that the first bridge was built by either or both of the religious houses, long established on each bank of the river. As an instance that this was the practice of such community, Maurice Jakes, a Cannon of Kildare, erected the bridge of Kilcullen, St. Wolstans and Leighlin. The tolls or duties however as pontage, payable by the passengers, formed a considerable part of the revenue of those establishments in latter years, and the religious authority of the brotherhood was a sufficient protection from violence until the rivalry of parties introduced licentiousness, and a thirst for reprisals and bloodshed that had small respect for any law or religion whatever. When interest was to be served or vengeance satiated, under those circumstances a Military defence was called for, and accordingly the Castle was built and successively strengthened as occasion required. The letter already quoted, having reference to Lord Furnival, mentions the erection of a “New Tower” for a ward to Athy bridge, with a great fortification about the same for resistance of enemies, “by which bridge” it is said “your faithful lieges were often times preyed and killed”.
Maurice, the fourth Earl of Kildare, attended Edward III at the Siege of Calais, and was knighted for his valour on the occasion by that monarch, who afterwards in 1350 appointed him to the Government of Ireland at a salary of £500 a year. This Earl had great experience in military affairs on the continent and in England, and when appointed Governor of Ireland, his knowledge was of the greatest importance in strengthening the defences of the Pale, and from him the Castle of Athy may be said to have first received anything like the appearance of a regular fortification.
It is very probable also that it was about this time it received the name of the White Castle, perhaps in contradistinction to the Black Castle, which, as already stated stood near the present site of the Reverend John Lawlers residence, or, as the Black Castle was for a long time in the possession of the Knights Hospitallers, a half religious, and half military order, it is not unlikely. Neither is it unsupported by some authority, that from the circumstance of the usual costume of those Knights being black, the Castle received its name, and for the same reason, the White Castle might be so called from the colour of the livery worn by the retainers of the Earl of Kildare. From authentic records, it is known that Gerald, the fifth Earl built a castle at Leighlin Bridge in 1408, which was named the White Castle, another building which previously existed being called, as in Athy, the Black Castle.
About eighty years ago, the fragment of a stone bearing a certain inscription was found in the old mill attached to the Castle. This stone can now be seen in the castle wall, near the former entrance door, and from the inscription on it, a writer in the Anthologia Hibernica, imagined that he had discovered the reason the castle received its present name, and since, in almost all the accounts of this building, this error has been followed.
As has been stated, the stone is but a fragment, and the portion of the inscription remaining scarcely conveys any sense, but admitting that it does record the setting of that stone by William White at the repairing of the Castle in 1575, it surely cannot be contended that the Castle received its name from this William White, when it was known as the White Castle for upwards of two hundred years before, and subsequently in the charter granted by James I to Athy, the Castle is correctly called the White Castle and not Whites Castle. The writer in the Anthologia Hibernica alluded to was a Mr. William Beauford who was a schoolmaster of no ordinary abilities residing in Carlow at one time, but afterwards a creditable inhabitant of Athy, where he also was the principal of a highly respectable school.
Although possessed of great versatility of talent, he appears to have held erroneous opinions of the ancient history of Ireland and its antiquities. To establish a favourite hypothesis he has sometimes been known to adopt a process of etymological investigation unparalleled in the annals of antiquarian research of which his translation of the inscription on the stone in question, is a thoughtless and glaring instance.”
Obviously local historians, of whatever age, were like politicians, never assured of acceptance by their own colleagues. I wonder what someone will say of me in 60 years time!
The following extract relating to the castle and bridge of Athy are from Henry’s manuscript.
“The castle never appears to have been an extensive building, one square tower, with the usual out works was found sufficient to command the bridge, for which purpose it was evidently erected, but by whom there are now no means of ascertaining. It may however be reasonably concluded that it was built about the time of the first bridge, and that it underwent alterations and improvements from time to time, suitable to the advanced state of military science, and to the taste or necessities of the parties who successively occupied it. Its position will at once discountenance the supposition that it was erected at an early period to protect the town, and it is equally improbable that it was built to command the ford. Such structures were very rarely used for purposes of the kind, and would be almost unnecessary at the ford of Athy, because Ardreigh, Dunbrin and Maganey fords lay only a little to the southward, and Barrowford, Shrowland and Bertfords within the short distance to the north, none of which were defended by a castle, although they were nearly as available to be passed as that of Athy. There was no ford at Woodstock, for the river there must have always formed a deep pool, on the margin of which the Castle of Woodstock was built, for the sake of the additional security such a position afforded.
From a careful examination of the materials available for enquiry, it is pretty certain that the first bridge was built by either or both of the religious houses, long established on each bank of the river. As an instance that this was the practice of such community, Maurice Jakes, a Cannon of Kildare, erected the bridge of Kilcullen, St. Wolstans and Leighlin. The tolls or duties however as pontage, payable by the passengers, formed a considerable part of the revenue of those establishments in latter years, and the religious authority of the brotherhood was a sufficient protection from violence until the rivalry of parties introduced licentiousness, and a thirst for reprisals and bloodshed that had small respect for any law or religion whatever. When interest was to be served or vengeance satiated, under those circumstances a Military defence was called for, and accordingly the Castle was built and successively strengthened as occasion required. The letter already quoted, having reference to Lord Furnival, mentions the erection of a “New Tower” for a ward to Athy bridge, with a great fortification about the same for resistance of enemies, “by which bridge” it is said “your faithful lieges were often times preyed and killed”.
Maurice, the fourth Earl of Kildare, attended Edward III at the Siege of Calais, and was knighted for his valour on the occasion by that monarch, who afterwards in 1350 appointed him to the Government of Ireland at a salary of £500 a year. This Earl had great experience in military affairs on the continent and in England, and when appointed Governor of Ireland, his knowledge was of the greatest importance in strengthening the defences of the Pale, and from him the Castle of Athy may be said to have first received anything like the appearance of a regular fortification.
It is very probable also that it was about this time it received the name of the White Castle, perhaps in contradistinction to the Black Castle, which, as already stated stood near the present site of the Reverend John Lawlers residence, or, as the Black Castle was for a long time in the possession of the Knights Hospitallers, a half religious, and half military order, it is not unlikely. Neither is it unsupported by some authority, that from the circumstance of the usual costume of those Knights being black, the Castle received its name, and for the same reason, the White Castle might be so called from the colour of the livery worn by the retainers of the Earl of Kildare. From authentic records, it is known that Gerald, the fifth Earl built a castle at Leighlin Bridge in 1408, which was named the White Castle, another building which previously existed being called, as in Athy, the Black Castle.
About eighty years ago, the fragment of a stone bearing a certain inscription was found in the old mill attached to the Castle. This stone can now be seen in the castle wall, near the former entrance door, and from the inscription on it, a writer in the Anthologia Hibernica, imagined that he had discovered the reason the castle received its present name, and since, in almost all the accounts of this building, this error has been followed.
As has been stated, the stone is but a fragment, and the portion of the inscription remaining scarcely conveys any sense, but admitting that it does record the setting of that stone by William White at the repairing of the Castle in 1575, it surely cannot be contended that the Castle received its name from this William White, when it was known as the White Castle for upwards of two hundred years before, and subsequently in the charter granted by James I to Athy, the Castle is correctly called the White Castle and not Whites Castle. The writer in the Anthologia Hibernica alluded to was a Mr. William Beauford who was a schoolmaster of no ordinary abilities residing in Carlow at one time, but afterwards a creditable inhabitant of Athy, where he also was the principal of a highly respectable school.
Although possessed of great versatility of talent, he appears to have held erroneous opinions of the ancient history of Ireland and its antiquities. To establish a favourite hypothesis he has sometimes been known to adopt a process of etymological investigation unparalleled in the annals of antiquarian research of which his translation of the inscription on the stone in question, is a thoughtless and glaring instance.”
Obviously local historians, of whatever age, were like politicians, never assured of acceptance by their own colleagues. I wonder what someone will say of me in 60 years time!
Thursday, November 16, 2000
Some Past Pupils Get Together - Late Paddy Flanagan
I had a surprise visitor last Sunday evening. He had travelled all the way from Beijing in China and yet looked as un-Chinese as you might expect of someone who had spent his school days in the Christian Brothers school in Athy. My visitor was Seamus Ryan, now a Doctor in charge of a Medical Centre in China’s capital, in which city he has been a resident for a number of years. We have kept in touch in recent years through the extraordinary agency of the internet. Indeed the genius of the system allows one to communicate at once with several persons, all receiving the same message with the press of a button. So it is that Seamus Ryan in China and Mike Robinson in Australia can be kept up-to-date with the local Athy news. It all depends however on their old school mate raising his energy levels to a sufficient height to make use of the latest electronic wizardry.
Unexpected as it was, Seamus Ryan’s visit presented an opportunity for a get-together with some of his old school friends which was speedily arranged. Later that Sunday night eight former pupils of the St. John’s Lane Academy of Excellence met to renew acquaintances and chin-wag their way through years of absence. George Robinson travelled from Athlone at short notice to attend and journeyed back there later that same night to prepare for a journey the following morning to Galway. George, as ever, was in scintillating form, reminding us of many forgotten episodes in our school lives which ended forty years ago. On such occasions the ageing youths of yesteryear belie their age and life experiences and indulge in youthful dreams of what seems like another age.
Times have certainly changed since as young lads we bounded up the metal stairs of the Christian Brothers School in St. John’s Lane to take our place behind the school benches which even then carried the crudely carved marks of generations long gone to their maker. It was indeed an old school with a history stretching back to 1862 when the Christian Brothers first arrived in Athy.
Last Sunday night as eight past pupils gathered for a chat and a drink the talk was of what seemed like another age. We talked of Brother Brett, noted without any dissenting voice as a gentleman and his colleague Brother Kehoe, better known to all his pupils as Johnny Boris. How or where he got the name I do not know but Boris [now long dead] still raises controversy amongst his former pupils.
We could all recall the horrific beatings which three of our school mates received at his hands during our secondary school days. Nowadays such physical beatings would merit possible legal action but in those days, now over forty years ago, little was thought of the sometimes ritual head-banging and leather slapping antics of school teachers. It is remarkable how incidents such as these had different effects on the young onlookers of the time, some of whom still feel, after so many years, a revulsion which finds expression in the condemnation of such callous behaviour. Others regard the occasional brutality of those days as a symptom of the times in which we lived and push the unpleasantness to the backs of minds where it remains submerged by the good memories.
No such condemnation was aired in relation to the two lay teachers who during the second half of the 1950’s laboured sometimes in vain to inculcate a modicum of learning into our unreceptive minds. Bill Ryan whom we had as a teacher for our entire secondary school life and Bill Riordan, our teacher for a few short years, were and still are, fondly recalled and remembered. Bill Ryan was a particularly good teacher who shared his experiences and his knowledge in a way and a manner which engaged his youthful charges. Thus encouraged they worked harder at his subjects than any others and in some cases maintained a life-long interest in the subjects which Bill Ryan taught with such success.
When we came together on Sunday night it was as a bunch of young fellows clothed in the garb of middle-aged men and burdened with the accumulated knowledge of 57 years. Pat Flinter, Ted Wynne and Teddy Kelly see much of each other every week day, working as they do within the confines of the Tegral industrial complex. Billy Browne and Frank English are two more of the locals who never left their home town, unlike Seamus Ryan, George Robinson and even myself who spent 20 years out of Athy in the 1960’s and 1970’s. We hadn’t previously got together in this way and Seamus Ryan’s unexpected visit gave us both the opportunity and the reason to indulge ourselves.
I marvel at the ability of some of my school pals to recall names and events of over 40 years ago with unerring accuracy. It is when faced with the encyclopaedic knowledge of local life and lore by somebody like Teddy Kelly that I wonder how it is that I ever get the courage to write of times past, especially when there are so many events and people I cannot remember any longer. One man whom I do remember passed away last week. He was Paddy Flanagan, a great cyclist and a native of County Kildare who was my first sporting hero. I can still recall the excitement experienced as I read in the late 1950’s of Paddy’s exploits in Ras Tailteann. He excelled at his sport at a time when sporting heroes were scarce enough and Irish sporting heroes virtually unheard of. In those pre-television days sporting excellence received its quota of coverage within the pages of the National newspapers and the Irish Independent was then my eyeglass on the world of sport. Nothing else interested me in the Newspapers those days other than the sport pages and for many summers the name of Paddy Flanagan and his brother were writ large on those same pages. Paddy was a Kildare man and gave us a pride in the County at a time when the sporting pages of the National Press had little cause to extol the achievements of the County footballers.
How sad to think that he passed away at such a relatively young age. Paddy Flanagan will always be, for me, one of the great sporting heroes of my schooldays.
When the school pals of 40 years ago broke up on Monday morning it was with the promise to have a class reunion next year with as many of our class mates as can be gathered together from all corners of the world. The Christian Brothers’ boys have still more stories to share and enjoy.
Unexpected as it was, Seamus Ryan’s visit presented an opportunity for a get-together with some of his old school friends which was speedily arranged. Later that Sunday night eight former pupils of the St. John’s Lane Academy of Excellence met to renew acquaintances and chin-wag their way through years of absence. George Robinson travelled from Athlone at short notice to attend and journeyed back there later that same night to prepare for a journey the following morning to Galway. George, as ever, was in scintillating form, reminding us of many forgotten episodes in our school lives which ended forty years ago. On such occasions the ageing youths of yesteryear belie their age and life experiences and indulge in youthful dreams of what seems like another age.
Times have certainly changed since as young lads we bounded up the metal stairs of the Christian Brothers School in St. John’s Lane to take our place behind the school benches which even then carried the crudely carved marks of generations long gone to their maker. It was indeed an old school with a history stretching back to 1862 when the Christian Brothers first arrived in Athy.
Last Sunday night as eight past pupils gathered for a chat and a drink the talk was of what seemed like another age. We talked of Brother Brett, noted without any dissenting voice as a gentleman and his colleague Brother Kehoe, better known to all his pupils as Johnny Boris. How or where he got the name I do not know but Boris [now long dead] still raises controversy amongst his former pupils.
We could all recall the horrific beatings which three of our school mates received at his hands during our secondary school days. Nowadays such physical beatings would merit possible legal action but in those days, now over forty years ago, little was thought of the sometimes ritual head-banging and leather slapping antics of school teachers. It is remarkable how incidents such as these had different effects on the young onlookers of the time, some of whom still feel, after so many years, a revulsion which finds expression in the condemnation of such callous behaviour. Others regard the occasional brutality of those days as a symptom of the times in which we lived and push the unpleasantness to the backs of minds where it remains submerged by the good memories.
No such condemnation was aired in relation to the two lay teachers who during the second half of the 1950’s laboured sometimes in vain to inculcate a modicum of learning into our unreceptive minds. Bill Ryan whom we had as a teacher for our entire secondary school life and Bill Riordan, our teacher for a few short years, were and still are, fondly recalled and remembered. Bill Ryan was a particularly good teacher who shared his experiences and his knowledge in a way and a manner which engaged his youthful charges. Thus encouraged they worked harder at his subjects than any others and in some cases maintained a life-long interest in the subjects which Bill Ryan taught with such success.
When we came together on Sunday night it was as a bunch of young fellows clothed in the garb of middle-aged men and burdened with the accumulated knowledge of 57 years. Pat Flinter, Ted Wynne and Teddy Kelly see much of each other every week day, working as they do within the confines of the Tegral industrial complex. Billy Browne and Frank English are two more of the locals who never left their home town, unlike Seamus Ryan, George Robinson and even myself who spent 20 years out of Athy in the 1960’s and 1970’s. We hadn’t previously got together in this way and Seamus Ryan’s unexpected visit gave us both the opportunity and the reason to indulge ourselves.
I marvel at the ability of some of my school pals to recall names and events of over 40 years ago with unerring accuracy. It is when faced with the encyclopaedic knowledge of local life and lore by somebody like Teddy Kelly that I wonder how it is that I ever get the courage to write of times past, especially when there are so many events and people I cannot remember any longer. One man whom I do remember passed away last week. He was Paddy Flanagan, a great cyclist and a native of County Kildare who was my first sporting hero. I can still recall the excitement experienced as I read in the late 1950’s of Paddy’s exploits in Ras Tailteann. He excelled at his sport at a time when sporting heroes were scarce enough and Irish sporting heroes virtually unheard of. In those pre-television days sporting excellence received its quota of coverage within the pages of the National newspapers and the Irish Independent was then my eyeglass on the world of sport. Nothing else interested me in the Newspapers those days other than the sport pages and for many summers the name of Paddy Flanagan and his brother were writ large on those same pages. Paddy was a Kildare man and gave us a pride in the County at a time when the sporting pages of the National Press had little cause to extol the achievements of the County footballers.
How sad to think that he passed away at such a relatively young age. Paddy Flanagan will always be, for me, one of the great sporting heroes of my schooldays.
When the school pals of 40 years ago broke up on Monday morning it was with the promise to have a class reunion next year with as many of our class mates as can be gathered together from all corners of the world. The Christian Brothers’ boys have still more stories to share and enjoy.
Thursday, November 9, 2000
Handbook for Travellers in Ireland 1878
I have always been fascinated by old guide books and enjoy the opportunity to read what travellers to this part of the country have to say about our area. One such book I bought recently was an 1878 edition of Handbook for Travellers in Ireland published by John Murray of London. In the preface to that book we are advised that it was based “in great part on personal visits and research made by the editor on the spot in order or render it as trustworthy as possible”. The editor’s subsequent faint praise for the inn-keepers of Ireland of 125 years ago is circumscribed with an admonishment that “if facilities for travelling in Ireland were greater and more attention were paid to order and cleanliness by the Irish Inn-keeper he would have a fair chance of diverting into that beautiful Ireland a large portion of the tourist flood which now streams for the continent.”
Irish Railways described in the book as “by no means luxurious” were stated to have carriages which were antiquated and occasionally ragged. The railway stations themselves were regarded as even more primitive than the carriages, and the Station Masters and their assistants throughout provincial Ireland were regarded as “curiously unsophisticated although imbued with genuine civility and eagerness to render the best possible service.”
Where the railways had not yet penetrated, transport was provided by coaches or public cars. Here the editor offered advice to his readers as to how best to travel on an Irish outside car.
“Ascertain which way the wind is blowing, if the weather is cold or likely to be bad and choose your side accordingly … Aprons are provided in the car, at the same time a private waterproof apron is a great convenience and added to which the traveller should obtain a strap by which he can buckle himself to the seat during night journeys and thus go safely to sleep without fear of being jerked forward”.
Irish Hotels with some exceptions were regarded as inferior to those of England, Scotland or the continent. One of the features of most Irish Hotels, even in the 1870’s, was the exaulted position occupied by “the boots”. He generally was to be found in provincial town hotels, and almost always was a native of the district who could direct you to all the best eating and drinking houses within the area. The broken bells, ragged wallpaper and carpets and ruptured sofa cushions were even in the most inferior of hotels, or so the editor would have us believe, accompanied by substantial good food, reasonably clean sleeping accommodation and always with good humoured civility and attention.
When travelling by the Great Southern and Western Railway from Dublin to Kilkenny the intrepid travellers passed by, as they approached Athy, the large mansion known as Bert Hall (as it was then styled). The land around Kilberry was described as “low, wet and boggy” and by all accounts was lying very little above the levels of the River Barrow. A description of Athy in the 1870’s as noted in this English publication will be of interest to modern day readers.
“It was in early times a place of importance as a neutral ground between the territories of Leix and Caellan, which as a matter of course were always at desperate feud, and struggled hard with each other for possession of Athy or Ath-legar, ‘the ford towards the west.’ Subsequent to the English invasion the Lords Justices regarded it with equal jealousy, from its being on the frontier of the Kildare Marches, and a castle, now called White’s Castle, was accordingly erected for its defence by Fitzgerald Earl of Kildare, at the commencement of the 14th century. It is a massive rectangular and embattled building, flanked at each corner by a small square turret, and overlooks the bridge that crosses the Barrow. This bridge bears the curious name of Crom-aboo, from the ancient war-cry of the Fitzgeralds, and is in itself worth notice. A little distance to the North of the town by the river-side is another square fortress, called Woodstock Castle, which, although usually ascribed to the Earl of Pembroke, is considered, with more probability, to have been built in the 13th century by an Earl of Kildare, who received the manor of Woodstock by marriage with the daughter of O’Moore of Leix. It is remarkable for the thickness of its walls, its square mullioned windows, and a round-headed gateway adjoining the tower. Formerly a monastery existed for Crouched Friars and another for Dominicans, both established in the 13th century. There are also the remains of Preston’s Gate leading into the town. Athy is a well-built little place, and is, jointly with Naas, the assize town of Co. Kildare. Its situation in the middle of a rich plain, together with facilities of water and land carriage, commands for it a large agricultural business.
A branch of the Grand Canal from Monasterevan here joins the Barrow, forming the commencement of the Barrow navigation, by which water communication is maintained between Athy, Carlow, Bagenalstown, Borris, New Ross, and the sea.
Kilberry is 3 miles to the North, between the railway and the river, and near Lord Downes’ seat at Bert. On this spot 2 strong castles and an abbey formerly stood, of the latter of which there are slight ruins; and on the other side of the river is Rheban Castle (Righ-ban), “the House of the King,” one of the fortresses of Richard de St. Michael (the same who founded the monastery for Crouched Friars in Athy). But it is probably that he only enlarged or rebuilt it, as not only the name appears to be of an early date, but it is even mentioned by Ptolemy as an inland town of some note.
The Moat of Ardscull, 3½ miles on the road to Kilcullen, is a high mound (now planted), supposed to have been raised to commemorate a desperate battle in the 3rd century between the men of S. Leinster and those of Munster. About 2 miles to the East, by a cross-road, is another historical spot, the Rath of Mullaghmast (Mullach-Maistean, Ir. ‘the Hill of Decapitation’). It was formerly known as ‘the Carmen,’ where, on 16 conical mounds, many of the elders of the province of Leinster held their councils; but it derived its other name in consequence of the act of some English adventurers in the 16th century, who, being resisted in their encroachments by some of the Irish chieftains, invited the latter to a conference on New Year’s Day, fell upon them unawares, and slew them. In consequence of the anathematization of Carmen the place of assembly was removed to the rath at Naas. Visible in the West is the tower of Inch Castle, one of King John’s fortresses, which was the locale of a severe engagement in 1642 between the armies of Ormond and Mountgarrett.”
The visitor today could without difficulty retrace the steps of his predecessor of 175 years ago using the same guide book. The only differences noticeable today arise from the since destroyed mullioned windows of Woodstock Castle and the round-headed gateway of the same Castle removed, as was Preston’s Gate. The stones taken from these medieval buildings were presumably used for building purposes elsewhere in the town.
Irish Railways described in the book as “by no means luxurious” were stated to have carriages which were antiquated and occasionally ragged. The railway stations themselves were regarded as even more primitive than the carriages, and the Station Masters and their assistants throughout provincial Ireland were regarded as “curiously unsophisticated although imbued with genuine civility and eagerness to render the best possible service.”
Where the railways had not yet penetrated, transport was provided by coaches or public cars. Here the editor offered advice to his readers as to how best to travel on an Irish outside car.
“Ascertain which way the wind is blowing, if the weather is cold or likely to be bad and choose your side accordingly … Aprons are provided in the car, at the same time a private waterproof apron is a great convenience and added to which the traveller should obtain a strap by which he can buckle himself to the seat during night journeys and thus go safely to sleep without fear of being jerked forward”.
Irish Hotels with some exceptions were regarded as inferior to those of England, Scotland or the continent. One of the features of most Irish Hotels, even in the 1870’s, was the exaulted position occupied by “the boots”. He generally was to be found in provincial town hotels, and almost always was a native of the district who could direct you to all the best eating and drinking houses within the area. The broken bells, ragged wallpaper and carpets and ruptured sofa cushions were even in the most inferior of hotels, or so the editor would have us believe, accompanied by substantial good food, reasonably clean sleeping accommodation and always with good humoured civility and attention.
When travelling by the Great Southern and Western Railway from Dublin to Kilkenny the intrepid travellers passed by, as they approached Athy, the large mansion known as Bert Hall (as it was then styled). The land around Kilberry was described as “low, wet and boggy” and by all accounts was lying very little above the levels of the River Barrow. A description of Athy in the 1870’s as noted in this English publication will be of interest to modern day readers.
“It was in early times a place of importance as a neutral ground between the territories of Leix and Caellan, which as a matter of course were always at desperate feud, and struggled hard with each other for possession of Athy or Ath-legar, ‘the ford towards the west.’ Subsequent to the English invasion the Lords Justices regarded it with equal jealousy, from its being on the frontier of the Kildare Marches, and a castle, now called White’s Castle, was accordingly erected for its defence by Fitzgerald Earl of Kildare, at the commencement of the 14th century. It is a massive rectangular and embattled building, flanked at each corner by a small square turret, and overlooks the bridge that crosses the Barrow. This bridge bears the curious name of Crom-aboo, from the ancient war-cry of the Fitzgeralds, and is in itself worth notice. A little distance to the North of the town by the river-side is another square fortress, called Woodstock Castle, which, although usually ascribed to the Earl of Pembroke, is considered, with more probability, to have been built in the 13th century by an Earl of Kildare, who received the manor of Woodstock by marriage with the daughter of O’Moore of Leix. It is remarkable for the thickness of its walls, its square mullioned windows, and a round-headed gateway adjoining the tower. Formerly a monastery existed for Crouched Friars and another for Dominicans, both established in the 13th century. There are also the remains of Preston’s Gate leading into the town. Athy is a well-built little place, and is, jointly with Naas, the assize town of Co. Kildare. Its situation in the middle of a rich plain, together with facilities of water and land carriage, commands for it a large agricultural business.
A branch of the Grand Canal from Monasterevan here joins the Barrow, forming the commencement of the Barrow navigation, by which water communication is maintained between Athy, Carlow, Bagenalstown, Borris, New Ross, and the sea.
Kilberry is 3 miles to the North, between the railway and the river, and near Lord Downes’ seat at Bert. On this spot 2 strong castles and an abbey formerly stood, of the latter of which there are slight ruins; and on the other side of the river is Rheban Castle (Righ-ban), “the House of the King,” one of the fortresses of Richard de St. Michael (the same who founded the monastery for Crouched Friars in Athy). But it is probably that he only enlarged or rebuilt it, as not only the name appears to be of an early date, but it is even mentioned by Ptolemy as an inland town of some note.
The Moat of Ardscull, 3½ miles on the road to Kilcullen, is a high mound (now planted), supposed to have been raised to commemorate a desperate battle in the 3rd century between the men of S. Leinster and those of Munster. About 2 miles to the East, by a cross-road, is another historical spot, the Rath of Mullaghmast (Mullach-Maistean, Ir. ‘the Hill of Decapitation’). It was formerly known as ‘the Carmen,’ where, on 16 conical mounds, many of the elders of the province of Leinster held their councils; but it derived its other name in consequence of the act of some English adventurers in the 16th century, who, being resisted in their encroachments by some of the Irish chieftains, invited the latter to a conference on New Year’s Day, fell upon them unawares, and slew them. In consequence of the anathematization of Carmen the place of assembly was removed to the rath at Naas. Visible in the West is the tower of Inch Castle, one of King John’s fortresses, which was the locale of a severe engagement in 1642 between the armies of Ormond and Mountgarrett.”
The visitor today could without difficulty retrace the steps of his predecessor of 175 years ago using the same guide book. The only differences noticeable today arise from the since destroyed mullioned windows of Woodstock Castle and the round-headed gateway of the same Castle removed, as was Preston’s Gate. The stones taken from these medieval buildings were presumably used for building purposes elsewhere in the town.
Thursday, November 2, 2000
Book Launch
I was overwhelmed by the response to the book launch last Thursday. There was such a large attendance, I was afraid the library authorities might ban similar events from using their facilities again. Thanks to everybody who attended on the night. It was for me a memorable occasion made even more memorable by the people who came out in support. It all goes to prove that there is enormous interest in local history. This interest is growing all the time and in the case of Athy, no doubt indicates a growing sense of civic pride in the town which has taken a number of knocks over the years.
It was while looking through the book that I realised how many of the good people I had interviewed in the early years of Eye on the Past have passed away. Paddy Keenan, a delightful man, Brother Brett, a generous teacher and Sean MacFheorais, gaelic poet and brother of Joe Bermingham were some of the people who appeared in the early articles. Hester May, that wonderful old lady who had packed into her early life associations with the men and women who across the stage of Irish, Rebellion and Politics was another. Stephen Bolger and Tosh Doyle were two local men who lived into old age and shared with me their experiences of life in Athy of years gone by. So too did Mary Carr of Quarry Farm who lived for a while in the gate lodge of the house where I am now writing this piece. Jack MacKenna, father of John who launched the book last week was the subject of an Eye on the Past when he recounted for me many of the forgotten stories of Republican activity in South Kildare during the War of Independence. Jack Kelly, musician and Jack Murphy a worker from the halycon days of Duthie Larges spoke to me of the lives of the Athy people they grew up with and knew so many years ago. Michael Moore, shop keeper and bee enthusiast, provided me with another insight into the towns past with his detailed knowledge of the early years of the South Kildare Beekeepers Association. Finally there was Julia Mahon whom I did not interview but wrote about after she passed away. Julia was the touchstone for many local Athy people and embodying as she did so much of what it is that makes Athy not only a place in which we all live out our lives but also the place which embraces and nurtures our hopes and our ambitions. Athy is our place and as John MacKenna said in his eloquent and much appreciated launch address, “all lives are of consequence - and poverty and anonymity, a rural way of life or indeed a quietness does not amount to a lack of consequence”.
The first article in the new book was on the Sisters of Mercy and I was delighted to meet during the night of the launch several members of the local Sisters of Mercy Community. I suppose the word “community” is still appropriate despite the emergence from the Convent life of the Sisters of Mercy who now live within the community they served for so long. Sister Paul was not able to be at the launch and sent me a letter beforehand with her good wishes as did Sr. Dominic of St. Vincent’s. It’s quite extraordinary the affection with which the Sisters of Mercy are held by the local people but indeed it is quite understandable why it should be so. Lives devoted to the service of a local people over generations creates its own reservoir of gratitude and the people of Athy have never, and will never, forget the debt owed to the Sisters of Mercy.
For the second time, Noreen Ryan and Georgina O’Neill attended the book launch. On the first occasion, the doors of the Town Hall stoutly resisted their attempts to enter but neither Noreen or Georgina were to know that the launch first scheduled for last September had been postponed. It was good to see both of them back again in company with so many others of their generation whose love for and knowledge of the town and its people is founded on long lives spent in the South Kildare town on the Marches of Kildare.
Derek Tynan, son of the former owner of the Leinster Arms Hotel and now one of the leading Architects in this country was a surprise attender. His mother is living in Beechgrove and in the past kindly sent me on some details of a local involvement in the design of the badge for the Garda Siochana. The sharing of information is an essential element of piecing together the towns story and a recent example of that was the kind lady who brought to my attention the forgotten story of “The Knights of the Plough”. If you knew anything about this organisation founded by a local man nearly sixty years ago, I would welcome hearing from you. And incidentally, it was not J. J. Bergin the founder of the Ploughing Association who set up the Knights of the Plough.
During the Book Launch, an unexpected surprise was the presentation made by Tommy Keegan. I have to say that Tommy’s kind gesture was a remarkable display of friendship and generosity and one which I much appreciated. The Master of Ceremony for the night was a man who has taken over the mantle of the late M.G. Nolan and with whom I have shared many experiences over the last forty years. Frank English was himself the subject of an Eye on the Past in December 1993 when his colleagues on the local Urban Council celebrated his 26 years on that Council. Since then, he has clocked up another seven years making his tenure one which threatens to surpass the record of Thomas Plewman who was a Town Commissioner and later an Urban Councillor between 1866 and 1920. Only another 21 years to go Frank!. Frank’s kind words on the night were much appreciated and I particularly liked the story of the Athy man returning to Australia who asked for the Nationalist to be sent to them so they could read “Taaffe’s Article”.
Fiona and Liam Rainsford of Data Print deserve special thanks for their courteous help in bringing out the book. They have done a good job and I am particularly pleased that a local printer has been involved in producing this book of local reminiscences. Shaw’s sponsored the wine reception and as one of the oldest businesses in Athy, it was appropriate, yet generous of them to be associated with the venture in this way.
So many people helped in so many ways over the years that inevitably I could not hope to name all of them in this short piece. Suffice to say that I thank everyone who has contributed in any way to the Eye on the Past articles and to the subsequent book, Eye on Athy’s Past. I will leave the last word to John MacKenna, the local writer whose talents have earned him an audience beyond the confines of the County and whose eloquent speech at the Book Launch was as ever generous and kind.
“The lives recovered and recounted in the book are the lives of ordinary people. Sometimes that phrase is thrown around as though the ordinary couldn’t possibly be of significance. But as this book proves --- everyone has a story to tell. Everyone has a sorrow to bear or a joy to celebrate”.
I hope that together we can continue to give voice to the lives of the local people for many years to come.
It was while looking through the book that I realised how many of the good people I had interviewed in the early years of Eye on the Past have passed away. Paddy Keenan, a delightful man, Brother Brett, a generous teacher and Sean MacFheorais, gaelic poet and brother of Joe Bermingham were some of the people who appeared in the early articles. Hester May, that wonderful old lady who had packed into her early life associations with the men and women who across the stage of Irish, Rebellion and Politics was another. Stephen Bolger and Tosh Doyle were two local men who lived into old age and shared with me their experiences of life in Athy of years gone by. So too did Mary Carr of Quarry Farm who lived for a while in the gate lodge of the house where I am now writing this piece. Jack MacKenna, father of John who launched the book last week was the subject of an Eye on the Past when he recounted for me many of the forgotten stories of Republican activity in South Kildare during the War of Independence. Jack Kelly, musician and Jack Murphy a worker from the halycon days of Duthie Larges spoke to me of the lives of the Athy people they grew up with and knew so many years ago. Michael Moore, shop keeper and bee enthusiast, provided me with another insight into the towns past with his detailed knowledge of the early years of the South Kildare Beekeepers Association. Finally there was Julia Mahon whom I did not interview but wrote about after she passed away. Julia was the touchstone for many local Athy people and embodying as she did so much of what it is that makes Athy not only a place in which we all live out our lives but also the place which embraces and nurtures our hopes and our ambitions. Athy is our place and as John MacKenna said in his eloquent and much appreciated launch address, “all lives are of consequence - and poverty and anonymity, a rural way of life or indeed a quietness does not amount to a lack of consequence”.
The first article in the new book was on the Sisters of Mercy and I was delighted to meet during the night of the launch several members of the local Sisters of Mercy Community. I suppose the word “community” is still appropriate despite the emergence from the Convent life of the Sisters of Mercy who now live within the community they served for so long. Sister Paul was not able to be at the launch and sent me a letter beforehand with her good wishes as did Sr. Dominic of St. Vincent’s. It’s quite extraordinary the affection with which the Sisters of Mercy are held by the local people but indeed it is quite understandable why it should be so. Lives devoted to the service of a local people over generations creates its own reservoir of gratitude and the people of Athy have never, and will never, forget the debt owed to the Sisters of Mercy.
For the second time, Noreen Ryan and Georgina O’Neill attended the book launch. On the first occasion, the doors of the Town Hall stoutly resisted their attempts to enter but neither Noreen or Georgina were to know that the launch first scheduled for last September had been postponed. It was good to see both of them back again in company with so many others of their generation whose love for and knowledge of the town and its people is founded on long lives spent in the South Kildare town on the Marches of Kildare.
Derek Tynan, son of the former owner of the Leinster Arms Hotel and now one of the leading Architects in this country was a surprise attender. His mother is living in Beechgrove and in the past kindly sent me on some details of a local involvement in the design of the badge for the Garda Siochana. The sharing of information is an essential element of piecing together the towns story and a recent example of that was the kind lady who brought to my attention the forgotten story of “The Knights of the Plough”. If you knew anything about this organisation founded by a local man nearly sixty years ago, I would welcome hearing from you. And incidentally, it was not J. J. Bergin the founder of the Ploughing Association who set up the Knights of the Plough.
During the Book Launch, an unexpected surprise was the presentation made by Tommy Keegan. I have to say that Tommy’s kind gesture was a remarkable display of friendship and generosity and one which I much appreciated. The Master of Ceremony for the night was a man who has taken over the mantle of the late M.G. Nolan and with whom I have shared many experiences over the last forty years. Frank English was himself the subject of an Eye on the Past in December 1993 when his colleagues on the local Urban Council celebrated his 26 years on that Council. Since then, he has clocked up another seven years making his tenure one which threatens to surpass the record of Thomas Plewman who was a Town Commissioner and later an Urban Councillor between 1866 and 1920. Only another 21 years to go Frank!. Frank’s kind words on the night were much appreciated and I particularly liked the story of the Athy man returning to Australia who asked for the Nationalist to be sent to them so they could read “Taaffe’s Article”.
Fiona and Liam Rainsford of Data Print deserve special thanks for their courteous help in bringing out the book. They have done a good job and I am particularly pleased that a local printer has been involved in producing this book of local reminiscences. Shaw’s sponsored the wine reception and as one of the oldest businesses in Athy, it was appropriate, yet generous of them to be associated with the venture in this way.
So many people helped in so many ways over the years that inevitably I could not hope to name all of them in this short piece. Suffice to say that I thank everyone who has contributed in any way to the Eye on the Past articles and to the subsequent book, Eye on Athy’s Past. I will leave the last word to John MacKenna, the local writer whose talents have earned him an audience beyond the confines of the County and whose eloquent speech at the Book Launch was as ever generous and kind.
“The lives recovered and recounted in the book are the lives of ordinary people. Sometimes that phrase is thrown around as though the ordinary couldn’t possibly be of significance. But as this book proves --- everyone has a story to tell. Everyone has a sorrow to bear or a joy to celebrate”.
I hope that together we can continue to give voice to the lives of the local people for many years to come.
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