In the first two articles in this series we looked at the leasing of the sites in O’Connor Square and who built the houses. Today we look at the timeline and we have added more recent detail on occupiers and uses. There are sixteen properties to cover from the four on the west side to twelve in the main part of the square.
Five of the sixteen houses in O’Connor Square were built in the 1740s and 1750s with the leases granted by Charles, Lord Tullamore, first earl of Charleville from 1758. The earl died at the age of 52 in 1764. Having no direct heir, the town and estate passed first to his sister’s child, John Bury (b. 1725, married Catherine Sadleir of Sopwell Hall in 1761) who succeeded to the Charleville property on 17 February 1764 and died c. 4 August 1764, leaving an only son, Charles William Bury, born 30 June 1764. Bury’s father had inherited the estate when he was only 29 but died within a few months of the inheritance, survived by the boy of five weeks and his wife and guardian of the estate, Catherine Bury née Sadlier.[3] With no power to grant building leases the then Mrs Catherine Bury (Mrs Catherine Prittie from 1766) could do little and not much development took place in Tullamore for twenty years until Charles William Bury’s coming of age in 1785. The entire Charleville estate in King’s County including Tullamore town was surveyed in 1786 and many new leases granted in place of earlier titles. Unfortunately the atlas created for this exercise has not been seen for over sixty years. Very often new leases were granted in 1786 in place of leases where the lives were all dead or maps not satisfactory.
Valuation records from the 1840s
The square had sixteen rated units, but only fourteen head leaseholds with the first dated to 1713 along the High Street (GV 3) and the last of those in the square was granted by Bury in 1786. The market house was built by the landlord, C.W. Bury, and not sublet. The first valuation of 1843 included in the square the four properties on the western side at High Street, but by the time of the printed valuation in 1854 these four premises (Goodbody, O’Carroll, and Deverell) were incorporated in High Street. The 1854 listing can be summarised as: Charleville Square, GV1–12: – Cath Elcoate; Police Barracks; Rich Willis; Rob Whelan; Thos Bartley; Pat Aylward; Henry Manly; Emily Deverell; Austin O’Malley; Chapel of Ease etc in the market house; vacant building in bad repair.
Charleville Square with its twelve ratable properties was among the highest in Tullamore town. The highest was GV 7 the Manly house and brewery with almost four acres of land on the southern side of the Tullamore river in Tanyard Lane and a valuation of £50 on the buildings and £7 on the lands. The lowest valuation was GV 9 with a small frontage and no garden. It was £7. The total valuation of all twelve units including the lands, gardens and all buildings was £216. 10s., of which the buildings amounted to £206. 10s. and the lands to £9. [4] Four of the six houses on the south side of the square were in the region of £18 while GV 3 was just £12 (the Willis property) and GV 6 (Tabuteau and later Pierce) was £25. The three houses on the north side of the square were less than £10 each. GV 6 (the Manly mill and later Tarleton residence came, in at £57.
Table 1: houses erected in Tullamore from 1713 to 1795 in O’Connor Square, Tullamore together with those demolished since 1870.
| Griffith val. No. | Street | Date of construction | Lessee | Remarks |
| GV 1 | High Street (O’Connor Square west) | 1741 | First leased in 1713 by John Moore and Colley Lyons to John Cathorne and sold to Gale who in turn sold to Manly in 1741. | New lease in 1786, Bury to Joseph Manly, £8 per year ground rent 90ft in front. Demolished c. 1995 for new post office and extension to Bridge Centre |
| GV2 | High Street (O’Connor Square west) | 1713 | 1713 John Wheatly or Wm Wheatly, later Jackson, Gale and Gale to Manly 1741. Probably the lessees of 1 and 2 from 1713 were Quakers. New lease of 1 and 2 granted by Bury to Joseph Manly in 1786, annual rent £8, 96 ft in front for no. 1 and for a new house at no 2 55 ft in front. Goodbodys purchased 1 and 2 from Manlys in 1841; occupier in 1843 Anthony Molloy, distiller; Daniel Carroll, pawnbroker, 1854, d. 1884. sold to G.N Walshe in 1930. Later Matty Dunne and Treacey butcher in shop. | New lease in 1786 to Joseph Manly, part of no. 1. May have been occupied by a Wm Kershaw in the 1740s. Demolished 1995 for new post office and extension to Bridge Centre. The leases of 1786 were a tidy up operation by the town’s new landlord Charles William Bury, who succeeded as a minor just five weeks old in 1764 on the death of his father and granduncle Charles Moore, first earl of Charleville who died in the same year. |
| GV 3 | High Street (O’Connor Square west) | 1713 (first lease) | Lease of 1713 to Richard Brennan, a tobacco spinner | New lease of 1786 to Joseph Thornburgh. Wm Thornburgh was a nephew of Brennan. Now Brewery Tap. See 1763 list of tenants. Deverell 1830-66 for brewery, P & H Egan, 1866-1968. |
| GV 4 | High Street (O’Connor Square west) | 1744 | Lord Tullamoore to Richard Moore | The house formerly lived in by Luke Jones. Both nos GV 4 and 5 were still in the occupation of the Molloy family in the late 1850s, but the young barrister, Constantine Molloy, had taken over from his mother and held the property until 1884. Post 1900 until 1920 it was the Poole shop and thereafter G.N. Walshe shop to c. 2000. Vacant |
| GV 1, 2 | O’Connor Square | 1787 | Charles W. Bury to Joseph Flanagan, distiller, 999 year lease in 1786, with a footage to the front of High street and O’Connor Square of 132 ft | This is the block from GV 49 High Street to GV 1 and 2 O’Connor Square south. In June 1900 it became the Rafter drapery and carried on until 1939, the Conroy and later Ginnelly, now the tourist office, stationery and betting. Pyke hardware, 1893-98. Post office 1900 -09 McNeill grocery 1926-69; Barry Keegan, 1969-2001. |
| GV 3 | O’Connor Square south | 1743 | Matthew Moore, a merchant. In 1743 Lord Tullamore demised by way of long lease to Matthew Moore, a merchant, of Tullamore, the house adjoining wherein Edward Price the younger then lived, together with a plot of ground part of Lord Tullamoore’s old garden, at a yearly rent of £2 and £1 renewal fine,.[1] | No new lease in 1786. Richard Willis, printer 1830-86. Michael Killeavy and later Abraham Colton; Pauline Colton – 1985. Now GCF Insurance. No new lease in 1786 |
| GV 4 | O’Connor Square south | 1752 | Lord Tullamoore to John Finnamore at £2 per year. The site was 41 ft in front and 178 ft from front to rear. The 1752 grant included a plot of land which was said to include some of Lord Tullamoore’s old garden | In 1843 Thomas O’Flanagan occupied the house and in 1854 Robert Whelan, a Tullamore solicitor. Rebuilt for new post office 1909-96, vacant since 2009. |
| GV 5 | O’Connor Square south | 1752 | Revd Philip Dixon at £2 per year | No new lease in 1786. The southern side of square was described as New Street in the 1750s. In 1843 the house was occupied by Richard Daly a lawyer and in 1854 by a Mr Bartley who held from the Revd Knox Maunsell.[2] Patick Egan of the Bridge St firm was the owner and occupier of GV 5 by 1880 having taken over from John P. Aylward. James Hayes, the Tullamore hotelier was the occupier in 1901. He had moved to GV 43 in High Street by 1911 and died in 1913. His successor by 1911 in O’Connor Square was a school inspector James Moore Bradshaw. Now the Phoenix Bar. No new lease in 1786 |
| GV 6 | O’Connor Square south | 1786 | Lease to Gideon Tabuteau for a yearly rent of £2. It was 50 ft in front and adjoined Revd Philip Dixon’s house, together with the little garden or hay yard formerly held by the late Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Crow, in all 1 rd 13 perches. The little yard provided an access to Tanyard Lane | A lease that led to the completion of the square on the southern side at the entrance to Tanyard Lane. Now or recently The Square cafe |
| GV 7 and 8 | O’Connor Square east | 1750 | Lease to Thomas Wilson, the Younger, clothier, almost three acres plus at £6 after seven years, and town parks 41 acres at 8s. per acre GV 8 | The original house was part of the Wilson property and may have been built at the same time as the original house at no. 7 which would date it to 1750 or earlier In 1843, the property was owned by Henry Manly and occupied by Emily Deverell in that year and in 1854 as a private dwelling. The old house affectionately remembered as Longworth’s or Miss Mooney’s was in the late nineteenth century a post office operated by Hugh Love and later a house for lodgers in the 1950s and 1960s operated by a Miss Mooney. Now Library and PTSB |
| GV 9 and 10 | O’Connor Square north | 1786-93 | 1786, Bury to John Scott of Mountmellick | A site for two houses, 55 ft in front £4. Sold to Peter Turpin in 1803 and to Thomas Acres in 1809. Let by Acres Estate for many years. Now Fahey and Farrell |
| GV 11 | O’Connor Square north | 1789 | The market house, built and owned by the landlord. Sold in 1960 for café use and having been a bank c 1980-2010 back to café. From about 1823 the market house at first floor level was adapted for Sunday evening services for the Church of Ireland parishioners and may also have been used as a courtroom for quarter sessions until the completion of the new courthouse at Charleville Street/Cormac Street in 1835. From 1821 until after the 1900s part of the formerly open ground floor of the market house was used by the Tullamore Charitable Loan Fund Society or bank, a forerunner of the credit union. The remaining part was used by the YMCA. Now Eddie Rocket | |
| GV 12 | O’Connor Square north | 1787 | Bury to Ridley. Goodbody warehouse, 1871-1929. | A house was erected on this site which In 1843 a valuer for the primary valuation reported that the Ridley house at 12 O’Connor Square was owned by a niece of Margaret Ridley, a Miss Printer, and to be let at £20 a year, but was ‘shut up and going out of repair’. Demolished in 1870 and replaced with the ‘brick building’. Part of BOI since 1979. |
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