offalyhistoryblog

Much has been written about the changing face of Offaly towns in the 1900-23 period and the same can be said for the period from the mid-1990s to 2007. For towns such as Tullamore the recession lasted up to about 2017 and since then building has improved. The former Tea/ ‘Tay’ Lane, later called O’Connell St (from Stella Press to the canal bank), saw change in the 1950s with the demolition of the old Tea Lane houses. Next came the new wine warehouse for D.E. Williams (now Offaly History Centre, also in the early 1950s), followed by the new Irish Mist warehouses in the early 1970s and early 1980s. This was followed in 1982 by the opening of the  Quinnsworth supermarket on part of the Williams ‘yard’ behind the head office of that company. Three years later, in 1985 the Irish Mist bottling facility was sold to C&C and the business transferred to Clonmel with the loss of up to 75 local jobs. Urban renewal tax relief in the late 1980s and early 1990s saw two blocks built close to the lane and off Kilbride Street by M/s Forrestal and Walsh for use as shops and apartments. (Chipland, florist etc).

In a departure from the Gibney plan the town council sold sites in nearby St Kyran Street for offices and apartments as part of the urban renewal scheme. About 1994 the large carpark was developed by the council from lands that had been set aside for the Kilbride park and playground. The year 1995 saw the conversion of the 1929 large Williams oats store to a department store by Tom McNamara.  By 2007 the entire area was sold to an investment company for about €50 million with full planning for a supermarket and shops granted in 2009. Alas it was too late as the recession was developing and Ireland (outside of Dublin) did not recover for up to ten years. It was a case of ten years of plenty (the Tiger Years) followed by  ten desperately lean years. Covid came next in 2020—21 and it was 2022–3 before the kettle was on the boil again in Tea Lane. Aldi demolished the Irish Mist warehouses and, at  a cost of perhaps €1 million. the old 1929 store and former Texas shop that had been opened to great fanfare in 1995.

Aldi for its new shopping in the former Tea Lane/O’Connell Street chose a single storey building with no residential content, a café and over 100 car spaces, at a total investment of perhaps €20 million. It is a clean lines bland building to the design of the German supermarket leader whose first shop in Tullamore in 2000 kickstarted the move from the Tullamore town centre. This is a feature now of so many Irish towns. A few such as Cavan town and Wexford have bucked the trend. Now this second Aldi store brings shopping back into Tullamore town with Dunnes, Lidl and Aldi all having second stores in the town centre.

Given the planning refusal for the high-rise development in the remaining part of the former Williams Tesco Texas site it looks as if the old Quinnsworth store may yet be adapted as a discount warehouse. The old Tea Lane/O’Connell Street is likely to remain a parking area for many years to come, but commercial life is coming back to the area after a gap of twenty years since Tesco moved out to Cloncollog.

Benchmarks for Tea Lane/O’Connell Street, 1794-2024

Researching the story of Tea Lane was assisted by benchmarks occurring over its 160 years of housing and 220 years of development as follows:

1. The first is the grant of the lease for building in 1794 – 200 years ago.
2. Second, the census return of 1821,
3. Third, the valuation records of the 1840s and 1850s
4. The fourth is the unique source in Tullamore town of the sale of Tea Lane in the Encumbered Estates Court in 1856.
5. The long and uneventful second half of the nineteenth century is brought to a close with the review provided by the first surviving census for Tullamore of 1901 and its companion of 1911.
6. The clearance of the street in the 1950s can be seen in the context of the Gibney plan for the Kilbride Street area and the new housing before and after the Second World War. This was a very grand planning statement commissioned by the council from Frank Gibney in 1950. Had it been complied with we would now be living in a model town. Memories of Tay Lane have been gathered from Josephine Warren by Cecilia Warren and were published on Offalyhistoryblog (see on www.offalyhistory.com and on offalyhistoryblog.
7. The stop-go policies for the area around Tea Lane and ‘The Quarry’ (between Kilbride Street and the canal) since then reflect public ownership and changing priorities since the 1950s, highlighted in the last fifty years with the playground, car park, through road from Columcille Street and an arts centre site proposal until revoked in 2015.
8. Mention should be made of the acquisition of the former Five Star supermarket lands and the Irish Mist property over the period from 1998 to 2007 by property developers for a planned supermarket and shops. This proposal on which perhaps €55 million was spent collapsed with the recession from 2008 and the site lay dormant and derelict until 2023 when half of the site was acquired by Aldi and other half is awaiting fresh development proposals following rejection by the local authority and the Planning Board of the first application.
9. The latest phase was the opening of an Aldi supermarket on the site of Irish Mist Liqueur warehouses on 21 November 2024. The principal access to this development is via Tea Lane/O’Connell Street.