The Foresters building fronting Church Street would not be so easy to recognise today as the ground floor is part of the Chanapa Thai restaurant east of the old Shambles.
In March 2024 we published two articles in this series by Aidan Doyle marking the 125th anniversary of the founding of the Tullamore branch of the Irish National Foresters (I.N.F) and the 100th anniversary of the opening of its new cinema in Market Square. As was noted in a Midland Tribune article forty years ago[1] the Irish National Foresters Benefit Society is an organisation about which most people know very little about although the Tullamore (Conn of the Hundred Battles) branch has been part and parcel of the town since 1899. The I.N.F. may be the fourth oldest organisation in Tullamore after the Freemasons (1759), GAA Tullamore (1888) and the Tullamore Golf Club of 1895-6.
The home of the club in the early years was the CYMS , later called St Mary’s Hall in Thomas/Benburb Street. By 1903 Tullamore I.N.F had its own building on part of the harbour site at the junction of Harbour Street and Henry/O’Carroll Street. The new building worked well for four years but things went badly against them with a fire in the clubhouse in Harbour Street in July 1907: ‘The Tullamore blaze destroyed what was probably one of the finest Forester Halls in the provinces. And what makes the occurrence all the more lamentable is the fact that it had been built only four years.’
The Foresters Hall was soon rebuilt and appears to have been ready for use in the autumn of 1907 as James O’Brien’s Irish Dramatic Company was scheduled to reopen the hall. The new hall cost £600 and had four extra rooms. A new billiard table as the old one (that had cost 100 guineas) was destroyed in the fire.[2] The hall was the location for dancing events and also for boxing. By 1910 entertainment would include a dramatic presentation on the life of Lord Walter FitzGerald and ceilidh dancing.
In politics the Foresters were middle of the road and willing to accommodate all sides in their hall for presumably a fee. Among the most successful ventures of the Tullamore branch was the establishment of a film theatre in early 1914. The fact that some of their members were councillors helped to block any newcomers in regard to securing a cinema licence.[3]
In the meantime, the Foresters continued its cinema programme with the all the leading films of the period and including a showing of a film of the funeral of Thomas Ashe in October 1917.[4] The continuing pluralist approach of the Foresters was shown in 1918 with Countess Markievicz and Maud Gonne on a visit to Tullamore for the performance of a play by T. M. Russel. This was followed soon after by a lecture by barrister Henry Hanna on the Pals of Suvla Bay. In April it was the anti-conscription meeting held outside the Foresters Hall. In October the film series Patria was shown to packed houses ‘with musical selections by the Murphy orchestra.[5]
The war was barely over when the Spanish ‘flu arrived causing death, the closing of schools and the cinema.[6] By February 1919 it was largely back to normal and the Foresters had one of its largest attendances in years with 240 present.[7] A few weeks later it was the turn of Fr Michael O’Flanagan, vice-president of Sinn Féin, to speak in the hall, standing in for Mrs Sheehy Skeffington. The talk was under the auspices of the Gaelic League. O’Flanagan got a rousing reception.[8] It was a difficult one for the Foresters as they had been warned that the Foresters Hall committee would be held responsible for any seditious utterances and initially refused to make the hall available unless undertakings were given. Fr O’Flanagan refused and it was the threat of forcible entry that allowed the meeting to proceed. This came about as large numbers were waiting to gain admission to the locked hall including prominent clergy such as the republican Fr Burbage of Geashill. Fr Burbage when asked to sing in the concert said he would only sing a song lest should catastrophe befall them – alluding to the three policemen present including Sergeant Cronin (he was shot and killed nearby on 31 October 1920).[9]
The War of Independence was more earnestly fought by 1920 with the burning of barracks and the attempted burning of Clara barracks defeated. The killing of Sergeant Cronin in Henry Street, Tullamore, only a stone’s throw from the Foresters Hall, on 31 October was said to be in retaliation for the death on 25 October of Sinn Féin lord mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney. Young Kevin Barry was executed on the same morning as Sgt Cronin died. And so the cycle of violence, which apparently meant so little to war-hardened Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, would have its local as well as its national impact far into the future. In Tullamore the Cronin killing was long remembered for the reason that it was largely an isolated incident in the War of Independence in Offaly and the fact that members of Sergeant Cronin’s family were prominent in Tullamore in the 1950s and 1960s, in particular, his son Archbishop Patrick Cronin and his daughter Peggy who worked for many years in Hoey & Denning, Solicitors.[10] It was also remembered as the night that the Black and Tans burned the Foresters Hall.
After the news of the shooting many people in Tullamore fled their homes. The Foresters’ Hall was burned on the same night as were the shops of well-known Sinn Féin sympathisers – Mrs Teresa Wyer (chair of the board of guardians) who had a pub in Church Street, O’Brennan’s of Church Street had a news agency and the hairdressing establishment of James Clarke in William/Columcille Street. James O’Connor, the town councillor and president of the local branch of the Transport Union, was resident in Mrs Heavy’s in Harbour Street and having been seized by the police was lucky to escape. Curfew was imposed in Tullamore during darkness and searchlights were in operation. Black and Tans behaved in lawless fashion in many of the midland towns, even Birr much to the surprise of residents there.
The Foresters then moved to Market Square to a premises later used as a snooker hall in the 1980s. In 1922 the branch successfully applied for compensation for the loss of their hall to the British government. The claim was for £15,000 and it was settled quickly at £13,00 by a Mr MacAuley, the assessor on behalf of the Shaw Commission and the Foresters’ solicitor Kearney of Conway & Kearney.[11]
During that year some of the compensation money was invested in the formation of the “Tullamore Co-Operative Society” and the commencement of the co-operative bakery. The bakery was formed on the initiative of the late James O’Connor Snr. Who joined the I.N.F. in 1912 and the bakery was originally housed in premises owned by the O’Connor family. The formation followed a strike in local bakeries. The Co-Op then purchased a site where James Morris and Sons furniture store later stood (now Chanape Thai) and the bakery was transferred there. The business, however, was short lived and ran into difficulties. It closed in 1923. As the major shareholder in the property the Irish National Foresters acquired the property. The committee immediately set about building a dance hall, club rooms and a cinema adjoining Market Lane and Market Square.[12] It was an interesting sequel. The Charleville agent, E. H. Browne, would not have been well disposed to Sinn Féin but may have felt it wiser to make this last piece of land of the Charleville estate in the town (part of the Shambles site) available ‘keep in’ with the new authority in the country. The reason it was free arose from the locating of the meat market here in 1820 on the site of the now vacated Protestant church of 1726 (see an earlier blog).
The Foresters acquired additional land from Lady Emily Howard Bury via her agent in 1922-3. The site was also part of the former Shambles which had been opened as a food and meat market off the Market Square in 1820. The new complex cost the Foresters close on £7,000 in all according to one source.[13] Alesburys of Edenderry were responsible for the new cinema seating while the design was that of T.F. McNamara who had taken over as architect of the new Catholic church (completed in 1906) from William Hague. The engineer was William Holohan, the town surveyor in Tullamore, and the builders were Duffy Brothers, Tullamore.[14]
The opening night on 15 March 1924 featuring a Senor Augusta Martini with songs from Italian opera, local contributions and a small orchestra.[15] The Foresters continued to run dances into the 1930s. That decade was a colder climate than back in 1912. It was post the Juries Act of 1927 and the dancing restrictions of the same year. When solicitor Joe Kearney was seeking the renewal of the Foresters’ dance licence in 1935 Judge Austin O’Donoghue wanted to know were ladies able to access the bar via a cloakroom. Kearney said no, that ladies did not access the bar, but for the garda superintendent helping out it might have proved even more difficult to get the renewal. The judge granted the licence to allow six dances in the year to 2 a.m. and a weekly dance to 11 p.m., no one under 18 or showing signs of drink to be admitted.[16]
It is said that the network of branches of the Foresters began to crumble in the late 1920s. Tullamore branch survived although membership declined. The new cinema was formally opened on 15 March 1924 but within six years the Foresters had leased the property to Messrs Mahon and Cloonan who called the place the Grand Central Cinema and went on to open a second cinema in High St (the Ritz) in 1946.[17] The opening season of the Grand Central included the first ‘Talkie’ seen in Tullamore in 1930.[18] Both cinemas were sold in the early 1980s. In the mid- 1980s the Grand Central was converted to use as a bar and restaurant, known in recent times as Characters and Fergie’s since about the year 1995.
The Foresters continued to march on St Patrick’s Day, but it is nothing like it was in that glorious first twenty-five years. In that period it fully embraced the innovations in social and business life very much associated with the first two decades of the twentieth century. That said it was a second home to Tullamore stalwarts right up to the 1980s when the first and second generation of members had passed on. These were the people who had secure jobs in Williams, Egan, the bacon factory perhaps Salts. All that changed too in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s.
The Tullamore Foresters is the last such club in the Republic of Ireland and retains some of all the space above Chanapa Thai. Alas, architect McNamara’s front to Church St of 1923-24 was destroyed in the 1950s for the Morris hardware shop. Changes were made to the exterior facing Market Square including the loss of the ironwork. Now that front to Church Street (see image) would be very attractive for Chanapa Thai today when contrasted with two large shop windows of the 1950s. The old Foresters’ cinema (to Market Square) was also suggested as an arts centre but neither the VEC nor the OCC were interested. It proved a difficult decade. The same was to happen to the old Market House in O’Connor Square in 1960 and again in the late 1970s and in 2014. The same is now happening in Durrow Abbey. Such are the vagaries of history and the legacy of missed opportunities. ‘We are where we are’ seems to be an argument for inaction.. None of that was applicable to the old Foresters of 1903 and 1923 – men of vision one and all.[19]
[1] Midland Tribune, 18 Aug. 1984.
[2] Ibid., 28 Sept. 1907.
[3] Tullamore and King’s County Independent, 17 Oct. 1914.
[4] Ibid., 29 Sept. 1917, 6 Oct. 1917.
[5] Ibid., 16 Feb. 1918, 20 Apr. 1918, 12 Oct. 1918.
[6] Ibid., 1 Feb. 1919.
[7] Ibid., 8 Feb. 1919.
[8] Ibid., 22 Feb. 1919.
[9] Ibid.
[10] See earlier blogs in this series at http://www.offalyhistory.com including that of the killing of Sergeant Cronin published on 31 Oct. 1920.
[11] Offaly Independent, 11 Nov. 1922.
[12] Tullamore Tribune, 18 Aug. 1984
[13] Offaly Chronicle, 26 Apr. 1923.
[14] Offaly Independent, 4 Feb. 1922, 18 Nov. 1922, 21 Apr. 1923.
[15] Offaly Independent, 22 Mar. 1924.
[16] Offaly Chronicle, 31 Oct. 1935.
[17] Offaly Independent, 12 Apr. 1930.
[18] Ibid., 26 Apr. 1930.
[19] Most of the Foresters’ material is now in Offaly Archives save some of the earlier minute books now in the National Archives but not as yet catalogued.
Research for this blog was supported by the Heritage Council.
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