We have looked at the houses in Cormac Street and will soon follow up with the jail and courthouse reviews. In this article we want to look at the families of Cormac Street in the early 1900s. In the c. 41 residences in the street in 1901 were about 326 people. About 250 were RC and about 60 were C of I and Others. It was a street of contrasts with overall good housing on the main street, poor housing in Wellington Barracks and sixty and upwards in the prison. Of the total number in 1901 98 were in the prison, 85 of whom were confined there and 13 were staff living in the building There were four prison officer families in the jail lawn houses: Alexander Spence (2 people in the house – himself as a widower and his daughter), a prison officer; Michael Curtin (8 in the house), a prison warder; James Creane (11 in the house, including 9 children), a prison warder; Alexander McCullagh, prison warder (2 in the house).
The houses on the street were as to 11 in the first class with the rest in the second class. The highest concentration of 1st class houses was on the terrace on the east side of the street bookended by Dr Ridley and William Adams (GV 3 to GV 14 as per maps in earlier blogs). There were no 3rd or 4th class houses on the street, but is should be remembered that the two-room cottages in Wellington Barracks (later Coleman’s Place Lane) were all described as being in the second class.
In this article we are looking at the houses from the courthouse to the junction with O’Moore Street. The area was residential but with the two big public buildings – the jail and the courthouse, and across from the courthouse was low-lying land used for farming purposes and in the corner the old town graveyard. For a decade or so from the mid-1830s two of the houses were transformed into a hotel to serve the courthouse and assizes among others. It was in house GV 13 that Benajamin Woodward was born in 1816 and described as ‘the most celebrated and original architect of nineteenth-century Ireland, designing over sixty buildings in the last twelve years of his life.’ We start with no. 14, the three-storey over basement house on the corner with the two faces – one to O’Moore Street and one to Cormac Street. The houses are numbered in Griffith’s printed valuation of 1854 (see image) as being numbers 3 to 14 and were built on the Windmill Hill site that Thomas Acres obtained from Charles William Bury, the town’s landlord, in 1795, supplemented in the late 1830s with land for the two big houses beside the courthouse.
What we construct and what we take down is often the most significant indicator of the nature and health of our society. Also, the choice of an aesthetic style for a new building tells us much about the values of its proposer. Government or religious institutions will seek to emphasise their role and power by providing substantial and prominent structures, often using ancient architectural styles to suggest their continuity and permanence. Successful businesses or go-ahead institutions will express their vitality and cosmopolitanism in a more modern manner. Home builders may wish to attract respect for their taste and sophistication.
The Grand Canal was completed to the River Shannon in 1804, 220 years ago. By 1864 passenger traffic was finished and commercial by 1960. Cruise traffic was only in its infancy and when this article was written 45 years ago things were bleak. In looking at the building of the Grand Canal from Tullamore to Shannon Harbour, we need to look at a piece written in the Irish Times by Sean Olson with photographs by Pat Langan, which was published on Thursday, 7 June 1979 in the Irish Times. The newspaper had been a good supporter of keeping the canal open in the 1960s when it was under threat from Dublin Corporation.
Things have improved so much in recent years with the towpaths now the focus of attention to promote walking and cycling. Today 23 August see the launch of an excellent study of the canal system as illustrated. Then on Saturday evening and Sunday there are two events from Waterways Ireland to be held in the Offaly History Centre Exhibition Hall beside the canal at Bury Quay (neighbour to Old Warehouse Bar and Restaurant), as illustrated.
Olson is worth reproducing to remind us that we do not want to go back there and was an excellent record of its time. Also worth mentioning is our over 60 blog articles on the Grand Canal available as blogs at http://www.offalyhistory.com. All free to read and download.
‘If the steps of the ruined canalside hotel at Shannon Harbour, Co. Offaly could talk they would have a tale to tell. It would be a story of bustled Victorian ladies and their potb-bellied merchant husbands, of trade, of business deals finalised in airy rooms overlooking the still waters of the canal.
For once the pulse of commerce beat hard at Shannon Harbour. It was an inland port – a staging post leading to the mighty Shannon river. It was built by the commerce of a different age, a monument to an era when the first hesitant puff of the steam engine sounded the death knell for trade on inland waterways. It was a slow lingering death. When it finally came in 1960, there were few obsequies for Shannon Harbour. Those there were hardly took the place into account at all. It all but died with the departure of the last barge.
Now the once fine hotel, later home of several families who made their living from the barges, stands staring roofed, inside gutted, steps broken and lifted. The warehouses once full of goods and porter, are roofless sentries before the lock gates that lead down to the Shannon.
Wellington’s victories in the battles in the Peninsular War were celebrated by Thomas Acres by the erection of the folly or tower in the garden of his private house at Acres Hall. This is now the Tullamore Municipal Council building and the garden is in part used for parking. The entire Acres development in Cormac Street west was based on the 1790 Kilcruttin Hill lease. The folly has been largely restored in 2020-22, but the part of the hill that was removed to facilitate more council parking ought to be replaced. In time perhaps the entire garden and folly could be incorporated into the town park.
There are 20 houses in all from south of the town hall and as far as the junction with the road to Kilcruttin beside the railway station. Following the numbering of these houses in the first valuation of 1843 and the second published in 1854 can be confusing. The numbers in the 1843 survey inclusive of Acres Hall are 505 to 520, with the count commencing at the single-storey over basement cottage at the junction of Cormac Street with the later road to Kilcruttin and finishing at Acres Hall (no. 520). That in the printed valuation of 1854 was Charleville Street nos 1 to 11. No. 1 was the home of Dr Pierce, son-in-law of Thomas Acres, and his wife Ellen and their ten children. The story of the house and the family we have looked at in blogs 2, 3 and 4 on Cormac Street, once called Charleville Street because it was the road to Charleville Demesne, the home of the Moore family from 1740 to 1764 and the Burys from 1764 to the present day (albeit now Hutton Bury since 1963).
The James Francis Fuller-designed church was one of two new Church of Ireland churches in the Tullamore area completed in the 1880s. The other was at Lynally and was the gift of Lady Emily Bury (died 1931) to mark the recent death of her young husband Charles Kenneth Howard. That at Durrow was to replace the 150-year-old church in Durrow Abbey demesne and which had been rebuilt in about 1730. Other churches such as Tullamore, Killeigh and Geashill had all benefited from funding in the early 1800s and were in better order. That said there was probably a degree of self-interest as much as selflessness in the gift of the new church at Durrow by Otway Fortescue Graham Toler. The old church was in Durrow Demesne close to the manor house of the Norbury family and one could understand them wanting to see it placed elsewhere. The well-known agent, Toler Garvey, had beautified the demesne with the provision of a new well and the placing of the High Cross in the graveyard in a line from the entrance door to the old church. The Norburys had purchased the Durrow estate in 1815, and it was here that the second earl was murdered by an aggrieved tenant in January 1839. It appears that the family did not take up residence in the new manor house until the mid to late 1850s.
The new Church of Ireland church, Durrow, completed in 1881.This view about 1990.(more…)
It is hard to believe that we are catching up on history. In seven years time we mark the 200th anniversary of the building of the Catholic church in Durrow. This year is the thirtieth anniversary of the major renovation. The catholic church now in use at Durrow dates back to 1831and was completed in 1832 and consecrated by the then bishop Rahan-born Dr John Cantwell, on 24 September 1832. In an unpublished report on the houses and churches of County Offaly prepared for the Offaly Historical Society in 1985, William Garner wrote:
In 1803, Hanover was occupied by troops from Napoleon Bonaparte’s French Army. Up to that point the Electorate of Hanover had been governed by King George III of the United Kingdom. In response to the occupation and the disbandment of the Electorate’s army, thousands of Hanoverian exiles travelled to England where they enlisted in the King’s German Legion of the British Army. The Legion were quickly deployed to Ireland and its soldiers appear to have created a good impression the towns like Tullamore where they were stationed.
The word duel supposedly has its origin in the Latin duellum, roughly translated as a war or battle between two. Ancient history, religious accounts and myth are all full of accounts of Champion Warfare as elite warriors battled for the glory of their respective peoples. When David slew Goliath, Achilles dispatched Hector outside the gates of Troy or when Cu Chulainn faced off against the fighters of Connacht, they were engaging in a form of single combat common across the world. Later still, during the Middle Ages many European societies condoned ‘Trial by Combat’ as part of their legal system. One of the last examples of such a contest in Ireland occurred at Dublin Castle in 1583.
A Family Feud, the O’Connors of Uí Fháilghe
For centuries the kingdom of Uí Fháilghe (consisting of the eastern region of modern county Offaly) was ruled by the O’Connor clan. During the 16th century, the family featured as a regular irritation and occasional ally for English administrators based in Dublin Castle. The situation was further complicated by internal dynastic rivalries within the clan and alliances between the O’Connors and Fitzgerald Earls of Kildare.
The last official great chief of the clan, Brian O’Connor Faly, married the daughter of the Earl of Kildare, engaged in a prolonged struggle for supremacy with his brother Cathaoir, fought in Silken Thomas’s Rebellion and lead numerous raids into the English controlled Pale.
Pardoned by Henry VIII in 1541, he was regranted his lands later in the decade, but rebelled in conjunction with Cathoair and the O’Mores of Laois in 1548. The Gaelic Irish leaders suffered serious reversals. Cathoair was executed in 1549, Giollapádraig O’More died while imprisoned in England and Brian’s political power was diminished. By the time of his own death in the cells of Dublin Castle in 1560, the kingdom of Uí Fháilghe had already on its way to being dismantled.
In 1556, Parliament passed an act to enable the government to carry out Plantations in O’More and O’Connor territory. As a result, Uí Fháilghe became King’s County, named in honour of King Phillip II of Spain, the husband of Queen Mary I of England.
Despite the major reverses which the O’Connors had suffered, some branches of the family continued to retain importance under the new dispensation. Moreover, the tendency for internal feuding had not entirely abated.
In 1583, Connor McCormac O’Connor alleged that several of his followers had been killed on the orders of Tadhg Gilpatrick O’Connor. In response Tadhg claimed that those killed had collaborated with a noted rebel. The case was referred to the lord justices. Having considered the matter, the Master of the Rolls, Sir Nicholas White suggested that the issue could be resolved by single combat.
The Bermingham town in Dublin Castle about 1895.
So, on the September 12th a large crowd of legal officials gathered in the inner courtyard of Dublin Castle to view the kinsmen do battle. Having been searched for hidden weapons, both men striped to the waist, shook hands and swore on the bible to refrain from the use of “enchantment, sorcery, or witchcraft”. (1)
The combatants were each armed with a sword and a shield, and the contest was a prolonged one. Badly wounded, Connor McCormac O’Connor attempted to effect a killer blow but overextended himself and lost his footing and was beheaded. (2)
Honour is Everything –Codes duello
While the notion of a duel to resolve legal issues had already begun to diminish by the time the O’Connors met in Dublin Castle. The idea of single combat as a means to settle disputes involving personal honour would prove to be a more persistent.
The importance of retaining personal honour and responding to any perceived slight was common across the globe. Especially in militarised societies with large numbers of young aristocratic men, but it found particular popularity in Renaissance Italy. It was there that duelling with rapiers first gained widespread popularity and some of the first of the so-called code duello were drawn up.
These rules, under which duels were fought, were developed in the hope that a well-regulated encounter would restore honour, reduce bloodshed and remove the danger of personal disagreements spiralling into family feuds.
The offended party issued a challenge to reassert their honour after a perceived slight. The second’s role was to patch up some form of face-saving compromise between the aggrieved parties and falling that to ensure that the duel was fought in a fair manner.
The many duels were fought without serious injury to either side, but the details of such encounters were rarely recorded. So much of what we know about duelling is drawn from fatal confrontations.
Duels were not designed to end in death, but rather to re-establish the equilibrium amongst the sons of aristocratic families. Nevertheless, deaths did occur, sometimes as the result, distain for proper duelling procedure or the temperament of the combatants and often because of the rudimentary medical skills of the time.
The rise of duelling corresponded with the demise to of the Gaelic Ireland, the confiscation of large tracts of land and the eventual emergence of the Anglo-Irish landed elite as the great beneficiaries of the Nine Years War, the War of the Three Kingdoms and the Williamite War. It was from such families that duelling would draw its adherents in the century that followed.
The New Order
In 1725 it was reported in the Ipswich Journal…
‘They write from Dublin, that on the 8th of Aug, a Duel was fought Parsonstown in Kings County, between Michael Moore of Cloghan, of the Said county, esq and Captain John Eyre of Feddan, in county Tipperary; at which were present among several other persons, lieutenant Bagnall, and quartermaster Charles Armstrong; and that the said Moore in the attack, tumbled, fell down, and lost his sword, upon which the said Eyre seized it, and pursued Moore with both swords in order to stab him, which the said Amstrong endeavouring to prevent, and putting his own sword into Moore’s hands to defend himself, the said Eyre run upon Armstrong (naked as he was and no party to the quarrel and stabbed him in the breast, of which he instantly died.’ (3)
Captain Eyre was subsequently acquitted of murder.
The Eyres had arrived in Ireland as Cromwellian settlers during the 17th century and were soon closely associated with county Galway. To this day the main square in Galway city and the village of Eyrecourt in the east of the county, bear the marks of that association. The Moores were a long-standing aristocratic family dating back to the Norman invasion. Having obtained Cloghan castle at Lusmagh early in the 17th century, they threw their support behind the Royalist and Jacobite causes. Despite this, they retained some of their holdings, until the reality of mounting debts forced a sale at the Encumbered Estate Court in 1852. The Armstrongs had first gained fame as Border Reivers operating in the Debatable Lands along the border between England and Scotland during the 15th and 16th centuries. Many Armstrongs travelled to Fermanagh in the hope of benefiting from the Plantation of Ulster. A few generations later a branch of the family had begun to establish a dynasty in the former stronghold of the MacCoughlan Clan in the west of King’s County, amassing estates containing thousands of acres with country houses at Banagher, Ballycumber and Gallen Priory outside Ferbane.
Duelling continued to grow in popularity throughout the 18th century, but how it was carried out would change greatly during that time as pistols replaced rapiers as the preferred weapon of choice for duelists.
The rise of duelling
To a certain extent firearms served to level the playing field. Previously, taller men with a greater reach, the more athletically able and those with training in swordsmanship went into battle with considerable advantages. The greater availability of pistols gave the unfit, untrained short man at least a fighting chance. But this equality of opportunity, probably also contributed to a rise in the number of duels being fought. The phenomenon is said to have peaked in the 1770s. In November 1774 it was reported …
Kilcormac about 2017
‘On Wednesday last a duel was fought at Frankford between Mr. George Drought and Mr. Alex. Comins, Ganger, when the latter received a ball in the right arm, which broke the bone.’ (4)
In 1777, representatives from Tipperary, Galway, Sligo, Mayo and Roscommon drew up a new code duello at the Clonmel summer assizes. These 25 ‘commandments’ would go on to provide a framework under which future duels were fought in Ireland, Britain and the United States. Duelists were expected to keep a copy of these rules in their pistol case.
‘a meeting took place last week, near Birr, in the Kings County, between a Mr. Dillon and a Mr. Moor, both living in the neighbourhood of that town, in consequence of some dispute at a hunting match. On the first discharge, Mr. Dillon received his antagonist’s ball through the groin’ (5)
Echoes of Rebellion
Henry Peisley L’Estrange was born at Moystown House around 1776. His family traced their roots to Norfolk and during the 17th century had amassed thousands of acres between Clonony and Shannonbridge in the west of King’s County. The family was also closely connected with military life and following the resignation of Laurence Parsons as commander of the King’s County Militia in the March 1798, L’Estrange replaced him. During the Wexford Rising, he played a prominent role in the Battle of Bunclody/Newtownbarry, when forces under his command initially retreated in the face of a rebel advance before regrouping, counterattacking and inflicting serious losses on Rebels led by Fr. Mogue Kearns.
Ballycumber House – home of John Warneford Armsrong, about 50 years ago. Picture by Rolf Loeber
John Warneford Armstrong was born at Ballycumber in 1770, 45 years after his unfortunate relative Charles Armstrong met his death while attending a duel between John Eyre and Michael Moore. A commissioned officer in the King’s County Militia, and in May 1798 Warneford Armstrong was approached by two radical lawyers John and Henry Sheares, who attempted to induce him to defect to the United Irishmen cause and bring his militia detachment him. Instead, he reported the matter to his superior Colonel L’Estrange who advised him to play along with the conspirators while reporting the details of his meetings. Eventually the Sheares were arrested, and Armstrong later appeared as prosecution witness at their trial in July. Convicted of high treason, the brothers were hanged, drawn and quartered outside Newgate Prison, with their remains buried in the crypt of St Michan’s church. During the Rebellion Armstrong took command of troops in Kildare and North Wicklow, where he was known for the ferocity of the methods, he used to suppress United Irish activity. (6)
In the summer of 1799, the Kings County Militia prepared for deployment to the Channel Islands. It’s not known what caused the outbreak of bad feeling between two of the regiments officers but in June it was reported that
‘Thursday last a duel was fought on the banks of the canal, near Dublin, between Colonel L’estrange and Captain Armstrong, both of the King’s County Militia; the exchanged a case of pistols, but neither received the least injury’ (7)
Both men lived to fight another day. L’Estrange died at Bath, England in 1824.
Armstrong was regularly villainized in nationalist literature and song…
‘We saw a nations tears,
Shed for John and Henry Sheares,
Betrayed by Judas, Captain Armstrong’
It was a characterisation that Armstrong robustly rejected, arguing that he had acted at all times in accordance with his duty as an officer. Returning to Ballycumber, he was the recipient of a large government pension. Described as an indulgent landlord, but a stern magistrate, on his death in 1854, he was buried at the Armstrong family vault at Liss church.
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