An article in the current edition of the Irish Georgian Society journal sheds more light on the Shinrone-born portrait painter Charles Jervas.[1] He was born in 1675 (or perhaps 1670) near Shinrone, King’ County (now County Offaly) and about eight miles south of Birr (Parsonstown) and was the son of John and Elizabeth Jervas (sometimes Jarvis, Jervis, Gervase and Gervaise). His mother was a Baldwin of Corolanty, Shinrone who were Cromwellian grantees. The old castle there (there are still ruins of it) was replaced in 1672 (other say 1698) by a large house – modified again in the eighteenth century and still standing. Jervas’s father, a Cromwellian, soldier-settler is said to have emigrated to America in 1688 to avoid the troubles then brewing due to the accession of a Catholic monarch and the changing power structure in Ireland as a result. He is said to have returned to Shinrone in the late 1690s and died there soon after, possibly in 1709. Another source has it that he died in America, but this seems unlikely.[2]
Alongside John O’Donovan and Eugene O’Curry the name of George Petrie (1790–1866) will forever be remembered as one of Ireland’s greatest scholars of the first half of the nineteenth century. It was a time when tremendous work was done for Irish archaeology and history. Petrie was a major figure in the historical research section of the Ordnance Survey. Jeanne Sheehy in her The Rediscovery of Ireland’s Past 1830–1930 states that he was the founder of systematic and scientific archaeology in Ireland.
Petrie was involved in the work of the Ordnance Survey from 1833 for ten years. He was very much a polymath and in his late years published a volume of Irish music arising from his efforts to collect and preserve old Irish music.
Thomas Lalor Cooke, the Birr solicitor and historian, would be the last to consider himself an artist, but when pressed he was generally a good deal less self-deprecating. He published his first history of Birr in 1826 without adding his name to the title, rather akin to the ‘silver fork’ novelists fashionable at that time. Yet, there can be few in Birr or among the learned who did not know that it was Attorney Cooke of Cumberland (now Emmet) Street who was the author. No doubt he also provided signed copies for friends. And in Cooke’s own copy of the Picture he has recorded that he had two tokens (p. 109) and at p. 210 referred to one of the coins as ‘now in the possession of Mr Cooke of Parsonstown’.
Sir Richard Colt Hoare’s account of his visit to Ireland in 1806 is of interest to us in County Offaly for his comments on the progress of building at Charleville and the two surviving drawings of the Srah and Charleville castles in a book of drawings of Colt Hoare’s in the RIA. These drawings are important for the catalogue of topographical drawings and paintings of King’s County/Offaly interest and hence their inclusion here. Srah/Sragh Castle can be described as Tullamore’s oldest surviving house and was erected in 1588. The fortifed house has attracted the interest of antiquarians since the 1800s. The Colt Hoare drawings are among the earliest and certainly that is so for Tullamore where paintings and drawings of topographical features are scarce until the contemporary artists began to fill the void.
In the early days of the Irish Free State two ambitious projects stood out as justifying the struggle for national independence.
In 1925, out of a total national budget of £25 million, the fledgling government bravely invested £5.2 in the Shannon Hydro Electric Scheme. Finished within four years, it ensured a degree of energy autonomy and dramatically improved living conditions, particularly in towns and later in rural areas.
In a second progressive advance the State embarked on a programme to build a modern hospital in every county.
When I was eleven I spent a long Easter weekend in the County Hospital in Tullamore. I don’t know what was wrong with me but it can’t have been anything serious and I remember it as a most enjoyable and stimulating experience.
The nurses and the nuns were kind and caring, the ward was spacious and sunlit with a lovely view across O’Connor Park to the Slieve Blooms, while the food was a lot more varied than I was accustomed to at home. My friends and neighbours visited with gifts of Easter eggs and sweets. I particularly remember getting little furry yellow chicks in one egg and kept them as a souvenir for many years after.
I think that my stay in that icon of Irish Modernist architecture, must have instilled my future love of good buildings but it was the glimpses of the large colourful painting in the entrance hall that really stuck in my mind. In the years to come, when visiting my mother or sick friends, I always stopped for a while to look at it again.
Its installation in the entrance of the new County Hospital, which opened in 1942 and of which the town was so proud, was the inspiration of the architect Michael Scott.
The Scott building Midlands Regional Hospital, Tullamore, erected 1938-42(more…)
George Petrie was born in Dublin in 1790 and has a strong King’s/ County Offaly connection through his work at Clonmacnoise, Birr, Banagher, Clonony, Lemanaghan and Rahan. He may have been the most significant topographical artist so far as Offaly is concerned. He was certainly the greatest exponent of the heritage of Clonmacnoise first visiting the site in 1818–22. Dates differ as the visits to Clonmacnoise as was noted in the most attractive publication by Peter Murray and published by the Crawford Gallery in 2004.[1] The other great work on Petrie is that of William Stokes, The life and labours in art and archaeology of George Petrie (Longmans, London, 1868). Also important is Crookshank and Knight of Glin, Irish painters, 1600–1940 (Yale, 2002).
The Dictionary of Irish Biography (DIB) entry by David Cooper records that Petrie, was an artist, antiquary and collector of Irish traditional music, and was born on 1 January 1790 in Dame Street, Dublin, the only child of James Petrie, portrait painter, of Dublin, and Elizabeth Petrie (née Simpson) of Edinburgh, Scotland. James Petrie (d. 1819) was born in Dublin of Scottish parents and studied at the drawing school of the Dublin Society. Afterwards he practised as a miniature painter and a dealer in jewellery, coins, and antique objects at 83 Dame Street. The collecting instinct would stand Irish heritage in good stead with James Petrie’s son George performing an outstanding archival and museum service.
Clonmacnoise and its churches is the subject of a lecture by Con Manning at Offaly History Centre, Bury Quay, Tullamore R35 Y5VO on Monday 14 April 7 30 p.m. Your chance to meet one of the foremost experts on Clonmacnoise – the most important heritage site in County Offaly. So do come all are welcome. Conleth Manning worked for nearly forty years as an archaeologist with the National Monuments Service. During that time he directed excavations at Clonmacnoise as well as at many other monuments around the country. He has a special interest in medieval churches and castles and has published widely on aspects of the medieval and post-medieval periods in Ireland.
The Murals Bar Cultural life in 1950s Tullamore centred around ‘The Murals’ bar. This was where us local artists, actors, historians and writers drank, clutching our copies of ‘Ulysses’ in its concealing brown paper cover while engaging in fevered and sparkling debates on cubism, existentialism, atonality and Marxism.
I may be exaggerating somewhat, but ‘The Murals’ really was our Deux Magots, our Cafe de Flore. The bar was the meeting place of what passed for an intelligentsia in Tullamore at a time, which, though it is now regarded as restrictive and obscurantist, I remember as stimulating and progressive. Maybe I was lucky.
The attraction of ‘The Murals’ was its design which was quite unlike any of the more traditional pubs of the town which were usually small, dark and poky. With its high ceiling, stripped down design, timber veneering, bright red stools, it was cool and elegant and above all- modern.
Richard Rothwell holds a place as Ireland’s foremost portrait painter of the 19th century but there has been much confusion about his identity owing to W.E. Strickland’s biography of him in ‘A Dictionary of Irish Painters’ (1913), which had him born in Athlone, a son of James Rothwell, and a descendent of the Rothwells of Co Meath, none of which was correct. This was repeated by other art historian and in a 1961 family history by his descendant Desmond Rothwell of Montreal, where Desmond wrote that Richard’s grandfather was Thomas Rothwell of Lisdaly, Co. Offaly, and that his father, James Rothwell, married Elizabeth Holmes and had seven children. He states that James fled Ireland in 1798, perhaps to America, after he allowed forces to rest overnight in his barns during the 1798 rebellion. This tradition, however, is not compatible another tradition recorded by Desmond of Richard supposedly being born in Athlone in 1800.
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