Category: Lemanaghan

• Holy Wells in County Offaly: the search is on ‘Do you know about your local holy well, do you visit it, can you share your knowledge and experiences’.  Under the current Offaly Heritage Plan we are carrying out research and keen to hear from you – email heritage@offalycoco.ie . Blog No 694, 19th Feb 2025

  There are more than sixty Holy Wells in County Offaly along with springs, mineral spas and local wells. Their setting varies from directly on the roadside such as St Finan’s at Cumber East, to the middle of a field (St Molua’s Well, Roscomroe).

  They can be associated with a neighbouring church (St Lugna’s Well, Letter), or remain isolated from a religious setting in some cases located in the middle of agricultural land (St Brigid’s Well or Toberneera, Castlearmstrong).

  Many of the wells have an associated patron saint, the spelling of which may have changed many times across verbal, mapping and literary references, while in some cases the name changed entirely to a different saint.

  While difficult to date, most are recorded monuments, an early reference is noted by Thomas Lalor Cooke (Cooke’s History of Birr), quoting from the Annals of Clonmacnoise that ‘a person named torbaid was comorban of St Patrick previous to the year 758, when his son Gorman died on a pilgrimage at the well of St Fineen at Clonmacnoise’.

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  February 19, 2025

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• Mapping the Past, Shaping the Future: the Changing Story of Ireland’s Boglands. Blog No 692, 12th Feb 2025

  News of a temporary exhibition at NLI Kildare Street, Dublin for February only

  

  A new temporary exhibition at the National Library of Ireland explores the history of the Irish Bogs Commission and how its 19th-century maps are now shaping the future of Ireland’s peatlands.

  Peatlands are among the world’s most vital carbon stores and play a crucial role in climate regulation. But when they’re drained, they lose their carbon sink potential and unique biodiversity and contribute to climate change. In Ireland, peatland drainage for agriculture and industry has shaped the landscape for centuries. Now, as part of national efforts to combat climate change, restoration of these ecosystems is a top priority.

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  February 12, 2025

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• Up Offaly: Offaly’s Day at the Heritage Council Heritage Week Awards in Dublin on 15 November 2024. ‘Well that Beats Banagher’ and Ballycumber, Lemanaghan and Shinrone. Blog No 670, 16th Nov 2024

  It was a big day for Offaly at the Heritage Week Awards held in the wonderful Royal Hospital Kilmainham on Friday 15 November 2024. As Amanda Pedlow, the Offaly Council Heritage Officer noted:

  It was Offaly’s day at The Heritage Council Heritage Week Awards in Kilmainham today. James Scully is the well-deserved winner of the national Heritage Hero Award.

  Ballycumber Tidy Towns Group won the Water Heritage Day award with their ‘Folly Tales and Treasure Trails’ event; The Heritage Boat Association and Inland Waterways Association with Waterways Ireland were runners up in this category with their ‘A Boatman’s Journey: Navigating the heritage of the Grand Canal’ held in Tullamore.

  Lemanaghan Bog Heritage and Conservation Group were runners up in the Intangible Cultural Heritage Award (The Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh Award) for their project recording traditions and folklore of Lemanaghan.

  Shinrone Heritage Group won the County Award for their Shinrone Gown project.

  Well done to all the winners and to the 70+ organisers of events for this year’s Heritage Week in Offaly.

  The big cheer was for the win by James Scully of the 2024 Heritage Hero award.

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  November 16, 2024

  history, Local history, news, Photography, travel

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• 56 Offaly in the Grand Canal Company minutes, 1900-1950 with special reference to the 1911-23 period. By James Scully. Blog No 615, 22nd May 2024

  

  Growing up on Clontarf Road, Tullamore, on the banks of the Grand Canal in the 1950s and 1960s I spent many childhood hours playing beside the canal. This was where my father’s family had lived for generations in East View Terrace before he and several of his siblings had acquired houses in Frank Gibney’s new state-of-the-art housing on Clontarf Road. In early teenage years I took to walking the canal line and ventured to Kilgortin Mill and Rahan, where my mother’s people, my grandfather and uncles and a multiplicity of cousins, lived. Not surprisingly the canal got under my skin if not indeed into my bloodstream.

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  May 22, 2024

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• 50-51, Grand Canal Townlands East to West: Derries to Glyn No 50-51 in the Grand Canal Offaly Series. By Philomena Bracken, Offaly History. Blog No 606, 27th April 2024

  

  With the construction of the Grand Canal from the late 1750s, brought with it the expansion of Trade. goods could be carried from East to West along the line, this helped boost the development of the local economy from the late 18^th century. The Offaly section of the canal runs approximately 42 miles and is home to a number of species and wild plants, due to the cross over through wet bog land during the development of the canal way[1].

   The first townland we come to along this way is Derries. It is situated in the Electoral Division of Ferbane, in the Civil Parish of Wheery or Killagally, in the Barony of Garrycastle, in the County of Offaly. The Irish name for Derries is Na Doirí meaning The Oak Woods.

  

  Wheery or Killagally is a large civil parish and it extends about 7 miles from Pollagh Village.

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  April 27, 2024

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• 48-49, Grand Canal Townlands East to West: Pollagh to Turraun No 48-49 in the Grand Canal Offaly Series. By Philomena Bracken, Offaly History. Blog No 604, 24th April 2024

  

  Pollagh also spelt as Pullough, is located in a small village in County Offaly, it is in the Civil Parish of Lemanaghan. A small parish, it extends from Ballycumber to Ferbane. Pollagh village can be found on the north side of the canal. The Parish lies in the territory of Dealbhna Eathra of the MacCoghlans – an ancient people. It has a rich heritage in its archaeology including the important monastic site, churches, and ringforts and the famous castles.

  One of The townlands that we come along as we work our way down the line is Pollagh, the name in Irish is Pollach, meaning Place full of Holes.

  Townland	Area	Pop in 1841	Pop in 1851	No. of Houses in 1841	No. of Houses in 1851	Pop in 1871	Pop in 1911	No. of Houses in 1871	No. of Houses in 1911
  Pollagh	907	267	168	43	33	282	223	42	50

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  April 24, 2024

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• 46-47, Grand Canal Townlands East to West: Ballindrinan to Cornalaur No 46-47 in the Grand Canal Offaly Series. By Philomena Bracken, Offaly History. Blog No 602, 20th April 2024

  

  Rahan, Civil Parish is situated in the ancient O’Molloy territory of Fear Ceall meaning Men of the Woods or Men of the Churches. It is bounded on its north west side by the Brosna River. Its bedrock is Limestone and it has deposits of brick and clay along the Grand Canal.

  

  

  Its best know archaeological site is the Rahan Monastic Centre which was an area of great importance in the early Christian Period.

  Townland: Ballindrinan is in the Electoral Division of Rahan, in Civil Parish of Rahan, in the Barony of Ballycowan, in the County of Offaly.

  The Irish name for Ballindrinan is Baile an Draighneáin meaning land of the blackthorns.

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  April 20, 2024

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• 43-44 Grand Canal Townlands East to West: Kilgortin/Killina/ Loughroe. No 43-44 in the Grand Canal Offaly Series by Offaly History. Blog No 597, 1oth April 2024

  

  Kilgortin is in the Electoral Division of Rahan, in Civil Parish of Rahan, this parish is situated in the ancient O’Molloy territory of Fear Ceall meaning the mem of the woods or men of the churches. If you look closely along the line in this area you will see deposits of brick clays along the Grand Canal between Ballycowan and Rahan, this was the source of an energetic brick industry in the past.  In this part of Rahan you will find the site of Rahan Monastic Centre, this is the most famous archaeological site in this location. It was a very important aspect of Early Christian period.

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  April 10, 2024

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• 42 The Way that I followed, Frank Mitchell (1990). In this extract Mitchell describes the landscape of west Offaly taking in the Shannon and the eskers. No. 42  in the Grand Canal Offaly series. Blog No 596, 6th April 2024

  

  Frank Mitchell (1912–97) was a distinguished but unassuming academic, environmental historian, archaeologist and geologist. While he had many academic writings his best known book was The Irish Landscape (1976) about which he was typically modest. In 1990 Mitchell published ‘a semi-autobiography’ The way that I followed. The title was a play on Robert Lloyd Praeger’s, The way that I went (Dublin, 1937). A delightful exercise in ‘topographical autobiography’. Praeger in his peregrinations was less kind to Laois and Offaly than Mitchell with Praeger’s observation that ‘neither county need detain us long’ (p. 235) and ‘there is not much of special interest’ (p. 237). Westmeath he found to be more hospitable than Offaly having less than half of the amount of bog in Offaly and more pasture. We may look at the Praeger account in another blog. Suffice to say that bogs were not flavour of the month with the visitors from the 1800s to the 1930s and who wrote up accounts of their tours. Mitchell did not follow that century old prescription.

  

  Someone who Mitchell would have known (at TCD) and admired was T.W. Freeman. The latter’s Ireland a general and regional geography (1950, third edition, 1963) provided a useful account of the boglands east of the Shannon and the eskers of the Central Lowland with a brief disquisition on the market towns ‘that differ so strangely in their material prosperity’. Freeman was fascinated by the unexpected and haphazard nature of economic life in some of the towns – he seems to have had in mind Tullamore and Clara.

  In any case let us go back to look at what Mitchell wrote of the terrain east of the Shannon as part of this Grand Canal series.

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  April 6, 2024

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• 24 Some old photographs of the Grand Canal: the Shackleton photographs of Tullamore and West Offaly in the 1890s. No 24 in the Grand Canal Offaly Series. By Offaly History. Blog No 579, 24th Feb 2024

  

  Jane W. Shackleton’s Ireland compiled by Christiaan Corlett (Cork, 2012) is an attractive large format publication was issued by Collins Press and consists of 180 well produced photographs by Jane Shackleton. These pictures are important for the photographic record in County Offaly and mostly date to 1894.

  

  Not surprisingly there are many pictures of mills in this book and there are about ten pictures of Offaly interest. Jane Shackleton started taking pictures in the 1880s and made several tours on the Shannon and along the Grand Canal and Barrow lines. These waterways photographs contribute greatly to the history of the canals and the great mills which were associated with river locations. Many of these were in fact owned by Quaker industrialists. Like other interested women of the period Jane Shackleton was a member of the Royal Society of Antiquaries (RSAI) and took photographs of some of their tours including that of June 1904 around Ireland. Midleton Biddulph, the amateur photographer and retired army officer of Rathrobin near Tullamore was also on this trip and some of his pictures survive and have been published as Rathrobin and the two Irelands; the photographs of  Middleton Westenra Biddulph, 1900–1920 (Tullamore, 2021). Corlett informs us that the Shackleton collection consists of 1,000 lantern slides and 44 albums containing several thousand prints, mostly of Irish subjects. This writer had the pleasure of seeing some of the Grand Canal and the turf works at Pollagh back in the early 1970s with Richard Shackleton and Jonathan Shackleton.

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  February 24, 2024

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