Category: Local history

• A Constant Battle: The Life of Patrick Lopeman, Great War Veteran, Connaught Ranger Mutineer, Labour Activist and Birr Man. No 11 in Offaly History Anniversaries Series by Aidan Doyle. Blog No 651, 11th Sept 2024

  Patrick Lopeman was born at Riverstown, Birr in 1893 (although army records sometimes list 1894). Over the next decade, his parents Patrick senior and Letitia (Sometimes listed as Alicia) moved with the family between several addresses in Kildare and Birr. Patrick Sr worked as a painter.

  In Lopeman’s youth his family suffered from economic hardship, living in lanes around Birr like Mount Sally which were essentially slums. In 1917, Birr’s parish priest Canon Horan described the conditions in which families like the Lopeman’s dwelled…

  ‘In many cases there were neither doors to the front or to the rear, and the roofs were also in a defective condition. It could hardly be said that there were floors to the houses and their condition generally was deplorable. In fact, he said the houses were nothing more or less than mouldering heaps of rubbish. How the poor people managed to live in such hovels he did not know…. they were unfit to kennel a dog’

  Even by the standards of the time Patrick endured a very difficult childhood. In May 1904, his ten-month older sister Agnes died of hydrocephalus. In November 1905 his six-month-old his brother James died of convulsions.  Three months later James’s twin sister Esther died of whooping cough and pneumonia. By the time of 1911 census Patrick Lopeman Sr had died, and the family were spread across different addresses. Eighteen-year-old Patrick was living in a boarding house at High Street, Birr with his younger sisters Bridget and Catherine.

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  September 11, 2024

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• The Centenary on 8 October 2024 of the first sitting of the Circuit Court in County Offaly. No. 10 in the 2024 Anniversaries Series by Michael Byrne and Offaly History. Blog No 650, 7th Sept 2024

  The new courts system established in 1923–24 saw the first sittings of the district court in Tullamore and Birr in January 1923 and the opening of barracks or stations for the new civic guard from the autumn of 1922. The circuit court system in Offaly was established in October 1924. The circuit court system had its origins in the Courts of Justice Act, 1924, but based, as it was, on eight regions and with wide jurisdiction in criminal and civil matters, emulated the old courts of assize. For Offaly the year from June 1922 to May 1923 was a time of turmoil with up to twelve ‘Big Houses, burned, damage to property, theft and the loss of the county courthouse, jail and barracks in Tullamore.

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  September 7, 2024

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• 8 Families of Cormac Street, Tullamore in the early 1900s. All was Victorian respectability to the front of the street but with a ‘cabin suburb’ and a prison close by. A contribution to the Living in Towns series supported by the Heritage Council. By Michael Byrne and Offaly History. Blog No 648, 31st August 2024

  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 1^st 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 3^rd or 4^th 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.

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  August 31, 2024

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• 7   Cormac Street east, Tullamore, Co. Offaly, from 1795.  By Michael Byrne and Offaly History. A contribution to the Living in Towns series supported by the Heritage Council. Blog No 647, 28th August 2024

  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.

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  August 28, 2024

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• Shannon Harbour, completed in 1804, and described by Sean Olson in 1979, 45 years ago. Canal events this August weekend, 45 years on, in Pollagh and Tullamore. Article no. 7 in the Offaly History Anniversaries Series. Blog No 645, 23rd August 2024

  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.

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  August 23, 2024

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• 6   Acres Folly, Kilcruttin graveyard and the Lloyd Town Park, Cormac Street, Tullamore, Offaly, Ireland. By Michael Byrne and Offaly History. A contribution to the Living in Towns series supported by the Heritage Council. Blog No 644, 21st August 2024

  Acres Folly

  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.

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  August 21, 2024

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• 5   The terraces on the west side of Cormac Street, Tullamore, Offaly, Ireland, 1790 to 1898. By Michael Byrne and Offaly History. A contribution to the Living in Towns series supported by the Heritage Council. Blog No 643, 17th August 2024

  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).

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  August 17, 2024

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• A new Church of Ireland church, Durrow in King’s County/Offaly in June 1881. No. 6 in the Anniversaries Series. Issued by Offaly History to mark Heritage Week, 17-24 August 2024. Heritage Week Tour, Sunday 18 August. Blog No 642, 16th August 2024. Blog No 642, 16th August 2024

  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.

  

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  August 16, 2024

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• St. Colum Cille’s Catholic Church, Durrow: built in 1831-32; major renovation completed thirty years ago. No. 5 in the Anniversaries Series. By Offaly History with thanks to Gerry Walsh for notes on the renovation in 1993–94. Heritage Week visit Sunday 18 August. Blog No 641, 15th August 2024

  It is hard to believe that we are catching up on history. In seven years time we mark the 200^th 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:

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  August 15, 2024

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• In search of Satisfaction: Duelling and King’s County, 1583–1845. By Aidan Doyle, nos 3 and 4 in the Offaly History Anniversaries Series. Part 2, the Bismarck, Turpin and Lord Tullamore duels. Blog No 640, 14th August 2024

  The Bismarck Connection: 1807 – Tullamore

  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.

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  August 14, 2024

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