The political machinations surrounding the transfer of the assizes (since the 1920s the High Court on circuit) to Tullamore, involving as it did the passing of an Act of Parliament in 1832 declaring it to be the place of the assizes (read county town) in place of Daingean (Philipstown) is a story in itself that goes back to when Daingean was created the county town as part of the Laois Offaly plantation project of the new colonists in the mid sixteenth century.
Just 100 years ago the closure of Tullamore prison was announced effective twelve months later. That was a legal formality as the prison had been severely damaged in the burning of July 1922 and by the extensive looting that followed. The town was without an effective police force since December 1921 and the new Civic Guard was not fully established in the town until May 1923. There had been sightings of them from September 1922 but the proposed new police barracks in the former county infirmary in Church Street was not ready due it being occupied by TB patients who were to be moved to Birr.
120 years has passed since the motor vehicle and driver licences registrations had been introduced in the UK and Ireland. The King’s Co (Offaly) county council was responsible in the collecting and registering drivers’ details and collecting fees. There were motor vehicles on the county roads from the late 1890’s, although there was no administration register for them. With the increase in motor transport on the roads by 1900 the council adopted rules of the roads act.[1] This included a twelve mile per hour speed limit in the country and eight mile per hour in the towns and villages. Bicycle and motor car owners must carry lights between sunset and sunrise, and a driver of a bicycle or motor vehicle dismount if they encounter a horse driven carriage, wagon or any other beast of burden until they were clear of the area to continue driving their motor vehicle. This law was updated 25th May 1901.[2]
The inside cover label of the 1904-23 King’s County vehicle registration ledger. Athlone Printing Works was owned by Thomas Chapman and was a subsidiary of the Westmeath Independent Newspaper (1883-1920). Courtesy Offaly Archives
In November 1903 at a meeting of the county council in Tullamore courthouse the council adopted regulations under the 6th section of the new Motor Car Act, which would come into force on the 1st January 1904.The principal rules were that “The county shall keep a numbered register of cars and motor bicycles; owners of motor register, and pay a fee of 20s, and in the case of motor cycles 5s. On the change of ownership, a re-registration fee of 10s for a car and 2s:6d for motor cycles. Persons driving any motor vehicle must be licenced and pay a fee of 5s per year. The legal age to obtain a licence was seventeen”.
The task of motor vehicle/licence administration was carried out by the council secretary’s office headed by Charles P. Kingston a local Birr native.
In the summer of 1903 Ireland received the letter (I) for its first licence plate letter and each county received a second letter in alphabetical order of counties. Offaly then (King’s Co) receiving the letter (R). Each vehicle was issued with its own alphanumeric number starting with IR.1 as the first vehicle registration. There were two categories for vehicles, private and public convenience, the latter being hired out by its owner to anyone who possessed a driving licence. Registration numbers could be transferred from one type of vehicle to another type and be registered in another county where the owner may have resided. This continued in many counties up to the early 1970’s.
The first people to embrace this new technology were affluent industrial families and large landowners were among the first motor vehicle owners in the county. Clergy and police were also encouraged to use motor transport for their day-to-day activities. The increase in vehicle registrations in the county from 1904 can be describe as slow and steady. From 1st of January 1904 to 23 February 1911, one hundred vehicles were recorded, and from 2nd November 1912 showed 150 vehicles registered. However, the beginning of the first world war, saw a large increase in registrations that included commercial vehicles. From the beginning of the 20th Century to the late 1920’s saw an increase in commercial businesses activity in the county. Road transport became more important for the supply of goods to branch houses throughout the midlands and beyond. Buildings in the county towns were re-developed and enlarged with new facade advertising a wider choice of imported goods. This can be seen more evident in the textile merchant businesses such as the many drapery buildings of the larger towns.
Motor Tour of the west of Ireland in 1906 , James Perry and party aboard IR 1 Wolseley[3]
The first vehicle registered in King’s Co (Offaly) IR.1 was a Wolseley 10 hp black car lined red for private use, James Perry Goodbody, Inchmore Clara.[4] The Wolseley Tool and Motor Car Co, Ltd Adderley Park, Birmingham. This company was acquired in 1901 by Vickers, Sons & Maxim engineering empire with Senior engineer Herbert Austin taking over the design of the car and motor.
This Wolseley power plant was a horizontal flat twin cylinder motor, chain drive to the back wheel, top speed 20 mph designed by Austin, and the first wholly British car to be mass produced from their Birmingham factory in 1902.The price with 36-inch tyres was £380.00. This registration number would stay in use on different vehicles in the Goodbody family well into the mid 1920’s.
D. E. Williams Ltd with their first registered motor lorry IR 164 registered 25th March 1913.Commer lorry 25hp painted red 2 1/2 tons trade[5].
D. E. Williams also registered IR 165. A four-seater Ford model T Car on the same date for trade. These new Ford cars were aimed at the commercial traveller and services that could now attend multiple destinations in one day’s drive and return. They came equipped with electric lights and window wiper, a hod and inflatable tyres that could the repaired quickly. Ford dealerships springing up all over the country in this period.
This new mode of transport had an impact on other professions such as: Agricultural consultants, Bank Managers, Doctors, legal administration and policing, Political, Religious and Sporting assembly’s and events etc.
Another large merchant business in the town with sixteen shops and licenced premises, across the midlands with their main office on Bridge St. was P & H Egan Ltd. Over the years this company built up a transport department and on 16th July 1915 they registered their first motor lorry, a Commer 2 ton for trade registered IR 236.
From 1912 local garages started to appear in the town. Robert H. Poole in Bridge St. was a motor and cycle agent with a large garage, service department and car hire. He was an accomplished competition cyclist and started selling Triumph motorcycles from 1904, also sales of used motor vehicles and in 1915 Ford and Overland cars.
James Arthur Kilroy, started his hardware, Ironmonger and garage supplying Ford model T cars from 1914 and later Maxwell five seat touring cars. James registered IR 162, a 3 HP Premier Motorcycle, 23 February 1913.
The first resident of Tullamore to register a motor vehicle was James Hayes b.1863 lived in Charleville street with his family. He was manager of the Charleville Arms Hotel and was a justice of the peace for many years at local petty sessions. He registered a Ford (Model T) car IR.11 in 1913 for commercial use, transporting guest around the area with a morning run to the town’s railway station. This car was assembled at the Henry Ford & Sons ltd factory Trafford Park, Manchester.
In 1914 Charles Kingston applied to the county accountant John Mahon for an increase in salary for himself and the county surveyor as well as additional staff to cope with the increase in road works across the county.[6]
As other smaller businesses were expanding around the town, Thomas English baker and general merchant William St. Registered a 20hp motor van IR 205, on 23ed April 1915 and held this number until 1923.This was a re-released Ford Model T, new to the market in late 1914 and was targeted at smaller local delivery business. This was a turning point for commercial transport as no longer did business owners need to burden the cost of horse drawn delivery carts and a man to look after them.
John H. Wakefield with his 1926 Ford Model TT delivery van[7]
There is also a separate short index for Vehicles with registrations from outside of the county.
For example, John Henry Wakefield was a store assistant and driver for Joseph A. Lumley grocer, William St. On the 6th May 1916 John registered a Ford model T four-seater car RI 2971 (Dublin). In July 1917 he set up his own grocery business (Central Stores) on the corner of Bridge Lane and Bridge Street, now part of the Bank of Ireland building. He then transferred this number to his new Ford delivery van. These new ford vans were capable of carrying up to one ton with its long wheel base and factory-made body. This limited the speed between 15-20 mph.
Registration of motor vehicles during the war period was slow as most of the motor manufactures changed production to supply the WD (War Department) with transport of all types of machines, equipment as well as munitions. By 1919 the motor market became saturated with repurposed military machines, that drove down prices. As well as returning soldiers and mechanics struggled to find employment in garages, this led to low wages and high unemployment in the country.
From January 1920 the first signs of change hung over the country with outbreaks of hostility against the Crown Forces from the Republican Army, and the pursuing War of Independence continued until December 1921, and was followed from June 1922 when the Civil war began.
During these years registration of motor vehicles was slow. From 1922 most vehicles were taken off the roads by their owners, as they were being targeted and used for transporting armouries and republican volunteers to and from ambushes around the county. Other cars were adopted with armoured plate on the sides to protect the drivers and passengers as the country fell into lawlessness. Garages, general merchets were targeted constantly with fuel stores raided along with anything of value, the owners threatened and intimated into selling up or in some cases burning of premises and homes. This was the case with Robert Poole Tullamore and George Lee Castle St Birr, both men and families had sold out and eventually emigrated.
By 1924 motor registrations had bounced back with most large industries purchasing goods vehicles. (3) D. E. Williams Barrick St. (2) P&H Egan, Ltd Bridge St. (1) M.J. & L. Goodbody Clara. James Kilroy High St (Hackney). (1) Joseph A. Lumley William St.
By the mid 1920’s car sales started to increase, this led to another new garage in Tullamore.
O’Conner Square mid 1920’s[8] L-R: Rafters Drapery Store with facade of advertising. George N. Walshe premises, fire engine parked outside his shop. Access to his garage was through the gate to the left of this building. This was an old coach yard and stable building. Building to the right of Walshe was Egan’s brewery house, Daly’s shop and arch entrance to Egan’s brewery and stores houses. The town switched to electric lighting in 1921.
Other families in the area that would go on to set up their own garage and motor works shortly after the first Motor Registration ends. Frank Hurst, O’ Moore St. started his Motor works in 1926, repairing agriculture machinery (Irish made Fordson tractors and small stationery engines) that was now replacing the work horse. Among his many staff was a young George Colton (1899-1931) Gorteen, Killeigh, motor mechanic who worked for G. N. Walshe before joining F Hurst Motor Works.
Unfortunately, the vehicle registration ledger is incomplete and ends in June 1923. There are no motor vehicle registration legers known to exist between 1923 and 1945.
Offaly Archives is the depository for all motor licences ledgers from 1904-1928 however there is also a gap from 1928-45 for licence registration’s (OFCC 10/5/1). The surviving ledgers are a wonderful source of information to anyone with an interest in early motor transport in the county and the early pioneers who embraced this technology.[9]
See also: James Perry Goodbody, Offaly’s leading industrialist and county council member for 21 years (1853-1923) By Michael Byrne April 19, 2023 Offaly History Blog.
Our thanks to Tomas Ó Helion for all his research for this blog article on a subject that touches most of us. A second article on this subject will be published in the Anniversaries Series in October 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.
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.
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.
Thomas Acres Pierce (sometimes written as Peirce) the eldest son of Dr Pierce (d. 1859) who succeeded his father and mother at Acres Hall died in 1879. Colonel Thomas Acres Pierce, (he was an officer in the King’s County Militia and in his early years the regular army) died suddenly in December 1879 of a heart attack. The local newspaper of the time noted that his father and grandfather (doctor and solicitor respectively also died in similar circumstances). Pierce was for a time local inspector of prisons and secretary to the grand jury of the county. While locally prestigious these were not remunerative appointments. He had married Miss F. G. French in 1856 and had issue – six children, the last dying in 1937. Not surprisingly with the smaller shares and number of dependants the Acres Estate got into financial difficulties in the 1880s. At the time of the death of another of the ten children of Dr Pierce, John Pierce, in 1889 his son Donald McFarlane Pierce (b. 1869) succeeded to Acres Hall and at the same time he managed to purchase a moiety of the entire Acres Estate for the sum of £4,703, and this money was raised through four new mortgages on the Tullamore properties. Donald M. Pierce married Mary Frances Murphy in 1896, and the marriage settlement was made in South Africa. He had married a Roman Catholic which in those days may have been difficult for some members of the family. There were at least four children of that marriage, Bernard, Donald, Fr. John (parish priest of Rathmines in the 1970s) and Robert Acres Pierce.[1] Donald Pierce and family returned to Ireland and were living on the terrace opposite the old family home in 1901 and 1911. In the 1911 Donald Pierce was described as a commercial traveller.Two members of the earlier Acres family, from which Thomas Acres is thought to have come, survived in the Roscrea area up to the 1970s
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