offalyhistoryblog

Category: Ballycumber

Down the Decades – The journey with George Griffith of Clonshanny, Clara, Ireland. By Tom Minnock. Blog No 563, 10th Jan 2024

Down the Decades was launched in Rahan Hall in November 2023 with a large audience and since then the new book by Tom Minnock has proved to be extremely popular with more copies printed to meet the demand. We asked Tom Minnock to tell us in this blog article about how the book came about. Born in 1922, the life of George Griffith tracked the life of the new Irish State, down through the decades. George never left his native Clonshanny giving him a local perspective on community life in the area during a fascinating period in the history of Ireland and the world. George Griffith died in March 2022.

Tom’s book is a collection of George’s reflections on that century up to 2022. Tom has set the context both locally and globally for each decade.

Tom Minnock writes:

The book is out there now and it is a peculiar feeling that is hard to put into words as something that you have spent countless hours living with takes wings. A few random words sketched out on a large note book and transferred on to a computer screen had grown and grown over time. How did this come about and why do I think it was important to publish it and expose myself to my community to be judged? I would like to share the journey and in doing so challenge you all reading this to consider writing or sharing your stories with somebody who will set them down for a future generation to ponder and continue the process.
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January 10, 2024
The 1923 General Election in Laois and Offaly: a remarkable outcome. Tar barrels in O’Connor Square for Pat Egan and a substantial vote for Republicans. An Offaly History contribution to the Decade of Centenaries. By Michael Byrne. Blog No 519, 30th August 2023

Laois Offaly is again to be divided into two three-seat constituencies according to the just announced electoral commission report. ‘This would be the first time that the Offaly constituency would fully align with its county boundary.’ For the 2016 General Election Laois and Offaly were divided and to the Offaly constituency was added 24 electoral divisions from North Tipperary. Laois-Offaly was adopted again for the 2020 general election. Now what was it like in the first Free State election in 1923 just 100 years ago? It was remarkable that the 1923 general election held on Monday 27 August 1923 was in general peaceful. It was only in early July 1923 that Ministers Milroy and Blythe spoke at a Cumann na nGaedheal (CnG) meeting in Tullamore in what was described by the Chronicle as scenes of an unprecedented character in the history of public meetings in Tullamore. The ‘supporters of Mr de Valera’ had posted anti-government posters about the town recalling the executions of Byrne and Geraghty, and also the three young men shot in Birr on a charge of armed robbery. On the office of the state solicitor, James Rogers, in High Street, Tullamore was pasted the words ‘Come inside and see the executioners’. Rogers would have been known both sides in the civil war as someone who defended Sinn Féin prisoners in the 1917–21 period. The newly appointed civic guards kept the peace between Cumann na Gaedheal supporters and supporters of the Republican IRA.[1]
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August 30, 2023
A new edition of the Annals of Clonmacnoise by Nollaig Ó Muraíle. Explore the link with Lemanaghan, Saturday 12 August, 2.30 p.m. Heritage Week Special no. 1. Blog No 512, 10th August 2023

Please see an invitation from the community in Lemanaghan about two events this Saturday 12 August as part of Heritage Week. We are publishing early this week as part of our Heritage Week Specials from 12 to 20 August. So keep in touch with us on Social Media and do call to Offaly History Centre and Offaly Archives as part of next week’s 2023 programme.

The community of Lemanagahan extend a special invitation to you for a truly remarkable event – the book launch of “The Annals of Clonmacnoise” where the links with Lemanaghan will be discussed by the author Nollaig Ó Muraíle.
Event Details:
Date: Saturday, August 12th, 2023
Time: 2:30 PM
Venue: The Granary, Boher, Ballycumber, Offaly, N35NX30 [beside St. Manchans Church]

“The Annals of Clonmacnoise” is a meticulously compiled chronicle that offers a panoramic view of Ireland’s past. Through its pages, you’ll be transported to a world of ancient tales, historical intrigue, and cultural treasures that have shaped the very essence of our heritage.

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August 10, 2023
Gaelic Assembly and Inaugurations Sites in County Offaly. By John Dolan. Blog No 488, 10th May 2023

Pre-Christian Irish Society

When Christians arrived in Ireland and started to write about the country they found an island of Gaelic kingdoms, perhaps up to 150, that was dynastic and the political organisation was based on the tuath. The tuath was the bedrock of the Gaelic political system and is described as a small kingdom. Most of what we know now has been gleaned from the Irish Law Tracts, commonly known as the Brehon Laws. Other written sources include the Hero and Saga Tales.
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May 10, 2023
The shooting of Jack Finlay of D.E. Williams, Tullamore, in a robbery at Lemanaghan, Ballycumber, County Offaly on 12 February 1923. By Jackie Finlay. A contribution to the Decade of Centenaries. Blog No 463, 11th Feb 2023

My story starts as a small boy growing up in Dillon Street, Tullamore in the 1940s. I remember seeing a cutting from a newspaper which I presumed was from a Tipperary weekly paper. The article covered a report of a feis and sports held in a field at the Golden Vale Hotel in Dundrum Co. Tipperary. It mentioned about the Misses Crummy from Ballydine taking part in the Irish dancing. A small report on the opposite side of the cutting was headed

Shooting near Birr. Charged at Birr with conspiring in 1923 to kill and killing John Finlay, Tullamore. Chas and Peter Molloy and Michael Coyne were sent for trial.

What is so unusual about this paper cutting from 1923?

My mother, one of the Misses Crummy mentioned in the article, was now working in Tullamore for T. English & Co. She met and married my father Thomas, brother of John Finlay some ten years later.
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February 11, 2023
A rare item for Offaly Archives: Hibernian Magazine for the year 1785. By Michael Byrne. Blog No 460, 31st Jan 2023

Offaly History have a vacancy for a qualified archivist at Offaly Archives (see our blog of 6 Jan. 2023 in regard to the post). Arriving for interview by air balloon would strike a chord. Speaking of which the balloon fire of 10 May 1785 is perhaps the best-known event in the history of Tullamore and yet there are few surviving accounts.

First there were almost no local newspapers serving the midlands at the time. Neither have diaries or letters survived of any of the townspeople of that period save one letter of 12 May 1785 published by way of reportage in the Hibernian Magazine of the fire that occurred on the fair day. This would have been on Tuesday 10 May 1785. The letter from the Tullamore correspondent is clearly the most useful and more informed than similar reports in Finn’s Leinster Journal and Faulkner’s Dublin Journal. Some of these reports put the loss at 130 houses and not 100 as advised to us by the letter writer. One other short note was penned by Molly Burgess (née Pennington) of the Methodist Community who lost their church (dated to 1760) in Swaddling Lane off Barrack/Patrick Street. This lane was also known as Ruddock’s Lane and post 1905 as Bride’s Lane. After the fire the Methodists build a new chapel or preaching house on the site of the present-day church. The current church was build 101 years after the first

on that site.
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January 31, 2023
Clara and Ballycumber men among twenty that went over the wall at Mountjoy in 1919. By Pat McLoughlin. A contribution to the Decade of Centenaries. Blog No 457, 21st Jan 2023

On the 29^th March 1919, 20 IRA Volunteers escaped from Mountjoy jail in broad day light. This escape was planned by Michael Collins on the outside and Piaras Béaslaí on the inside. A prison strike had been taking place in the jail in support of four prisoners who were not being afforded political status. In the lead up to the escape this strike was halted because the escape plan had a better chance of success with a quieter atmosphere in the prison.

The plan was to get Piaras Béaslaí and JJ Murphy both MPs and Padraig Fleming a volunteer from the Swan, Co. Laois out, followed by the four prisoners not being afforded political status. A list of men with long sentences was created and it was decided that men serving short sentences or who had sentences close to completion would not escape. Padraig Fleming had conducted an extraordinary fight for treatment as a political prisoner in Maryborough (Portlaoise) jail, enduring hunger strike, torture and physical mistreatment for months. In Mountjoy he was the Officer Commanding the political prisoners.

The escape was planned for 3 p.m. on Saturday March 29^th. On the previous Monday the four prisoners being denied political status broke away from the warders in charge of them and led them on a big chase around the field before being recaptured. As a result, they were kept in a metal cage for exercise and guarded by no less than eleven warders. If these precautions were continued their chances of escape were slight, while the presence of so many warders also presented a serious obstacle to the escape plan. On Fleming’s orders the four prisoners caused no more problems for the warders and the prison authorities were lulled into a false sense of security.
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January 21, 2023
The Last Bend: A Personal History of Peter Henry’s Travelling Shop. By Vincent Henry. Blog No 445, 7th Nov 2022

The stories in this book by Vincent Henry are based on real events and are as accurate, he states, as he could make them, with many factual accounts that document characters and happenings from the end of World War II to the beginning of the 1980s.

Prologue

Two months after the end of World War II, my parents, Peter Henry and Elizabeth O’Brien, who had recently married, made a far-reaching decision. Responding to an advertisement in the local Westmeath-Offaly Independent, they purchased a grocery shop with attached living premises, in Clara, County Offaly, right in the centre of Ireland. A Protestant lady called Miss Poff sold the house, shop and sizeable garden to my parents for the princely sum of £900. This was money my mother had received as an inheritance from her father.

My father, who was thirty-two years of age at the time, had spent his working life farming but wasn’t particularly fond of that occupation. He was the eldest male in his family, but his younger siblings were eager to take over the farm and he was more than happy to venture into a new career in the grocery business.

‘The Emergency,’ as World War II was known in Ireland, was still in operation at that time. Each family continued to use ration books for basic necessities such as tea, bread, butter and eggs. Showing his entrepreneurial spirit, my father circumvented the letter of the law by securing basic foodstuffs from the surrounding rural areas. He dealt directly with local farmers, and as a result was able to provide a lot of basics over and above ration allocation quotas.

Thus began our travelling shop – or ‘the van,’ as it was invariably called.
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December 7, 2022
Have an ‘Offaly History’ Christmas with over a dozen new books this year. Blog No 443, 30th Nov 2022

It has been a good year for new publications contributing to the history of County Offaly and helping us to get to know ourselves and our place better. When the annual report of the Tullamore Credit Union is dropped in the door you know Christmas is close. Seeing the cover and that the credit union is now sixty years old set us thinking of phases in our history. The year 1923 marked the end of the civil war. After a period of growth from 1891 to 1918 things got difficult. You could write off 1923–63 in terms of the economic engine. It was mostly switched off with exceptions in Tullamore Yarns, the Bacon Factory, Tullamore and the Williams and Egan businesses serving the midlands. The emerging Bord na Mona and ESB were providing jobs in west Offaly from the 1950s and east Offaly later, but it was the 1960s before a general ‘all boats’ lift up occurred. Equally you could say that since September 2001 (and the mobile phone) we have been living with anxiety which seems to grow every year especially since Brexit 2016 and now the war and climate change. Not to mention all the things we have to do online to comply with the requirements of banks and government. These books are all available from Offaly History, Bury Quay (and online http://www.offalyhistory) and our friends in Midland Books, Tullamore.
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November 30, 2022
The Mulock family of Bellair/Baile Ard, Ballycumber, County Offaly. By Eamonn Larkin. Blog No 435, 2nd Nov 2022

Specially contributed to mark the Decade of Centenaries in Offaly #DecadeofCentenaries @DeptCultureIRL @DepartmentofCultureIRL Tourism-Culture-Gaeltacht @offalyheritage @offalylibraries

Bellair or Ballyard is in the Parish of Lemanaghan, in the Barony of Garrycastle and has an area of 1,198 acres and borders Hall, Westmeath in the north, Cappanalosset in the west, Moorock to the east and Springpark to the south. The dominant feature is the Hill of Bellair, which is visible from adjoining counties. The most striking feature of the Hill is the wonderful plantation of Beech and Fir trees which were planted on the instructions of Rev. Doctor Mulock. The Mulock or Mullock family were not planters, but were Irish landowners, who originated in the North of Ireland in the lands of Dal Araide.

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November 2, 2022