offalyhistoryblog

Category: Birr

George Petrie (1790–1866), a key landscape painter for Offaly’s ‘heritage of ruins on the landscape’. No 3 in a series on the paintings and drawings of County Offaly, 1750-2000, explored through the works of artists from or associated with County Offaly. Blog No 709, 15th April 2025

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.
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April 15, 2025
Parsonstown/Birr Minor Model School.By Joseph Doyle. No 10 in the 2025 Anniversaries Series. Blog No 701, 15th March 2025

Between 1849 and 1867 a nationwide network of almost thirty Model Schools was established by the Board of National Education. These schools were under the exclusive control of the Board and it was expected that attendance would be drawn from the various denominations to be found in the area of each school’s location. The primary aim of these institutions was to provide a regulated system of training for candidate teachers. Due to a growing reluctance on the part of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and clergy to be associated with these institutions where they had no input into management, the establishments were decidedly skewed towards Ulster. This became even more pronounced when a scheme for the establishment of those schools termed Minor Model Schools – as opposed to the more prestigious District Model Schools – was put in train. Of the seven such schools, only one – Parsonstown Minor Model School – was located outside of Ulster. As such it was an exotic.
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March 15, 2025
The Morrison family, jewellers, creative artists and photographers, Emmet Square, Birr – prominent members of the Birr Methodist community. By Michael Byrne. No 9 in the 2025 Anniversaries Series. Blog No 699, 8th March 2025

The Changing face of Birr in the 1900 to 1920 period will be the focus of a talk arranged by the Birr Historical Society for Monday 10 March at 8 p.m. in the County Arms Hotel. The illustrated lecture will focus on change in that period and the record of it provided by the early photographers and other sources. Once such was George Morrison son of Edward, both were jewellers and in addition George was a trained photographer who had opened a studio in his Birr jewellery shop in 1894. He was grandfather to the now acclaimed documentary artist George Morrison of Mise Éire (1959) fame. Another neighbour, Archie Wright of nearby Cumberland House, Birr, had also trained in photography and would assist his father in producing photographs weekly for the local King’s County Chronicle newspaper from 1885. At the time an innovation in the provincial press.
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March 8, 2025
The Beginning of the Gas Supply in Birr/Parsonstown. By Martin Hoctor. No. 8 in the Offaly History Anniversaries Series. Blog No 697, 1st March 2025

The first indication that Birr/ Parsonstown (as often called in the 19th cent.) had used gas to illuminate the town during the dark winter months was an editorial comment that appeared in the King’s County Chronicle of January 9 1850^[1] that extolled how the use of portable gas had made the town safer to move around at night.
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March 1, 2025
Mixing a Bazaar, Religion, Politics, Sport and Song in West Offaly during 1897. By Aidan Doyle. No 2 in the 2025 Offaly Anniversaries Series. Blog No 688, 15th Jan, 2025

Sometimes researching history is like trying to make a jigsaw that’s missing too many pieces. Sometimes, someone throws a few pieces from a different jigsaw in, just to complicate matters even more. This one such story.

New Arrivals in the neat little town

In May 1896 the Midland Tribune reported…

‘Tuesday last was celebrated by great festivity and rejoicing at Ferbane, the occasion being the arrival of four Sisters of the Order of St. Joseph to found a Convent in the neat little town. The nuns came at the invitation of the esteemed Parish Priest, Very Rev. Canon Sheridan who had prepared for their accommodation in the large vacant building beside the Brusna Bridge’

A Priest and his Parish

Canon Patrick Sherdian was a man who got things done, but he liked things done his way. Ordained in 1855 and stationed at Ferbane from 1875 until his death in 1899, the Canon interested himself in every aspect of his parishioners’ lives. His time in Ferbane was occasioned by conflict, be it with some members of the local home rule organisation, the Board of Guardians or his own curates. Nevertheless, his achievements were substantial. In 1894, he led the successful campaign to save the Clara to Banagher Railway branch line. Having built a national school in High Street, he set out to construct the Church of the Immaculate Conception at Ferbane. Work progressed quickly and the Canon set to work on raising the estimated £7,000 required to complete the job. To accomplish this, he organised a massive raffle and a Grand Bazaar to be held on the last week of May in 1897.
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January 15, 2025
The first public elections by secret ballot in King’s County/Offaly were held in Birr and Tullamore in October 1872. Offaly History Anniversaries Series, no. 1 of 2025. Blog No 687, 8th January 2025

The year 2024 saw the local and general elections held and, of course, voting was by secret ballot. The polling centres of 2024 were remarkably quiet as if one were attending confession in a quiet corner of a church. Long gone were the days when a glass of Birr or Banagher or Bernie Daly’s Tullamore whiskey would be proffered by candidates or their agents to thirsty voters. The right of secret ballot extends back to 1872 and the Ballot Act. Before that time voting was in public and held in the towns in Offaly of Tullamore, Birr and Philipstown (Daingean).The Birr-based Chronicle newspaper had thought to describe the polling booth as the voter having to go ‘behind a screen, a la Punch and Judy mode, and there make the sign of the cross with a pencil on the voting paper opposite the names of the favourite men’. This was 50 years before the STV (single transferable vote was used in parliamentary elections in 1922 (see note 5 below) The Chronicle had noted in 1872 the emergence of the polling districts and the practice before 1872 in parliamentary elections:

Formerly, [before 1800] the county sent six members to the Irish Parliament, two for the county at large, and two for each of the boroughs, Philipstown and Banagher; but since the Union its representation has been limited to the two members for the county, and in 1836 the number of registered votes amounted to 1700. The election under the new Ballot Act will, of necessity, assume a different form, and will not be confined to Tullamore, Parsonstown and Philipstown.
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January 8, 2025
New books on Offaly History in 2024: another good crop. Blog No 681, 15th Dec 2024

The year 2024 was another good year for publications on Offaly history with overviews of County Offaly towns, books on Tullamore, Birr and a musician from Killeigh who acquired fame in the United States. We also had Cloneygowan, canals, peat, a Feehan bibliography and natural history.
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December 15, 2024
The changing face of Offaly and Kinnitty in the early 1900s: launch by John Clendennen T.D. of a new book featuring Kinnitty at Giltraps’s, Kinnitty on Thursday 19 Dec. at 8 30 p.m. Blog No 680, 14th Dec 2024

Kinnitty Parish can now celebrate having two TDs, not to mention so many of of its young men on the first Offaly team to win an All Ireland back in 1924. All part of recent celebrations. What was the village like a generation earlier in the 1890s and earlier 1900s? To find out more come to the launch of The Changing Face of Offaly towns in the early 1900s published by Offaly History and for which local woman Grace Clendennen contributed an essay. Please note the launch time of 8 30 p.m. (ed.)

From the Midland Tribune of 5 Dec. 2024

Grace Clendennen writes of Kinnitty in 1901 and 1911

Like the 1901 census, the majority of Kinnitty residents in the 1911 were born in the King’s County. There were 225 people recorded in 49 houses[1]. Roman Catholic was the most common religion stated but a sizable number, 42 out 225, stated their religion to be other than Catholic[2]. Akin to the census of 1901, eight properties were listed as ‘first-class’. Two of the properties were listed as general shops. In 1901 Patrick Egan and his wife were recorded as shopkeepers. A shop assistant, a domestic servant and a yard man lived with the Egan family.
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December 14, 2024
22 Bussing in the Midlands from Tullamore to Birr, Banagher and back again: Lennox Robinson (1886–1958) on tour in the early Fifties. No 22 in the Offaly History Anniversaries Series. Blog No 671, 20th Nov 2024

At one time I didn’t think, but now I definitely do think, that the pleasantest way of seeing Ireland is from a seat in a bus. I do not mean one of those eight-day bus tours, conducted and excellent and comfortable as they may be, I mean the couple of hours spent bussing from one country town to another. [So announced Lennox Robinson in an article first published in the Irish Press and later in his compilation I sometimes think (Dublin, 1956). He would possibly have been amused to know that bussing has another meaning nowadays when students get together in a college dorm. Robinson was not inspired by some of the women who joined his Tullamore to Banagher and Birr bus. Now read on.]

If you travel in a friend’s car, you are cribbed and confined, he or she has to make talk with you and you have to return the ball of conversation; a train nearly always looks for and finds, the most poor and uninteresting country to travel through, and when it reaches an interesting town, Portarlington, for instance, is careful to stop a mile away from the place, John Gilpinish.

But a country bus swirls along, is very swift, and yet can be leisurely, picks up a parcel here and delivers a bundle of papers there.

We are, back in the old coaching days : the conductor knows everyone-or nearly everyone-and has a friendly word for each on-comer or down-getter. He sets down Mrs. Maloney at the Cross and helps an old Jack who is off to spend the day, his pension-day, in the town: yet he can be severe and inexorable on the question of accepting bikes.

I am beginning slowly to fall in love with the midlands slowly, because there is nothing tempestuous or flashy about them. The vivacity of Kerry and Donegal, the cuteness of Cork and Antrim-these are lacking, and instead there is a lovely autumn-afternoon placidity, golden and Veronese-woman-like atmosphere. The very names of sleepy; they are bees in August Lime-trees: Birr, Clogher, Ferbane, Clara, Mountrath.
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November 20, 2024
The changing face of Offaly towns in the early 1900s, beautifully illustrated with historic pictures, to be launched on Friday 15 November, 7.30 p.m. at Offaly History Centre Tullamore by Cllr Tony McCormack, cathaoirleach Offaly County Council. Blog No 668, 9th Nov 2024

The changing face of Offaly towns in the early 1900s: An illustrated history edited by Michael Byrne with contributions from Paul Barber, Stephen Callaghan, Grace Clendennen, Kevin Corrigan, Michael Goodbody, Ger Murphy, John Powell, Laura Price, Ciarán Reilly and Brendan Ryan (Offaly History, Tullamore, 2024, 368 pp). Available from Offaly History Centre and Midland Books Tullamore and online at www.offalyhistory.com. ISBN 978-1-909822-38-2 (hard back), €27.99. The book will be launched at Offaly History Centre, Bury Quay, Tullamore – beside the new Aldi and Old Warehouse. It is already available at the Centre, online at http://www.offalyhistory.com and at Midland Books, Tullamore. If you cannot attend in Tullamore we have a launch at Giltrap’s of Kinnitty on Thursday 21 Nov. at 7. 30 p.m. We will have copies in Bridge Centre for the Christmas Sale 14 to 24 December.
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November 9, 2024