The name of Kathleen Cowan is virtually synonymous with accounts of the suffrage movement in Co Offaly during its most vital phase. As secretary of the Birr Suffrage Society, she reported on its activities in the local and suffrage press, organized and spoke at meetings in the town and throughout the county, and represented it at suffrage gatherings in Dublin. Beyond the fact of her involvement, however, little is known of her background. I was, therefore, particularly pleased to come on her name in the context of some unrelated research, and to realise that *my* Kathleen Cowan was the person described by historian Margaret Hogan as ‘tireless in the cause of women’s issues’ and one of the moving spirits in the campaign locally.[1] This short account of Cowan’s life is intended to fill in some of the blanks in her story.
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.
I am always intrigued, and fascinated to learn of a person, who in their time was famous, but somehow or other has faded into the mists of time. Such a person is our subject Joseph Stirling Coyne. He was during his lifetime a very famous dramatist, writing upwards of 100 plays, a theatre reviewer and one of the first editors of Punch magazine. His story is worth telling and hopefully this blog may restore him to public conscientiousness, especially in his native town.
He was born in 1803 in Birr, then known as Parsonstown. The year 1803 was a pretty good year to be born, for he shares it with Gerald Griffin, John Henry Newman and James Clarence Mangan no less, and of course with his fellow Birr man the poet John De Jean Frazer.
The founding of Tullamore Credit Union in April 1963 was one of the best things that ever happened in Tullamore. The same can be said of the credit union movement founded in Ireland in the late 1950s. How did it come about? How was it sustained? Who were the leaders, managers and staff at the front line? The success of a community-based, people-centred and voluntary effort is all the more relevant today when people often have only machines to turn to in the provision of services and some feel disenfranchised both at local and central government level. ‘We ourselves’ was heard a lot in this ‘Decade of Centenaries’. It was also the cry of the credit union founders in the Lemass-led early 1960s when practical steps were taken to stem the flow of emigration and provide employment opportunities at home through the provision of credit where it could be useful.
This week saw the launch of John Feehan’s latest work Camcor the River of Birr published by Offaly County Council. It could be argued that it is a book that he has been working on for a lifetime as he was reared on the banks of the Camcor in Birr town and has been living close to it for the majority of his life, exploring and observing over the decades. While it is the river associated with Birr the book sets out the formation of the geology of the tributaries in the Slieve Bloom and follows the progress of the river to where it meets the Little Brosna in Birr Demesne. As with all John Feehan’s books it is a masterpiece in presenting knowledge about all aspects of the landscape in a digestible and engaging format. The book is A4 in format, softback, full colour, and extensively illustrated with upwards of 200 photographs, charts, maps and drawings – all carefully selected. Some of the chapters open with double page spreads and the overall effect is pleasing as there is no sense of clutter. Full marks to the author, designers and printers of this important addition to Offaly’s local and natural history. John Feehan has been a major contributor to Offaly’s growing library of publications since his seminal Slieve Bloom in 1979.
The contents of the book are wide ranging with chapters of The Course of the Camcor, The main tributary, the Nature of Rivers, Natural History, Mills and Distilleries, Draining the Camcor basin, The River in our Service, Crossing the river and the bridges of the Camcor and the concluding Afterward appropriately titled ‘Looking ahead’.
The ‘Second Reformation’ initiated by Magee was marked by:
An exhibition charting the development of the ‘Second Reformation’, one of the most significant periods of nineteenth-century Ireland, is currently running in Birr Library and is open to the public. Furthermore, a public lecture by Dr Ciarán McCabe (QUB) in Birr Library on Wednesday 5 April (at 6.30pm) will discuss the ‘Second Reformation’ (including the infamous Birr Crotty Schism) and the development of the exhibition.
Bell Hill is a small townland close to the village of Clareen, Co. Offaly. The Bell Hill itself is situated on high ground with good views in all directions. A large bush sits on the hill and is known locally as the Bell Bush. There are a few other locations in Ireland called Bell Hill.
The story of Bell Hill starts with St. Ciarán of Saighir and is mentioned in nearly all of the Lives of the Saint. The story links St. Ciarán with St. Patrick and is probably best told in the Life of Ciarán as translated by Ingrid Sperber from the Codex Kilkenniensis, held in Marsh’s Library, Dublin.
In this Latin Life we find that when Ciarán ‘heard of the existence of the Christian religion in the city of Rome, he left Ireland and travelled thither. On his arrival, he was baptised and instructed in the Catholic faith, he remained there for 20 years, reading the Sacred Scriptures, collecting holy books, and studiously learning ecclesiastical rules. And when the people of Rome saw the wisdom and discretion, the piety and faith of the holy man Ciaran, he was ordained bishop and afterwards sent to Ireland, his native country.
And St Patrick, the Archbishop of all Ireland, met him on the road in Italy, and God’s two saints rejoiced in their meeting…. at that time St. Patrick was not yet a bishop, but he was later ordained archbishop by Pope Celestine and sent to preach in Ireland… and Patrick said to Ciaran, ‘go before me to the centre of Ireland, to a spring called Fuaran, on the border between the Southern and the Northern Irish. Build a monastery there, for there will be your estate and your resurrection’. St Ciaran said to him, ‘the location of this spring is unknown to me’. St Patrick answered him, ‘dear brother, proceed without anxiety, and God will be with you. Accept as your travelling companion this bell, which will remain dumb until you arrive at the same spring. When you have reached it, the bell will emit a clear sound and ring sweetly.… when St Ciaran reached Ireland, God directed him to the spring called Fuaran, and there the bell of the holy man rang clearly. This bell is called Bardan Ciaran and is kept and greatly honoured in the monastery of St Ciaran and throughout his entire diocese’.
So we are soon reaching the day when the new Esker Arts Centre building will open in Tullamore. Is it the first public building since 2013 and the new bridges on the canal. Before that we had the town library (2011), the regional hospital, the town park, bypass, courthouse and the swimming pool. When Revd Dean Craig performed the opening ceremony for the newly built courthouse in June 1927 (after its burning in 1922) he could not remember when such an opening had taken place of a public building and that stretched back to his father’s coming to Tullamore in 1869. So these openings are important and give rise to a good deal of pleasure, pride in our place and hope for the future.
The arts in Tullamore was never a strong point when compared with towns like Birr and Athlone. That is in the past and we now look forward to a programme of events for 2023 and beyond. The arts centre project in Tullamore has gone through vicissitudes since it was first planned in the 2000s and dropped as late as 2014 when the budget was too high but less than it is today. . Now the new building is in the former Kilroy’s store in High Street and not in Kilbride Park as was once intended. Before that the library district was considered in a €20 million plan that was dropped after 2007. In its style, as to the exterior, the new arts center bears more resemblance to the Wexford opera house (2010). Unlike the great local public buildings, such as the courthouse (1835-1922-1927-2007) or the jail of 1830 (destroyed in 1922 by the retreating Republicans during a disastrous civil war) the new arts centre is built on the site of a shopping precinct since the 1880s and earlier.
The pavements were not great but the buildings were so fine. Bank of Ireland front of 1870 (now Hoey & Denning) and Ulster Bank (1890s). The Kilroy front was c. 1880.
The now arts building occupied three generations of the Kilroy family in the years 1908-2007. It was a great hardware store and early made a reputation that was consolidated under the young Dermot Kilroy whose coming into full management of the business coincided with the start-up of RTE Television. He and his father, James A. and son Derry Kilroy were all master marketeers – something that will not be lost on the news arts administration whose job it will be to make the new Esker Arts Centre a viable and attractive proposition. And no doubt it can be.
The new arts centre is in Tullamore central with a strong location in the High Street where so much business was done in the past and good parking in public and private carparks nearby. No doubt it will have coffee and liquor facilities. It would make sense to secure the adjoining Ulster Bank building if the bank would be disposed to sell at a reasonable price in recognition of its contribution to Tullamore since 1893. We say this because the bank and Kilroy’s (now the arts centre) were part of one property from the 1800s and had a common landlord in the Crofton family, long associated with Tullamore. Their main home was at Merryfield – a lost demesne on the site of what is now Charleville Lake (1809-12), but they also had 29 High Street (from the 1930s the Roberts garage).
The old shop front was considered the finest in Tullamore in the 1880s. This picture possibly about 1957 with J.A. Kilroy at the shop entrance. The Carragher pharmacy appears to be under renovation.(more…)
I dreamed of someday going to Ireland and exploring my ancestry. But I am afraid to fly; not only because of feeling trapped in a plane high in the sky over the ocean but because of the pain I have experienced in my ears on domestic flights.
Can you believe it, this past November my husband got me on an airplane? And it did not require knocking me out. Just painkillers, nasal spray, decongestant, chewing gum, hard candies, a small teddy bear to clutch, and a prescription for an anxiety pill, nothing drastic. The ear pain was still present, and the nervous shaking was only subdued by continuous prayer.
This was my first trip outside the United States, and I was pleasantly surprised by the warmth of the people of Ireland.
We took this journey to launch a book I co-edited with two gentlemen from Dublin, Terry Moylan, and Padraig Turley. I met them through the internet when double-checking a fact about my ancestor, John De Jean Frazer, for the novel I am writing about him and his son-in-law, Thomas Clarke Luby.
Terry and Padraig were starting a book to republish the poems of Frazer, my third great-grandfather. My novel includes some of those poems and I had wanted to honor him myself and bring him out of the cobwebs and into the light. I was happy to accept the invitation to join these gentlemen on an eye-opening adventure.
Fr Colm Gaynor was a Catholic curate in Birr in the years 1922–37. Originally from Tyone, Nenagh his valuable memoir was published in 2003 and included with that of Sean Gaynor and Eamonn Gaynor. The book was published by Geography Publications as Memoirs of a Tipperary family: the Gaynors of Tyone, 1887–2000. It is available from Offaly History Centre to buy or to read at Bury Quay, Tullamore.
The three young Tullamore men were William Conroy (20), Patrick Cunningham (22) and Colm Kelly (18) and they were executed by the Free State military in the grounds of Birr Castle on 26 January 1923. They were from poor families in the town and had no one of influence to speak for them. It is said that a fourth young man was allowed to go free.
Writing later to the Military Service Pensions Board about the execution of three men, Sean McGuinness, brigade O/C and on the Republican side said :
The three had been expelled from their IRA active service unit for some minor misdemeanours. McGuinness wrote that the men returned to Tullamore, where they “remained unemployed and I presume penniless and without a smoke”. He claimed they were executed by the Free State for a “few minor robberies”, though the court records show they were summarily executed for armed robbery. McGuinness suggested that “their crime was nothing compared with that of the great betrayal of the Republic by the authority responsible for the killing of these three youths”.
Such was the legacy of bitterness understandably arising from the Civil War.[1]
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