Category: Offaly

• The firefighting Foley family of Ferbane and the supreme sacrifice at 9/11 New York. By Aidan Doyle. A contribution to the Commemorations Series 2025. Blog No 744, 6th Sept 2025

  The 1920’s saw high levels emigration to the United States from Ireland. Among those crossing the Atlantic Ocean was James Foley from Endrim near Ferbane. James was 21 when he boarded the RMS Cedric at Cobh enroute to New York in March 1927.

  His brother Peter had arrived in the Big Apple a year earlier. In 1929 the Wall Street Crash heralded the end of the Roaring Twenties and the beginning of the Great Depression. Offalians in the city found mutual support in the Offalyman’s Association, an organisation in which the Foley family were closely associated.

  James was living on Milton Street in the Greenpoint district of Brooklyn when he applied for US citizenship in 1933. After his marriage to Mary Egan, the daughter of Mr & Mrs Lawerence Egan from Kilcormac, the couple lived at Inwood on Manhathan and later in the Bronx.

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  September 6, 2025

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• Artist and art teacher Oliver Connolly, Tullamore. No 16 in a series on the paintings and drawings heritage of County Offaly, 1750-2000, explored through the works of artists from or associated with County Offaly. By Michael Byrne. Blog No. 743, 3 Sept. 2025

  Oliver Connolly must be one of the best-known artists in the midlands given that he has taught art to thousands of children and adults largely drawn from the wider Tullamore area for over forty years. Practising very much as a topographical artist it is a pleasure to include his work in this series.

  Oliver Connolly was kind enough to make available a series of drawings of the buildings of Tullamore for the publication A walk through Tullamore issued in December 1979. Now long out of print it was the first historical study of an Offaly town to provide illustrations by an artist since Thomas Lalor Cooke issued his Picture of Parsonstown (Birr) in 1826. We have already featured that book in this series.

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  September 3, 2025

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• The Birr family of George Morrison of Mise Eire fame, died August 2025, aged 102. No 15 in a series on the arts heritage of County Offaly, 1750-2000, explored through the works of artists from or associated with County Offaly. By Michael Byrne. Offaly History Blog No 737, 6th August 2025

  One of Offaly’s pioneering photographers living in Birr in the late nineteenth century was George Morrison, son of Edward, both were jewellers in the town in Duke now Emmet Square. George Morrison 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 who has just died at the age of 102. It can be said that George Morrison inherited a tradition commenced in the family by his grandfather, but following in the footsteps of many others including Mary, third countess of Rosse.

  Another Birr neighbour of the Morrison family was 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. The Chronicle was one of the first provincial papers to use the block process and Wright had been sent to London to study the process.

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  August 6, 2025

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• Irish personalities depicted in the Williams calendars in the 1950s and 1960s, based on commissioned drawings from Irish artists. By Michael Byrne. No 14 in a series on the paintings and drawings heritage of County Offaly, 1750-2000, explored through the works of artists from or associated with County Offaly. Blog No 735, 30th July 2025

  Desmond Williams (1908–1970), a director of the Williams Group of companies spent over thirty years with the company in promoting Tullamore Dew whiskey, Irish Mist liqueur and the company’s wine distribution network. He died prematurely in 1970 at the height of the sales decade for Irish Mist with exports to over 100 countries.

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  July 30, 2025

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• Liam C. Martin (1934–98), Kilbeggan born artist and his work on the D.E. Williams buildings in Tullamore. By Michael Byrne. No 13 in a series on the paintings and drawings heritage of County Offaly, 1750-2000, explored through the works of artists from or associated with County Offaly. Blog No 734, 26th July 2025

  Liam C. Martin was born in Kilbeggan in 1934 so he must have known all about the Locke’s distillery in that town and the associated distilling history of the Williams family in Tullamore. In about 1980 he was commissioned by the Williams Group and the late Edmund Williams to record the Williams buildings in Tullamore for posterity. The drawings were printed in an issue of about 25 copies and presented in a specially printed folder. There are some of the drawings in Offaly Archives and complete sets in private collections. It was the act of a far seeng man to have the legacy recorded and Liam C. Martin was a great choice.

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  July 26, 2025

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• Lady Beaujolois Bury (1824–1903) the prayerful artist of Charleville Castle, Tullamore. By Michael Byrne. No 12 in a series on the paintings and drawings heritage of County Offaly, 1750-2000, explored through the works of artists from or associated with County Offaly. Blog No 733, 23rd July 2025

  Beaujolois Elenora Catherine, the only daughter of the second earl of Charleville (1801–51) and his wife Harriet Charlotte Beaujolois Bury née Campbell (1803–48) was born on 4 December 1824 and survived almost as long in years as her later cousin, Col.  Howard Bury. In case anyone would think that the name Beaujolois is in recollection of some Bacchanalian festive evening we should know that the unusual name was (as De Beer writes) due to her having as her godfather, Louis Charles d’Orleans, Comte de Beaujolais, brother of Louis Phillipe.[1] There is much about this connection in the Charleville Papers in Nottingham University. Beaujolois married Captain Hastings Dent in 1853 and died in 1903. Dent died in 1864. Lady Beaujolais had been married for only eleven years and was a widow for almost forty.

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  July 23, 2025

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• Fergal MacCabe architect, town planner, artist and heritage brand ambassador for Tullamore. No 11 in a series on the paintings and drawings heritage of County Offaly, 1750-2000, explored through the works of artists from or associated with County Offaly. By Michael Byrne. Blog No 732, 19th July 2025

  Fergal MacCabe is an architect, town planner and a topographical artist. He has managed to combine all three disciplines in his career. His fondness in recent years for the capriccio style of painting in many ways pulls together all his skills in how he views buildings and sees them in context. In his capriccio style Fergal MacCabe draws on real architectural elements and it is their juxtaposition that is whimsical. Yet he has regard to his own aesthetics, architectural and town planning skills in the buildings he selects and how he brings these buildings together.

  For his jovial attitude to life we can probably thank his mother Winifred, who was by all accounts a character up to early passing in 1960.

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  July 19, 2025

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• Another brisk walk this Saturday in Tullamore to visit Harbour Street and the Canal Quarter. Tullamore Tour Saturday 12 July, 11 a.m. to 12 30 p.m. to include Harbour Street, Deane Place, Market Square, Gas Works Lane, Canal Harbour, O’Carroll Street, Store Street, Benburb Street and Chapel Lane. Blog No 729, 9th July 2025

  Walk around Tullamore’s canal quarter with Michael Byrne as guide. Find out where was Charles Street, Deane Place and Gas Works Lane. Where did Lord Tullamore live before the family moved to Charleville in 1740. When did the canal arrive. Was there a barracks there before that? Where was Pentland’s Distillery. Who was the Thomas in Thomas Street? Find out where the largest meeting in Tullamore was held and why. Take care and thanks to our yellow-jacketed stewards Shaun and Pat and to Helen and friends for assistance with the teas.

  We meet at Offaly History Centre, Bury Quay (beside new Aldi and Tullamore Old Warehouse restaurant) for ease of parking from 10 30 a.m. All are welcome and the tour is free. Tea/Coffee/scones available from Offaly History Centre from 10. 30 a.m. Bathrooms available. We walk to Harbour Street through the new Aldi car park (over the former Williams oats store and Irish Mist warehouses and into Offally (sic) Street or Wheelwright Lane).

  Harbour Street

  Developed over the period from 1800 to 1825 it could be described as the opening to the canal quarter facilitating access to the new streets at Deane Place, Market Square, Chapel Street, Store Street, Gas Works Lane and O’Carroll Street. Surprisingly for such a great artery it was never an important trading street. The harbour takes up much of the eastern end of the street together with the great distillery of the 1820s – now the Granary apartments. The original name here was Charles Street and this can be seen carved in stone on the corner with O’Carroll Street.

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  July 9, 2025

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• More light on Charles Jervas (1675–1739), a leading portrait painter from Shinrone, County Offaly. No 9 in a series on the paintings and drawings heritage of County Offaly, 1750-2000, explored through the works of artists from or associated with County Offaly. By Michael Byrne. Blog No 728, 5th July 2025

  An article in the current edition of the Irish Georgian Society journal sheds more light on the Shinrone-born portrait painter Charles Jervas.[1] He was born in 1675 (or perhaps 1670) near Shinrone, King’ County (now County Offaly) and about eight miles south of Birr (Parsonstown) and was the son of John and Elizabeth Jervas (sometimes Jarvis, Jervis, Gervase and Gervaise). His mother was a Baldwin of Corolanty, Shinrone who were Cromwellian grantees. The old castle there (there are still ruins of it) was replaced in 1672 (other say 1698) by a large house – modified again in the eighteenth century and still standing. Jervas’s father, a Cromwellian, soldier-settler is said to have emigrated to America in 1688 to avoid the troubles then brewing due to the accession of a Catholic monarch and the changing power structure in Ireland as a result. He is said to have returned to Shinrone in the late 1690s and died there soon after, possibly in 1709. Another source has it that he died in America, but this seems unlikely.[2]

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  July 5, 2025

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• George Petrie (1790–1866) a key landscape painter for Offaly’s heritage of ruins on the landscape: Clonmacnoise. No 8 in a series on the paintings and drawings heritage of County Offaly, 1750-2000, explored through the works of artists from or associated with County Offaly. By Michael Byrne. Blog No 726, 28th June 2025

  Let Erin remember the days of old

  Alongside John O’Donovan and Eugene O’Curry the name of George Petrie (1790–1866) will forever be remembered as one of Ireland’s greatest scholars of the first half of the nineteenth century. It was a time when tremendous work was done for Irish archaeology and history. Petrie was a major figure in the historical research section of the Ordnance Survey.  Jeanne Sheehy in her The Rediscovery of Ireland’s Past 1830–1930 states that he was the founder of systematic and scientific archaeology in Ireland.

  Petrie was involved in the work of the Ordnance Survey from 1833 for  ten years. He was very much a polymath and in his late years published a volume of Irish music arising from his efforts to collect  and preserve old Irish music. 

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  June 28, 2025

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