In January 1953 Clara and Tullamore district was introduced to its very own ‘bat mobile’ the recently launched sports car, the Jaguar XK120. After the austerity years of WW II its sleek design and incredible speed was said to have inspired the creators of the fictitious ‘bat mobile’ in 1966. It was owned by Larry Egan of Gayfield, Clonminch Road. Larry was joint managing director (with his relation Paddy [P. V.] Egan, Cloncon and later Spollanstown) of the firm P. & H. Egan Limited headquartered on Tullamore’s Bridge Street. Their relation and good friend, Clara’s ace motorcar and motorcycle racer Charlie O’Hara raced it for them.
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Tullamore in the Sixties launch – pictures capturing the period. Blog No 678, 7th Dec 2024
Tullamore in the Sixties was launched to great acclaim on 6 December. Most of the contributors living in Ireland participated in the proceedings with three to five minute talks. The book was launched by architect, town planner and artist Fergal MacCabe. A few of his own watercolours grace the contents of this 450 page book with extensive essays (from 18 writers) and 350 pictures. The book is available from Offaly History Centre, Bury Quay, Tullamore and Midland Books and the pop up at Bridge Centre. It can also be ordered on line.
Some of the contributors to Tullamore in the Sixties Some of the pictures capture the period:
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Kilcruttin’s Forgotten People. Recapturing memories of Tullamore in the Sixties by Terry Adams. Blog No 676, 3rd Dec 2024
One of the essays in the new book on Tullamore in the Sixties to be launched on Friday 6 December 2024 at 7.30 p.m. at Offaly History Centre (beside the new Aldi store in Tullamore, all welcome) is that by Terry Adams on his beloved Cormac Street, Tullamore where his family have been located for 150 years or thereabouts. Terry’s is an evocative piece and one of 29 essays in this new book on Tullamore with over 300 pictures.
I stood with my back to Lloyd’s field, surrounded by memories of childhood and family. On my left, back towards the town, my Grandmother Egan’s family home, The Hall, now the municipal council offices, nestles behind its railings and garden. Opposite, on the junction of Cormac Street and O’Moore Street, stands the building I was born in, now home to my brother Brian. My Adams grandparents’ house faces me across the street. Further along the imposing old courthouse and jail buildings sit in their solemn majesty.
The view from Kilcruttin Hill courtesy of Fergal MacCabe Cormac Street, my street, even if I have not lived here since 1981. When I think of home it is to this street, to these buildings, my mind roams. It is a major part of me, of my identity, of who I am, of who I always will be. I look back towards the town centre, the street has changed little since my childhood. The house exteriors, excluding The Hall, have not been radically altered but most of their old occupants have left us: my father, also Terry, Frank and Carmel Egan, Ray and Sylvia Courtney, Ray and Emer McCann, Mr and Mrs McNeill, Mr and Mrs Brennan, Bridie Byrne, Jimmy and Marcella Byrne, Mrs Behan, Paddy and Mrs. Lloyd……
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Tullamore in the Sixties. A new book of essays on Tullamore in an eventful decade, just published. Blog No 674, 29th Nov 2024
This volume of essays brings together the contributions of eighteen people who kept a keen eye on developments in Tullamore in the 1960s. Perhaps none more so than the late Joe Kenny who came to Tullamore in the 1950s as a vocational schoolteacher and was held in high esteem for his sound judgement and abilities as an impartial chairman. In that capacity he was the inaugural president of Tullamore Credit Union in 1963. Fergal MacCabe, as a Tullamore native, with a professional life in architecture and town planning in Dublin, brings a unique contribution by way of his recollections of Tullamore in the 1950s and his review of the first town plan of the 1960s. The same can be said of Vincent Hussey as a planning officer with Offaly County Council with his recollections of Tullamore since the 1960s. Niall Sweeney, an engineer and former Offaly County Manager, takes a close look at the provision of public infrastructure in Tullamore over the period from the 1960s to 2014. The late Jack Taaffe, as town clerk in Tullamore in 1970–72 demonstrates just how underfunded urban authorities were in those years. He went on to become county manager in Westmeath presiding over the progress of the county from 1981 to 1988. Michael Byrne looks at the history of business in Tullamore and sought to cover the principal enterprises of the 1960s in manufacturing, distribution, shopping, entertainment and dancing. Noel Guerin, as a former employee of ‘the bacon factory’, was able to write of a company that employed up to 100 people in Tullamore over forty years and made the name of the town famous for the Tullamore sausage. Ronnie Colton, from his own extensive involvement in the motor business brings a knowledge from the garage floor and sales yard that few others can match.
Miss Savage, a well-loved teacher in the Mercy primary school Alan Mahon, as the grandson of an innovative cinema proprietor, recalls two cinemas in Tullamore whose cultural contribution is perhaps forgotten now but was all important to the people of Tullamore and district over a period of sixty or seventy years, if one takes it from the commencement of the Foresters cinema (later the Grand Central) in 1914.
Sport, so important to so many, brings us to the essay by Kevin Corrigan who looks at a formative decade leading on to the GAA Senior Football All-Ireland victories in the 1970s. Kevin had the challenging job of reducing to a short essay what could fill twenty books were one to address in detail each of the sporting activities that came to the forefront in the sixties.
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The Education Inquiry 1824-26, – its Context and its findings for Killoughey, County Offaly. By Damian White. No 23 in the Offaly Anniversaries Series. Blog No 672, 23rd Nov 2024
The 1824 Survey of Irish schools and the reason it was carried out must be put in context. That context probably can be traced back to the Gavelkind Act, enacted in the Protestant Irish Parliament 120 years earlier in 1704. This act brought into force what became known infamously as the Penal Laws.
The Penal Laws were intended to protect the interests of the Protestant Ascendency from any future threat from the Catholic majority. Amongst these laws was one stating that “No Catholic may attend a university, keep a school, or send his children to be educated abroad. £10 reward is offered for the discovery of a Roman catholic teacher.”
These laws were severe, but as time went by, were more observed in the breach. Teachers, many of whom lived an itinerant lifestyle for fear of discovery and arrest, moved around the country, being sheltered by families in the areas where they would provide lessons for local children, often in outdoor, secluded areas, protected from view by hedges and the alert observations of a well-positioned look-out. This led to the use of the term ‘hedge school’, the convenor of which was known as the ‘Hedge School Master’.
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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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From ‘Tay Lane’ to a new Aldi store in Tullamore town centre. The four layers of development since 1790 – just 234 years ago. No 23 in the Offaly History Anniversaries Series By Michael Byrne. Blog No 669, 13th Nov 2024
Very soon now Tullamore will have a new Aldi Store at Tay Lane/O’Connell Street, Tullamore. This is the company’s second store in the town/The first was opened in 2000 at Cloncollog and preceded Tesco in 2004 (who once occupied the adjoining Tay Lane site and are near neighbours of Aldi at Cloncollog). Lidl and Dunnes already have two stores each in Tullamore and now Aldi will join this grouping with an investment in Tay Lane of close on €20 million when all expenses are taken into account.
Tea Lane (‘Tay’ Lane) is a popular old street name in Tullamore and most people seem to know that it was the area from the Al Conroy Printing Works (now again Stella Press under Brian Conroy) as far as the Offaly History Centre on the corner of Bury Quay and the former bonded warehouse (the Tullamore DEW Old Bonded Warehouse, 2000–20) and since December 2022 the Old Warehouse bar and restaurant (proprietor Shane Lowry). The name was in existence as early as 1821. The northern part of the lane was called the Old Fair Fields on a 1791 lease map. More changes are now in hand with the opening of a new Aldi store in late November 2024, following on the demolition of all the Irish Mist warehouses (erected from 1970 to 1985) and the great oats store of 1929. Irish Mist and Williams constituted the third layer. The first was that of long gardens from Patrick Street to almost the canal bank and before the canal (1801) the old fair fields. The second was the Williams buildings on these lands post 1897 and before their demolition for the new Irish Mist buildings of 1970-1985. Now Aldi will provide the fourth layer.
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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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Memories of Offaly: celebrating the mix of rural and urban life in the 1960s and 1970s by Killina, Rahan man Aidan Grennan. Blog No 667, 6th Nov 2024
Memories of Offaly can best be described as opening a diary into life in Co Offaly, over the last 50 or 60 years. The author of the book is Aidan Grennan, from Killina, Rahan. Aidan is to be congratulated on his second book. Both books are available from Offaly History Centre and online at http://www.offalyhistory.com
‘It is a nostalgic glimpse into the people and events in the county within my own life-time’ said Aidan. He commented: ‘I think it’s important now and then, to take a look-back over the years. I love nostalgia’, though we have to live in the present.
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