Category: Tullamore

• Tullamore’s ‘Chop’ Factory. By Michael Goodbody. From our new Anniversaries Series. Blog No 636, 30th July 2024

  This article is not about the fashionable ‘Chopped’ clean food eateries. Instead, it concerns what was fed to our horses, in particular, before World War 1. That was a time of increasing use of motorised transport and less of horse-drawn vehicles. It was in 1904 that Motor Registration was introduced in Ireland, the War began in August 1914 and by 1924 the Goodbody Chop business in Tullamore was gone. Now read on in this our new Anniversaries Series. Our thanks to Michael Goodbody for this contribution to our blog series. You can find almost 650 articles about Offaly History on our website, http://www.offalyhistory.com. If you wish to write an article contact info@offalyhistory.com. Our blogs get 2,000 views per week.

  Nineteenth century towns and cities were alive with the bustle and noise of people going about their daily business. Sometimes overlooked are the thousands of horses that were needed to support all this activity. Before the invention of the motor car horsepower was what drew cabs, coaches, heavy goods carts and light passenger vehicles. A city such as Dublin probably contained up to 20,000 horses and ponies.[1]

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  July 30, 2024

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• No 3 Cormac Street, Acres Hall, ‘the best house in Tullamore’, now Tullamore Town Hall: the home of the Acres family (1786­–1839), Acres Pierce family (1839–91) and the Egan family (1891–1968) thereafter leased, and Tullamore Town Council 1985– in progress). A contribution to the Living in Towns series supported by the Heritage Council. By Michael Byrne and Offaly History. Blog No 635, 27th July 2024

  This handsome house was built in 1786 by Thomas Acres and is set well in from the street. The valuer of 1843 wrote: ‘This has always been considered the best house in Tullamore – it is well situate – extensive pleasure grounds in front and rear, and well walled garden.’^[1] Acres Hall, the town hall since 1992, is a five-bay, two-storey house with a limestone ashlar façade. In this respect it bears comparison with the house of Dr Wilson of 1789 (now Farrellys) in High Street and was built at the same time.

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  July 27, 2024

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• 2  Cormac Street, Tullamore: from Acres Hall to the town park: stages in the development of a singular street. A contribution to the Living in Towns series supported by the Heritage Council. By Michael Byrne and Offaly History. Blog No 634, 24th July 2024

  Last week we set out reasons why Cormac Street can be considered so good. Anybody getting off the train, visiting the town park or the courthouse cannot but be impressed. The street is very largely intact since it was built and has been enhanced by the town park. The restoration of the full Kilcruttin Hill beside the folly should be undertaken by the municipal council given its historic importance. Charleville/Cormac Street was the outer extremity of the town when building started here in the 1780s. Probably the Elmfield house (now the location of the Aras an Chontae) dates to 1795. Both Norris of that house and Acres of Acres Hall (dated to 1786) were functionaries of the young landlord’s family and both built on the road to the demesne. Bury came of age in June 1786 and so could regulate matters himself. While there were some cabins on Charleville Road these were temporary structures and aside from Elmfield no building leases were granted here until that to Daniel E. Williams in 1898. He completed Dew Park by 1900 and it was then regarded as the best house in Tullamore having taken that honour from Acres Hall. It reflected changing times with the demise and relative impoverishment of the Acres family and the growing importance of the new Catholic merchant class of Egan’s and Williams. While Williams had a virtual freehold in Dew Park lands the Egan family took a long lease from the Acres Pierce family of Acres Hall in 1891. The third big house that of Elmfield may well have earned the first-place honour but the Goodbodys sold this house in the 1880s and moved to Dublin. Richard Bull, the sub-sheriff moved in and departed after 1904 when the house was taken by Dr Kennedy who had moved from The Cottage in O’Moore Street.

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  July 24, 2024

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• 1  Cormac Street, Tullamore: a significant achievement in the planning process, 1786–2024. A contribution to the Living in Towns series supported by the Heritage Council. By Michael Byrne and Offaly History. Blog No 632, 17th July 2024

  Cormac Street is somewhat unique in the story of Tullamore Street development with its forty houses, two major institutional buildings, a folly and a town park. Rarely is a street preserved without blemish with so many elements over a two-hundred-year period. Cormac Street was also the home of the town’s major property developer and rentier Thomas Acres (d. 1836) who built his Acres Hall in 1786 (now the home of Tullamore Municipal Council). To the earl of Charleville and Thomas Acres is due most of the credit for the transformation of a green field site with Kilcruttin Hill and cemetery to the western side and the Windmill Hill to the east with the terraces in Cormac Street and O’Moore Street. Acres could thank the war with France, 1793–1815, for the boost to the local economy that provided him with tenants for the terrace of houses on the east side. The expansion of Tullamore after 1798 due to the Grand Canal connection with Dublin and the Shannon provided the impetus to secure a new county jail (1826–30), county town status in 1832 and to take effect in 1835 with the completion of the county courthouse. War, politics and pride of place all contributed to the mix. The Bury contribution was rounded off when Alfred (later the fifth earl) got a new railway station at Kilcruttin in place of that at Clonminch in about 1865. Alfred died in 1875 soon after he succeeded his nephew to the earldom.

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  July 17, 2024

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• 7,  O’Moore Street, Tullamore southwest and the Acres estate owned terrace from Tullamore House to Victoria Terrace. A contribution to the Living in Towns series supported by the Heritage Council. By Michael Byrne and Offaly History. Blog No 631, 13th July 2024

  As we conclude our series on O’Moore Street and move to Cormac Street it is opportune to look at the oldest terrace on the street but starting with No 1 O’Moore Street being Tullamore House, the home of the Bannon family. So many have lived here since that great house was built about 1800. We will go into more detail on this one as part of the Cormac Street series. For now let’s look at the terrace from no. 2 to no. 9 in the 1843-54 valuation records. The terrace was built in the years from say 1795 to 1805 with a few houses rebuilt in recent years.

  The developer/rentier was Thomas Acres of nearby Acres Hall (now the Town Hall) and he was building on a nice lease for ever from the young landlord Charles William Bury of Charleville (Lord, Tullamore 1797 earl of Charleville 1806). It was a lease of the Windmill Plot from Victoria Terrace to the county courthouse.

  

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  July 13, 2024

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• The Role of Urban Design in the Evolution of Tullamore. By Fergal MacCabe. Published to mark the Regeneration Plan for Tullamore and the Harbour Master Plan. Submissions by 25 July (see online for details). Blog No 630, 12th June 2024

  Urban Design ‘The design of buildings, groups of buildings, spaces and landscape’

  Early Efforts

  The purpose of urban design is to create attractive and enticing public environments through the use of harmony, proportion, rhythm, art, unity and vistas. Urban designers treat towns and cities as artefacts whose appearance and civic life can be improved by the application of aesthetic devices .

  In the late 18th and early 19th century these principles played an important role in the evolution of Tullamore. The laying out of O’Carroll Street and the fine terraces of Church Street and Bury Quay as well as the alignment of Patrick Street to frame the gate of the Barracks were all considered urban ensembles.

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  July 12, 2024

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• Victoria Terrace, Furlong’s and the Tullamore Court Hotel, O’Moore Street, Tullamore. No 6 in the O’Moore Street Living in Towns Series supported by the Heritage Council. By Michael Byrne and Offaly History. Blog No 629, 10th July 2024

  The fourth head lease in O’Moore Street granted by the earls of Charleville, and the last of significance, was that to the Tullamore printer Richard Willis in 1838 for the construction of the seven houses in Victoria Terrace, O’Moore Street. The lease from the second Lord Charleville was for 99 years from 25 March 1838 at £21 per year or £3 ground rent for each house. The first earl died in 1835 and, his son, the profligate second earl, was determined to extract more money from his estate to fund his expensive lifestyle and political ambitions. No more sweetheart deals as was done by the first earl for Thomas Acres in the 1790s who developed part of O’Moore Street and most of Cormac Street. The lease of 100 years instead of three lives renewable for ever was a change of policy on the part of the second earl who was disgruntled at his father having virtually alienated or sold much of Tullamore town for small money, as he believed.

  Richard Willis was in the printing business for over fifty years. A few of his publications survive in the RIA (Hardiman pamphlets) and Offaly Archives. He worked from what is now the Insurance offices of Gray Cunniffe Flaherty and had a lane of cabins to the rear that was closed by 1854.

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  July 10, 2024

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• F. J. Hurst Motor and General Engineering Works Ltd., Tullamore and the Motor Works,  no 5 in the O’Moore Street, Tullamore Living in Towns Series  supported by the Heritage Council. By Michael Byrne and Offaly History. Blog No 628, 6th July 2024

  The two big garages in O’Moore Street, Tullamore of Roberts Motor Works and Hurst were famous from the 1920s and 1930s. The Hurst boiler, in particular, will be remembered by patrons of Georgie Egan’s in Harbour Street where, as a pot-bellied iron stove, it heated that old pub, now gone. Hurst was the first to open in 1925 and was building on a tradition of engineering in the Killeigh/Geashill area that may owe its origins to the service of large farm machines for the fine farms in the parish of Geashill and Killeigh, by men such as George Matthews in the 1900s. Matthews came to farms with his threshing equipment much as farm machinery services are provided today. The Roberts family was probably that connected with serious prize-winning gardening at Charleville back in the 1880s. The Motor Works garage was opened in the mid-1930s in the former Presbyterian manse after the departure of Revd Mr Humphreys.

  Why mention the garages now with both long closed. We do so to illustrate how lack of planning in the 1750s still impacts on street development in O’Moore Street 275 years later. That said the first earl of Charleville (d. 1764) was concentrating on the main road from Charleville Gate to High Street and Pound Street (now Columcille St). The old church was in Church Street and the Crofton House at the junction with the Killeigh Road (now O’Moore Street) was the first in view from the demesne entrance on the avenue left of the main gate. The earl’s grand nephew successor, when he came of age in 1786, started working on making the demesne more picturesque and employed Leggatt (see IGS jn. no 26 (2023) in the late 1780s and J.C. Loudon in 1811 as the castle was nearing completion. Loudon is said to have laid out Bachelors Walk as an attractive drive to the new church at Hop Hill, then in progress and completed in 1815.

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  July 6, 2024

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• ‘The Cottage’, O’Moore Street, one of the most interesting houses in Tullamore: no 3 in the 2024 Living in Towns series. Supported by the Heritage Council. By Michael Byrne and Offaly History. Blog No 626, 29th June 2024

  The Cottage in O’Moore Street, Tullamore is one of the few examples in Offaly of cottage ornée architecture. This was an architectural style that may have begun with Walpole’s Strawberry Hill, built over the period from 1749 to the 1770s. One of the best-known examples in Ireland is the Swiss Cottage in Cahir. These cottages were built by the well-off to play at rusticity and, as with this house, have carefully hidden its actual size and its impressive garden. The Cottage was built about 1809 and is one of three or four fine houses in the street, the best being Moore Hall and Tullamore House at the junction with Cormac Street.

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  June 29, 2024

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• Overview of Earl St/ Windmill St/ O’Moore Street, Tullamore in the early 1840s-1850s with up to 46 houses. No 2 in a 2024 Living in Towns series supported by the Heritage Council. By Michael Byrne and Offaly History. Blog No 625, 26th June 2024

  The first overview of the street is available from the 1838 six-inch map and the 1843–54 valuations. By the early 1800s only one windmill survived and that was marked as in ruins on the 1838 five-ft manuscript map. Interestingly the 1838 six-inch map refers to windmills in ruins. Looking closer at both maps it does appear as if the second mill ruin was in the garden of no. 9 Cormac Street (see six-inch map). Moore Hall and ‘The Cottage’ were a hankering after rural life and as good quality houses were isolated from the town centre, but they made possible the attractive Willis-built Victoria Terrace of 1837–8.

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  June 26, 2024

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