Category: Architecture

• The new Esker Arts Centre at no. 13 High Street, Tullamore. A contribution to the Living in Towns series by Offaly History. Blog No 468, 1st March 2023

  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 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).

  

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  March 1, 2023

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• Impressions of an Ireland Dream. De Jean Frazer, T.C. Luby and a Birr book launch. By Laurel Jean Grube. Blog No 467, 25th Feb 2023

  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.

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  February 25, 2023

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• Planning for a new central Tullamore. By Fergal MacCabe. Knowledge-based support for creativity and innovation. Blog No 465, 18th Feb 2023

  ‘The Beaujolais’

  Sometime in the 1830s, the architect William Murray (1789-1849), best known for designing mental hospitals all around Ireland, presented a quick outline of a new public square in Tullamore which would be bounded on three sides by fine houses and dominated on the fourth by the imposing portico of the recently erected County Courthouse. 

  The title of his drawing’ Thoughts for a Square at Tullamore, Ireland facing the Courthouse to be called ‘The Beaujolais’ suggests that it was not an actual commission but more likely a broad brush and quickly executed response to a remark by Lady Beaujolais Bury the wife of the local grandee, perhaps exchanged at a social gathering. Architects do this a lot to get business and Murray may have been trying to reconnect commercially with the family who had given his cousin Francis Johnston such valuable and prestigious commissions as Charleville Forest and St Catherine’s Church.

  Of course Murray’s elegant scheme was never realised and was to be the last proposal for a civic design set piece in Tullamore for some time. In the 1950s, the urban planner Frank Gibney suggested the creation of a parkland setting for the Church of the Assumption but this notion was eventually shelved and for the following seventy years no further interventions which would combine coherent built form with public benefits were to be advanced and the planning of the town remained firmly in the hands of engineers whose principal spatial concern was the accommodation of the motor car.

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  February 18, 2023

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• 2023 will be remembered as the year in which Tullamore tried to reinvent itself: the Dream Team. By Fergal MacCabe. Blog No 461, 4th Feb 2023

  Last year Offaly County Council and Waterways Ireland appointed advisors to prepare regeneration plans for the town centre and for the Grand Canal Harbour at the heart of it. The consultants brief required ideas for the redevelopment of the key underused sites, proposals for linking them all within a coherent, livable, safe and attractive town centre whose crowning glory would be an accessible Harbour containing dramatic new buildings full of vibrant day and night-time attractions. A date in mid to late 2023 was set for the delivery of their proposals.

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  February 4, 2023

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• Cormac Street, Tullamore: a significant achievement for the planning process, 1786–2020. A contribution to Tullamore 400th and the Historic Towns Initiative to support town regeneration. By Michael Byrne. Blog No 456, 18th Jan 2023

  Cormac Street is somewhat unique in the story of Tullamore street development with its forty houses, two major institutional buildings 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 west and the Windmill Hill to the east. 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) secured a new railway station at Kilcruttin in place of that at Clonminch in about 1865.

  Cormac Street has had the benefit of careful planning in its first hundred years and has managed to survive the excesses of the post 1960 and post 1997 periods of rapid development. The saving of Acres Hall in the 1980s was a significant achievement. What are these elements that contribute to the street and how did it all come about? Here are set out twenty points and probably more could be added.

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  January 18, 2023

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• Saint Piran – of Seir Kieran, Offaly? By John Dolan. Blog No 449, 21st Dec 2022

  It was a casual comment at the recent excellent Heritage Day event at Seir Kieran, Discovering Seir Kieran Monastic Site, a local mentioned that there had been a visit in recent months from a group from Cornwall, visiting the birth place of St. Piran/St. Ciarán.  Cornwall had been mentioned as a place associated with St. Ciarán by one of the speakers on the day.  It was time again to have a look at this St. Piran. Piran is by far the most famous of all the saints to have gone to Cornwall from Ireland.

  St. Ciarán was one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland along with Brendan of Birr. Charles Plummer’s translation of the Life of Ciarán has him arriving to Ireland before St. Patrick. He also had the title of the ‘first born of the Saints of Ireland’. He is supposed to have been born at Cape Clear in Cork where there is a church, a beach and a standing stone as memorials to him.

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  December 21, 2022

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• Traditional Architecture in Offaly: History, Materials and Furniture, 1800 to Present Day. Blog No 444, 3rd Dec 2022

  Kitchen, parlour and bedroom – transforming a house into a home

  Traditional Architecture in Offaly: History, Materials and Furniture by Rachel McKenna (Offaly County Council, 2022) is a wonderful new addition to the growing collection of quality publications on the county of Offaly and its place in Irish heritage. For long neglected by the travel writers who took the coastal route the county has made up for that oversight since the late 1970s with a whole series of publications. The writer is the county architect and well placed to observe the changing scene and to appreciate what was distinctive about the habitations of the ordinary people (the third and fourth class housing of the 1841-61 censuses) and what has survived to the present day. As the CE of Offaly County Council has written in the Preface

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  December 3, 2022

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• Have an ‘Offaly History’ Christmas with over a dozen new books this year. Blog No 443, 30th Nov 2022

  It has been a good year for new publications contributing to the history of County Offaly and helping us to get to know ourselves and our place better. When the annual report of the Tullamore Credit Union is dropped in the door you know Christmas is close. Seeing the cover and that the credit union is now sixty years old set us thinking of phases in our history. The year 1923 marked the end of the civil war. After a period of growth from 1891 to 1918 things got difficult. You could write off 1923–63 in terms of the economic engine. It was mostly switched off with exceptions in Tullamore Yarns, the Bacon Factory, Tullamore and the Williams and Egan businesses serving the midlands. The emerging Bord na Mona and ESB were providing jobs in west Offaly from the 1950s and east Offaly later, but it was the 1960s before a general ‘all boats’ lift up occurred. Equally you could say that since September 2001 (and the mobile phone) we have been living with anxiety which seems to grow every year especially since Brexit 2016 and now the war and climate change. Not to mention all the things we have to do online to comply with the requirements of banks and government. These books are all available from Offaly History, Bury Quay (and online http://www.offalyhistory) and our friends in Midland Books, Tullamore.

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  November 30, 2022

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• ‘It will last for centuries’:  St. Joseph’s Convent, Tullamore. By Fergal MacCabe. Blog No 442, 26th Nov 2022

  Fergal MacCabe

  In 1840, the scaffolding began to come down to reveal the new convent and school of the Sisters of Mercy on Bury Quay, today Convent Road.

  With the building of the County Gaol in 1830, the County Courthouse in 1835 and the Union Workhouse in 1839-41, Tullamore was rapidly acquiring substantial civic and social buildings which were adding to its prestige and promoting its new role as the capital of King’s County.

  But as yet, no buildings of a religious or educational nature which might contribute equally significantly to the architectural character of the town centre had emerged. The Catholic chapel of 1802 on its backland site off Harbour Street was a relatively modest structure without a frontage presence onto a main street. Charleville School built in 1811 at the junction of Henry Street and Church Street exhibited a well-mannered but unassuming appearance. Though a most impressive structure, the siting of Francis Johnston’s St Catherine’s on Hop Hill rendered it remote from the daily life of the town.

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  November 26, 2022

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• Serious fires at Birr Castle in 1832 and 1919. Serious Tourism now. Specially contributed to mark the decade of centenaries in County Offaly. Blog No 437, 9th Nov 2022

  Two serious fires took place at Birr Castle within the hundred years from 1832 to 1919. Thankfully there has been nothing like it since and the castle was fortunate to survive the burnings of country houses in the county in the period from June 1922 to April 1923. Birr Castle is the only large house in the county to have survived in the same family since the 1620s. Its Gothic exemplar Charleville Castle, Tullamore also survived the destruction of the Civil War period. Both houses were occupied by the Free State Army from late July 1922.

  The fire of 1832, ninety years earlier, was perhaps the most destructive and in its aftermath Laurence Parsons, the second earl of Rosse took the opportunity to add a third storey to the great house that had been substantially rebuilt in 1801–03. Its comrade in Tullamore is dated 1800 to 1812, or 1809 the grand opening – if not quite finished.

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  November 9, 2022

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