A rambler to Geashill in 1936 recorded his thoughts on the railway station, the village itself and the poems of Edward Egan who lived close by at the Meelaghans. The railway station closed about 1961, and Edward Egan better known as ‘The Poet’ Egan was in his last years when Rambler visited in 1936. For all the praise for Egan there were few at his funeral in Killeigh old churchyard. Nor is there any tombstone to mark his name.
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STEA2M Engineering Heritage October Festival at Birr, 19th Century Pioneers to inspire 21st Century Engineers 18th to 20th October 2024. Blog No 660, 12th Oct 2024
The Great Telescope at Birr
Agenda for the Festival
Friday 9am to 5pm – Discover Birr Castle Demesne by taking on the engineering trail through the gardens and science centre.
Friday 7pm – Welcome reception with tea and sandwiches followed by opening lecture(1) – 8pm. Note: All lectures in Birr Theatre and Arts Centre
- 8.00pm Lady Alicia Clements – Introduction to the Engineering Weekend Festival
- 8.15pm John Burgess – The Parsons Families of the 19th Century
Saturday – 10.00am Lecture (2) – Power on Land
- Brian Leddin TD – Chair of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action – Welcome and Opening Remarks
- Geoff Horseman (Formerly Head of Turbine-Generator Engineering at Parsons and Chief Turbine Engineer at Siemens Newcastle-Upon-Tyne) – Evolution of the Parsons Land Steam Turbine
Saturday – 11.30am guided discovery tour in Birr Castle Gardens to visit (Please note to wear non-slip footwear and outdoor gear for walking on garden trails):
- The Leviathan and LOFAR Telescopes – Peter Gallagher or Joe McCauley
- The refurbished suspension bridge,
- Rejuvenated hydro-electric turbine, and
- The secret of the lake’s ingenious water level management system.
Saturday – 1.15pm Lunch at the Kellys Bar
Saturday – 2.30pm Lecture (3) – Power at Sea
- 2.30pm Ian Whitehead – Turbinia – a daring venture in marine propulsion
- 3.00pm Geoff Horseman – Engines of the First Giant Turbine Passenger Liners
- 4.00pm Jody Power – Marine Propulsion Steam Turbines – A Personal Journey
A recess of 2 hours from 4.30pm to regroup at 6.30pm in John’s Hall
Saturday – 6.30 pm Exhibition in John’s Hall, Birr.
8.00 pm Dinner in Doolys Hotel
Sunday – 10am – Lecture (4) – Power to Change
- 10.00am – Benita Stoney – The Stoney family collaboration and achievements
- 10.45am – Una O’Grady – Renewable Energy in the Midlands – Wind, Water and Stars
- 11.30am – Stephen Grant – Engineering at a time of change – 21st to 19th Centuries parallels to inform a paradigm shift in addressing climate change
- 12.15pm – Lady Alicia Clements – Farewell notes
Sunday 1pm and 2pm – Guided tours of castle
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15 Tullamore and Geashill railway stations, 170 years of the Portarlington to Tullamore line, marked this 2 October 2024. By Peter Burke. No 15 in the Anniversaries Series by Offaly History. Blog No 657, 2nd October 2024
The railway line from Portarlington to Tullamore was opened on 2 October 1854. It was a quiet affair, but the commencement of the line was to mean significant growth in the years that followed. This was particularly so from 1857 when the extension to Athlone and Galway was completed.
The act to enable the line to be commenced was passed in 1847, but no action was taken until 1851. The connection to Tullamore was part of the line of the Great Southern and Western Railway (GSWR) while that to the west via Mullingar was backed by the Midland and Great Western Railway (MGWR).
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The closure of Tullamore Jail in 1924. No. 12 in the Anniversaries Series. By Michael Byrne and Offaly History. Blog 653, 18th Sept 2024
Just 100 years ago the closure of Tullamore prison was announced effective twelve months later. That was a legal formality as the prison had been severely damaged in the burning of July 1922 and by the extensive looting that followed. The town was without an effective police force since December 1921 and the new Civic Guard was not fully established in the town until May 1923. There had been sightings of them from September 1922 but the proposed new police barracks in the former county infirmary in Church Street was not ready due it being occupied by TB patients who were to be moved to Birr.
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8 Families of Cormac Street, Tullamore in the early 1900s. All was Victorian respectability to the front of the street but with a ‘cabin suburb’ and a prison close by. A contribution to the Living in Towns series supported by the Heritage Council. By Michael Byrne and Offaly History. Blog No 648, 31st August 2024
We have looked at the houses in Cormac Street and will soon follow up with the jail and courthouse reviews. In this article we want to look at the families of Cormac Street in the early 1900s. In the c. 41 residences in the street in 1901 were about 326 people. About 250 were RC and about 60 were C of I and Others. It was a street of contrasts with overall good housing on the main street, poor housing in Wellington Barracks and sixty and upwards in the prison. Of the total number in 1901 98 were in the prison, 85 of whom were confined there and 13 were staff living in the building There were four prison officer families in the jail lawn houses: Alexander Spence (2 people in the house – himself as a widower and his daughter), a prison officer; Michael Curtin (8 in the house), a prison warder; James Creane (11 in the house, including 9 children), a prison warder; Alexander McCullagh, prison warder (2 in the house).
The houses on the street were as to 11 in the first class with the rest in the second class. The highest concentration of 1st class houses was on the terrace on the east side of the street bookended by Dr Ridley and William Adams (GV 3 to GV 14 as per maps in earlier blogs). There were no 3rd or 4th class houses on the street, but is should be remembered that the two-room cottages in Wellington Barracks (later Coleman’s Place Lane) were all described as being in the second class.
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7 Cormac Street east, Tullamore, Co. Offaly, from 1795. By Michael Byrne and Offaly History. A contribution to the Living in Towns series supported by the Heritage Council. Blog No 647, 28th August 2024
In this article we are looking at the houses from the courthouse to the junction with O’Moore Street. The area was residential but with the two big public buildings – the jail and the courthouse, and across from the courthouse was low-lying land used for farming purposes and in the corner the old town graveyard. For a decade or so from the mid-1830s two of the houses were transformed into a hotel to serve the courthouse and assizes among others. It was in house GV 13 that Benajamin Woodward was born in 1816 and described as ‘the most celebrated and original architect of nineteenth-century Ireland, designing over sixty buildings in the last twelve years of his life.’ We start with no. 14, the three-storey over basement house on the corner with the two faces – one to O’Moore Street and one to Cormac Street. The houses are numbered in Griffith’s printed valuation of 1854 (see image) as being numbers 3 to 14 and were built on the Windmill Hill site that Thomas Acres obtained from Charles William Bury, the town’s landlord, in 1795, supplemented in the late 1830s with land for the two big houses beside the courthouse.
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Modern Times: mid-twentieth century architectural styles in Tullamore, Ireland. By Fergal MacCabe. Published to mark Heritage Week 2004 and no. 8 in Offaly History Anniversaries Series. Blog No 646, 24th August 2024
What we construct and what we take down is often the most significant indicator of the nature and health of our society. Also, the choice of an aesthetic style for a new building tells us much about the values of its proposer. Government or religious institutions will seek to emphasise their role and power by providing substantial and prominent structures, often using ancient architectural styles to suggest their continuity and permanence. Successful businesses or go-ahead institutions will express their vitality and cosmopolitanism in a more modern manner. Home builders may wish to attract respect for their taste and sophistication.
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Shannon Harbour, completed in 1804, and described by Sean Olson in 1979, 45 years ago. Canal events this August weekend, 45 years on, in Pollagh and Tullamore. Article no. 7 in the Offaly History Anniversaries Series. Blog No 645, 23rd August 2024
The Grand Canal was completed to the River Shannon in 1804, 220 years ago. By 1864 passenger traffic was finished and commercial by 1960. Cruise traffic was only in its infancy and when this article was written 45 years ago things were bleak. In looking at the building of the Grand Canal from Tullamore to Shannon Harbour, we need to look at a piece written in the Irish Times by Sean Olson with photographs by Pat Langan, which was published on Thursday, 7 June 1979 in the Irish Times. The newspaper had been a good supporter of keeping the canal open in the 1960s when it was under threat from Dublin Corporation.
Things have improved so much in recent years with the towpaths now the focus of attention to promote walking and cycling. Today 23 August see the launch of an excellent study of the canal system as illustrated. Then on Saturday evening and Sunday there are two events from Waterways Ireland to be held in the Offaly History Centre Exhibition Hall beside the canal at Bury Quay (neighbour to Old Warehouse Bar and Restaurant), as illustrated.
Olson is worth reproducing to remind us that we do not want to go back there and was an excellent record of its time. Also worth mentioning is our over 60 blog articles on the Grand Canal available as blogs at http://www.offalyhistory.com. All free to read and download.
‘If the steps of the ruined canalside hotel at Shannon Harbour, Co. Offaly could talk they would have a tale to tell. It would be a story of bustled Victorian ladies and their potb-bellied merchant husbands, of trade, of business deals finalised in airy rooms overlooking the still waters of the canal.
For once the pulse of commerce beat hard at Shannon Harbour. It was an inland port – a staging post leading to the mighty Shannon river. It was built by the commerce of a different age, a monument to an era when the first hesitant puff of the steam engine sounded the death knell for trade on inland waterways. It was a slow lingering death. When it finally came in 1960, there were few obsequies for Shannon Harbour. Those there were hardly took the place into account at all. It all but died with the departure of the last barge.
Now the once fine hotel, later home of several families who made their living from the barges, stands staring roofed, inside gutted, steps broken and lifted. The warehouses once full of goods and porter, are roofless sentries before the lock gates that lead down to the Shannon.
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6 Acres Folly, Kilcruttin graveyard and the Lloyd Town Park, Cormac Street, Tullamore, Offaly, Ireland. By Michael Byrne and Offaly History. A contribution to the Living in Towns series supported by the Heritage Council. Blog No 644, 21st August 2024
Acres Folly
Wellington’s victories in the battles in the Peninsular War were celebrated by Thomas Acres by the erection of the folly or tower in the garden of his private house at Acres Hall. This is now the Tullamore Municipal Council building and the garden is in part used for parking. The entire Acres development in Cormac Street west was based on the 1790 Kilcruttin Hill lease. The folly has been largely restored in 2020-22, but the part of the hill that was removed to facilitate more council parking ought to be replaced. In time perhaps the entire garden and folly could be incorporated into the town park.
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