It is hard to believe that we are catching up on history. In seven years time we mark the 200th anniversary of the building of the Catholic church in Durrow. This year is the thirtieth anniversary of the major renovation. The catholic church now in use at Durrow dates back to 1831and was completed in 1832 and consecrated by the then bishop Rahan-born Dr John Cantwell, on 24 September 1832. In an unpublished report on the houses and churches of County Offaly prepared for the Offaly Historical Society in 1985, William Garner wrote:
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No 4, Cormac Street, Acres Hall, Acres Pierce, Henry Egan and Tullamore Town Council. A contribution to the Living in Towns series supported by the Heritage Council. By Michael Byrne and Offaly History. Blog No 638,7th August 2024
Thomas Acres Pierce (sometimes written as Peirce) the eldest son of Dr Pierce (d. 1859) who succeeded his father and mother at Acres Hall died in 1879. Colonel Thomas Acres Pierce, (he was an officer in the King’s County Militia and in his early years the regular army) died suddenly in December 1879 of a heart attack. The local newspaper of the time noted that his father and grandfather (doctor and solicitor respectively also died in similar circumstances). Pierce was for a time local inspector of prisons and secretary to the grand jury of the county. While locally prestigious these were not remunerative appointments. He had married Miss F. G. French in 1856 and had issue – six children, the last dying in 1937. Not surprisingly with the smaller shares and number of dependants the Acres Estate got into financial difficulties in the 1880s. At the time of the death of another of the ten children of Dr Pierce, John Pierce, in 1889 his son Donald McFarlane Pierce (b. 1869) succeeded to Acres Hall and at the same time he managed to purchase a moiety of the entire Acres Estate for the sum of £4,703, and this money was raised through four new mortgages on the Tullamore properties. Donald M. Pierce married Mary Frances Murphy in 1896, and the marriage settlement was made in South Africa. He had married a Roman Catholic which in those days may have been difficult for some members of the family. There were at least four children of that marriage, Bernard, Donald, Fr. John (parish priest of Rathmines in the 1970s) and Robert Acres Pierce.[1] Donald Pierce and family returned to Ireland and were living on the terrace opposite the old family home in 1901 and 1911. In the 1911 Donald Pierce was described as a commercial traveller.Two members of the earlier Acres family, from which Thomas Acres is thought to have come, survived in the Roscrea area up to the 1970s
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Nesbitt’s Junction and the Edenderry-Enfield Railway Line and the end of era. By Declan O’Connor. No. 2 in our Offaly History Anniversaries Series marking past events of significance. Blog No 637, 3rd August 2024
The image is that of a cancelled return rail excursion ticket from Edenderry to Dublin on the 17th of March 1963. The event was the Railway Cup inter Provincial Finals in Hurling and Football. Four Offaly Players were selected – Greg Hughes, Paddy McCormack, Charlie Wrenn and Sean Brereton. It was the last passenger or goods train to use the Edenderry – Enfield Branch or Slip Line which started almost 86 years earlier. Would you like to contribute a story. Email us info@offalyhistory.com first.
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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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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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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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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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‘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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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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