Polo traces its origins to the game of Chovgan, an equestrian team sport played by the aristocracy of the Persian Empire. It spread across Asia evolving along the way. By the 1400s it had arrived in India, supposedly introduced during the Muslim conquests of the subcontinent. During the Mughal period polo was dubbed the ‘Sport of Kings’ and the emperor Jalal ud-din Akbar introduced a set of rules governing the sport in the 1560s. In 1859, British soldiers and tea planters serving in India established the Calcutta Polo Club and the game was quickly introduced to Britain. When Carlow hosted Ireland’s first polo match in 1872, the local press referred to it as ‘Hurling on Horseback’. A year later the All-Ireland Polo Club was founded, with its grounds at the Nine Acres in the Phoenix Park. In 1875 the Hurlingham Polo Committee in London drew up a set of rules which would shape the polo in the century which followed. In the same year polo had migrated once again and in time the scions of Argentina’s richest families would establish that countries position as the global powerhouse of the game.
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.
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.
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
One hundred years of Clara History:The diary of Lydia Goodbody, 1841–86; Harold Goodbody’s history of Clara, 1887–1945. Illustrated with over 200 photographs, 360 pages (Offaly History, 2021). To be launched at GAA Centre, 8 pm on 4 Nov. Orders also per shop at http://www.offalyhistory.com and to callers (from 5 Nov.) to Offaly History, Bury Quay, Tullamore 9 am to 4 30 pm Mon to Fri. Thanks to Clara Heritage Society for all their help with the launch. Strictly in accordance with Covid guidelines for events so follow directions of members of society. There will be at least four points of sale to avoid crowds and possibly outside the hall as needs. Email us at info@offalyhistory.com for any special wants or needs in regard to securing a copy of the book. We have copies set aside for all who ordered. On the night have €15 for soft and €20 for hardback handy so as to avoid change and delay. Enjoy and with thanks to all in Clara Heritage Society.
Clara has long been associated with the textile industry; stretching from the bleach greens of the early 1700s to development of the country’s largest jute factory, which gave employment in the district from 1864 and ran as a very successful business for the next hundred years. Reading the diaries of his Victorian great-aunt during World War II Harold Goodbody realised that she had kept a day-to-day record of how this industry had been created and how it and her family’s flour milling activities had supported the local community.
Harold made extracts of the more relevant parts of the diaries and added his own notes and recollections, creating a history of the Goodbody family in Clara and how a modest Offaly village had been turned into one of Ireland’s leading industrial centres. His work has now been edited to what will be a valuable local history source. Harold’s own historical research, covering the period from the late 1880s to the 1940s, is particularly insightful in the context of a period of significant change in Ireland and in the fortunes of Clara and its leading entrepreneurial family. The work is illustrated with over 200 carefully selected photographs.
There are only a few studies available on the development of retailing in Ireland, either of a general nature or in connection with particular firms. It is well known that in the first half of the nineteenth century and up to the Famine years retail outlets were not widely available and many in the smaller towns were no better than huxter shops. There were exceptions and that is clear from the photographs of c. 1900 of shops such as Williams. Egan, Goodbody and Lumley (in Tullamore); O’Brien in Edenderry and O’Meara and Fayles in Birr. In looking at the revolutionary period from 1912 to 1921 to mark the decade of centenaries it is also worth looking at revolutions in other areas such as transport, energy and shopping. Like the political revolution retailing exhibited signs of stress after 1921 and did not recover until the coming of the supermarkets to the provincial towns in the 1960s.
The Williams head office with the Barrack Patrick Street shop to the right before more intensive motorised transport from 1915.Branch house managers were appointed of which the last under the old system (before the switch to supermarkets) was T.V. Costello.
The trade directories, and from the 1840s the valuation records, will facilitate investigation of retail outlets. By the 1860s living standards had improved and this is reflected in the increasing number of shops; per capita tobacco consumption rose to English standards about 1870 and per capita consumption of tea was not far off the English level by the end of the 1870s. The considerable economic progress of the early 1870s, began to slow down by the end of that decade. The 1880s is looked on as a period of industrial crisis with industries closing down in all the principal towns, or destroyed by fire as with the Goodbody tobacco factory in Tullamore and the Birr distillery in 1889.The railways and the canals (especially in the midlands) facilitated the easy removal of heavy goods and livestock from towns all over Ireland, but it also left it easier to import foods easily and cheaply. As a result, the Irish industrial base (such as it was, especially in southern Ireland) receded while the retail and services sector began to grow albeit slowly.
James Lyle Stirling was born 16 May 1858 to Thomas Lyle and Anne Stirling of Tullamore. He was a business man who ran several businesses in Tullamore, between the years of 1880 and 1898, and is best remembered for his mineral water manufacturing company.
His father, Thomas Lyle Stirling, was a brewer and merchant in King’s County, who ran most of his business in Church St., Tullamore. He was also an active Tullamore town Commissioner and sometime acted as an agent for Mary Anne Locke of Locke’s Distillery Kilbeggan. Thomas Lyle Stirling married Anne Jane, daughter of William and Catherine Commins of Cappincur, Tullamore, they had six children, all born in Tullamore except the youngest, Thomas who was born in Dublin. The children were Margaret (born 1857), James Lyle (1858), William (1860), Catherine (1862), Isabella Elizabeth (1863) and Thomas (1866).
James Lyle Sterlingand family
Anne Jane, James’s mother died shortly after Thomas was born in 1866 and his father Thomas remarried later the same year to Helena Reamsbottom, widow of Thomas Reamsbottom Esq. of Bellair Lodge, after she had lost a child and her husband early that year. Thomas Lyle and Helena Stirling, now married, lived in Bellair Lodge, Ferbane, and they went on to have two more children: Elizabeth Helena (born c.1869) and Thomas Francis Lyle (1872). In 1876 Thomas Lyle died, leaving a young James as his heir. As James was too young to take charge of his businesses, his estate was run by his executors, John Tarleton and Constantine Quirke. It would be another four years in 1880 before Stirling was old enough to take over his father’s business.
James Lyle Stirling married in Dublin to Gertrude Bridget Murphy (born c.1864), a daughter of Patrick Murphy a trader from Athy, Co. Kildare. They had six children at Church Road, Tullamore: Genevieve, Mary Margaret (born 1888), Eithel Mary (1889), Blanche Loretto Lyle (1891), Ida Mary Gertrude (1892), Joseph Allen (1893), and Raymond Gordon (1896). The family later moved out to Cloonagh House, just outside Tullamore.
The jacket for the 2019 edition designed by Brosna Press, Ferbane.
Mary Ward takes her place alongside the Rosses, Jolys and Stoneys in the King’s County/Offaly people of science gallery. Born Mary King, at Ballylin, Ferbane on 27 April 1827 she died in a shocking accident at Birr on 31 August 1869 (see our blog of 24 August 2019). On Saturday 31 August 2019 we mark the 150th anniversary of her death and say something of her achievements. So join us on Saturday from 3.30 pm at Oxmantown Mall, Birr. All are welcome. The book launch is at 5 pm in the Courtyard Café, Birr Demesne. The book will be general sale from 1 September at Birr Demesne, Offaly History Centre and Midland Book, Tullamore.
offalyhistoryblog 