Category: Subjects

• 59 ‘The month of September in Banagher, and all along the Shannon banks, is visually a glorious one, with golden autumn mornings, the low sun making long shadows of the houses in the street’, Pope Hennessy, Bence Jones, Trollope, Banagher and the Shannon/Grand Canal landscape. No. 59 in the Grand Canal Offaly series. Blog No 619, 5th June 2024

  

  Banagher, County Offaly has associations with two well-known writers of the nineteenth century – Anthony Trollope and Charlotte Bronte.  Up to recent years nothing by way of notice of this was to be found in Banagher, but that has all changed as Banagher, now hard pressed along its main street, looks again to embrace tourism in a way that it did so well in the late nineteenth century and in the 1960s. The plans for the former hotel at Banagher will do much for the promotion of the architectural heritage of the town as did the voluntary work by the co-operative at Crank House. Pope Hennessey’s description in 1971 of Banagher in September would be music to Failte Ireland anxious as they are to extend the holiday season.  He wrote:

  ‘The month of September in Banagher, and all along the Shannon banks, is visually a glorious one, with golden autumn mornings, the low sun making long shadows of the houses in the street.  At dusk the whole river reflects the varied sunsets as the days draw in – effects of palest pink, for instance, striped by cloudy lines of green, or an horizon aflame with scarlet and orange light.’  And

  The bridge at Banagher affords a splendid view over the level reaches of the river, which here flows glassily between a countryside as flat as that in some Dutch picture.  In winter-time the flooded river spreads across these meadows to create an inland sea. In spring and early summer kingcups bloom amongst the sedge and reeds along the Shannon’s bank, wild yellow irises abound and cowslips also.  In early summer, too, plumes of mauve and purple lilacs hang over the white walls of the yards of Banagher, and the whole countryside beyond the town displays brilliant variations of the “forty shades of green”. 

  Many have tackled Trollope’s life, but none immersed himself so much in Banagher as the late James Pope Hennessy.

  John McCourt in his 2015 study of Trollope Writing the Frontier: Anthony Trollope between Britain and Ireland ‘offers an in-depth exploration of Trollope’s time in Ireland as a rising Post Office official, contextualising his considerable output of Irish novels and short stories and his ongoing interest in the country, its people, and its always complicated relationship with Britain’.

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  June 5, 2024

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• 58 Henry Inglis travels on a River Shannon steam boat and includes Killaloe, Portumna, Banagher and Athlone on his Tour in 1834. No 58 in the Grand Canal series. Blog No 618, 1st June 2024

  

  Last week we looked at the history of steamers on the Shannon. Today we take the account of Henry D. Inglis published in 1835. Inglis was a professional travel writer and author of Spain in 1830, A Journey through Norway etc, published his A Journey throughout Ireland during the Spring, Summer and Autumn of 1834 in London in 1835.  His account is well thought of and in his concluding remarks he says why jest or narrate the curious and witty eccentricities of Irish character when ‘God knows there is little real cause for jocularity, in treating of the condition of a starving people.’ So there was a degree of sympathy rather than of superiority.

  Inglis was born in Edinburgh and was the only son of a Scottish lawyer.  His Irish travels volume  was published the year of his death, (first edition, 1835, fourth edition 1836).  While considered a ‘fairly benevolent interpreter’ he could find no explanation for the Irish situation other than defects of character.

  Inglis spent a week there and also visited Killaloe, Portumna and Banagher. He went from Banagher to Athlone by road and thought the latter was a remarkably ugly town – but not withstanding an interesting and excellent business town. He spent a week in Athlone and used it as a base for touring in the county of Longford to see Goldsmith’s Country.

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  June 1, 2024

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• 57 The Golden Era of Shannon Steamers. No 57 in the Grand Canal series. Blog No 617, 29th May 2024

  

  The history of passenger steamers on the Shannon, covering a period of 140 years, was traced by Dr McNeill of Southampton University, in a lecture jointly sponsored by the Old Athlone Society and the local branch of the Inland Waterways Association, and held in the Prince of Wales Hotel, Athlone, in January 1966.[1] Dr McNeill soon after published two volumes on the subject of steamer transport. Ruth Delany has also published material in her The Shannon Navigation (Dublin, 2008).[2]

  McNeill, in his 1966 Athlone lecture, said that Ireland had a tremendous heritage of water transport. Mentioning that the first experiment in the idea of iron bulkheads in streamers was tried out on the Shannon in 1829, he said that we were apt to forget the work done by Irishmen in the technical field in the last 150 years. Iron steamers were cradled in Ireland in the 1820s.

  Mr. McNeill acknowledged his debt to the late Dr Vincent Delany and to the files of the Westmeath Independent for much information on Shannon steamers.

  Recalling that in 1829, the first commercial passenger steamer service commenced plying on the lower Shannon, he said it was operated by the City of Dublin Steampacket Company for roughly thirty years. The fleet included the Garryowen, the largest iron steamer in the world at that time and first development of the new idea of iron bulk-heads. Another steamers, Erin Go Brath, made marine history at that time by keeping her engines running for six days without stopping.

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  May 29, 2024

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• Tullamore and the £1 million housing scheme of 1922. The new houses at John Dillon Street. By Peter Connell. Blog No 616, 25th May 2024

  This is the story of eight new houses built by Tullamore Urban District Council in 1923 in what is now John Dillon Street. Turning into the street from Charleville Road, the first eight houses on the right were built as part of the Provisional Government’s £1 million scheme launch in 1922 in the midst of the Civil War. Opposite them are houses built by the Irish Soldiers and Sailors Land Trust for veterans of World War I.  The eight houses may only have made a small dent in Tullamore’s chronically bad housing conditions in the early 20^th century, but the circumstances surrounding when and how they were built provide some valuable insights into the history of the town and the country in these turbulent years.

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  May 25, 2024

  Archival collections, Planning, Tullamore

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• Hillforts in Co. Offaly. By John Dolan. Blog No 614, 18th May 2024

  From the ending of our most recent Ice Age to the arrival of our First Farmers, the Irish landscape changed little other than the reduction of our land space with rising sea waters from the melting ice cap.  The Mesolithic peoples left minimal traces behind such as that at Lough Boora, Offaly.

  The First Farmers introduced land clearances in order to sow crops, crops led to surpluses. Surpluses were used for sowing in the next year and also for trade. Crops led to settlement where people no longer needed to hunt or to gather in the same way.  Settlement and farming also led to a substantial growth in the Irish population. Later, farm animals appear requiring further land clearances. DNA evidence is emerging that new groups of people were coming into Ireland, resulting in the previous hunter gatherer population disappearing from the landscape.

  The organisation of farming resulted in changes to the diet while settlement in specific locations led to wealth and people living longer.  We then start to see monuments appear on the landscape particularly for burials of members of the elite, almost always male.  Many of the structures were built to honour the dead and their ancestors, some were richly furnished and provide more evidence of the wealth of those living in the Bronze Age.

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  May 18, 2024

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• Remembering John Flanagan, the Tullamore builder and developer, who died on 9 May 2024. An obituary from Offaly History. Blog No 612, 11th May 2024

  John Flanagan the well-known builder and advocate for Tullamore and County Offaly died on 9 May 2024. He was the modest man from the Meelaghans, Puttaghan and Bachelors Walk, Tullamore who invested his whole life in making Tullamore a better place for people to live, work, bank and even pray in. In 2018 he was awarded the Offaly Person of the Year Award. John Flanagan was a realist in the Lemass mode. His focus was on getting things done. At the time Lemass came to be Taoiseach in 1959 John Flanagan was just 28 years old. It was ten more years, in 1968-9, before he got his first major break with the purchase of the Tanyard Lane property in Tullamore from the P.&H. Egan liquidator. The Bridge House, also owned by the Egan firm, was bought soon after by Christy Maye, and thirty years on Tullamore had two fine hotels, developed by the new entrepreneurs of the 1960s and 1970s, on lands that had been part of Egan’s extensive portfolio.

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  May 11, 2024

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• Tullamore Town Council: a short timeline of municipal events from its establishment in 1860 to its abolition in 2014. By Offaly History. Blog No 611, 10th May 2024

  The town councils of Tullamore, Birr and that of Edenderry were abolished ten years ago in what some consider was a mistake and a hasty reaction to the calls for pruning in that recessionary period. Here we provides some headlines for significan events since the first council body – the Tullamore Town Commission – was established in 1860. This was followed by the urban council in 1900. We post this blog on the anniversary of the great balloon fire of 10 May 1785.

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  May 10, 2024

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• 54 Charles Coote’s observations on Ballycowan barony and the district of Tullamore for his Survey of King’s County published in 1801. No 54 in the Grand Canal Series from Offaly History. Blog No 610, 8th May 2024

  

  The line of the Grand canal to Philipstown and Tullamore is the only navigation through this county, and is material advantage to the district, through which it passes.  Levels have been taken, and the line laid out for a further extension of this canal to the Shannon, with off branches to Birr and other towns, which is not yet put into execution.

  The terminus of the line from Dublin to the Shannon was Tullamore for the years 1798 to 1804 when the link with the Shannon was at last completed. In the 1790s a line to Kilcormac and Birr was considered but on the grounds of expense that along the Brosna was selected.

  [175] Ballicowan village is the estate of the [176] Earl of Mountrath, and here are the ruins of a castle, which  gives name to the barony.  Turf fuel is in plenty, and had on the cheapest terms. . .

  

  Tullamore is the market for grain, and indeed the produce of many adjoining baronies is sent thither, there being the fairest sale and a good demand amongst the buyers, occasioned principally on account of the many stores, which were established by the Grand Canal extending here, and which divides this barony for some distance.  This proves the value of inland navigation and gives the farmer in these distant parts the advantage (as we may say), of bringing Dublin market home to his door. 

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  May 8, 2024

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• Offaly and the Great War essays published in 2018 now on Open Access to all. Thanks to the Decade of Centenaries. Blog No 609, 4th May 2023

  The bumper volume of essays (list below) in Offaly and the Great War (Offaly History, 2018) can now be accessed free online at www.offalyhistory.com thanks to the Decade of Centenaries. The book of 28 essays is also available in hardcopy from Offaly History for just €20. In all over 50 articles free to download. Go to the Decade of Centenaries on the offalyhistory.com website.

  When the great historian and first ‘telly don’ A.J.P. Taylor published his short history of the First World War just in time for the remembrance days of over fifty years ago he wrote that the war reshaped the political order in Europe. That its memorials stood in every town and village and that the real hero of the war was the Unknown Soldier.

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  May 4, 2024

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• Father Whelan from Ballycommon, County Offaly. He laid the foundation for the Catholic Church in three American States. By Danny Leavy. Blog No 608, 3rd May 2024

  Prior to 1783, the history of the Catholic Church in America was one of struggle and suffering. The country was under British rule until the victorious War of Independence that year. In her struggle for independence, France was America’s greatest ally. King Louis XVI sent out a large fleet, under the command of Comte De Ternay on April 16, 1780. It anchored off Rhode Island on July 11, 1780. It was to wait for a second fleet under Comte De Grasse, which departed on March 22, 1781. The second fleet reached Chesapeake Bay on August 26^th of the same year.

  

  At this time, the Irish Capuchins had two convents in France, Bar-sur-Aube and Vassy, where the friars were trained with the intention of returning to Ireland. Ireland at the time was under the penal laws. The Capuchins had removed their novitiate to France. The French King put out the call for Chaplains for the forces destined for America. Twenty Capuchins answered the call including, Father Charles Whelan, from the Vassy convent. Father Whelan was born in Ballycommon near Daingean, County Offaly, in the year 1741.

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  May 3, 2024

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