Sir Richard Colt Hoare’s account of his visit to Ireland in 1806 is of interest to us in County Offaly for his comments on the progress of building at Charleville and the two surviving drawings of the Srah and Charleville castles in a book of drawings of Colt Hoare’s in the RIA. These drawings are important for the catalogue of topographical drawings and paintings of King’s County/Offaly interest and hence their inclusion here. Srah/Sragh Castle can be described as Tullamore’s oldest surviving house and was erected in 1588. The fortifed house has attracted the interest of antiquarians since the 1800s. The Colt Hoare drawings are among the earliest and certainly that is so for Tullamore where paintings and drawings of topographical features are scarce until the contemporary artists began to fill the void.
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The Irish National Stud, 1900-2025: Horses, Politics and Elitism (2025). A new book by Declan Monaghan. Blog No 719, 7th June 2025
Background
One Wednesday morning in November 2013, as I painstakingly ascended several flights of stairs to reach the summit of the Offaly Adult Education building in Tullamore to inquire about the Leaving Certificate subjects of History and English, my mind raced at breakneck speed—not out of excitement for the prospect of taking the course, but in search of a plausible excuse to leave the building as soon as possible and avoid any interaction! This was the last place I wanted to be, but relentless pressure from my ex-wife, Orla, forced me to bite the bullet and investigate the prospect of returning to education. Orla displayed foresight as she observed something within me that she believed could thrive in the classroom environment. Unsurprisingly, I disagreed! I was more familiar with the confines of the construction industry! But to appease her, I agreed to ask about the course, with no intention of signing up! Nonetheless, my cunning plan was shattered faster than the speed of light when I was offered a place starting that same Wednesday morning. A sense of shock and horror enveloped me. Firstly, I was six weeks late beginning the course, and secondly, I had to walk into a room of students, most younger than me!
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Christopher Maye of Tullamore and Mullingar: a man for others and loved by all. An appreciation Article , Offaly History. Blog No 717, 31st May 2025
It is rare that it can be said of a businessman that he was loved by all. In the case of Christy Maye it is true he held the loyalty, respect and love of all who came to know him, whether as an employee, customer, supplier or competitor. He was a successful businessman, builder, hotelier but above all an entertainer. And more than that he was a great leader in the Tullamore community without ever wanting thanks or recognition. This was best exhibited in his championing and leading the Tullamore Show since he largely founded it in 1991, inspired at the time by the Mullingar Show. He was a member of the Tullamore Lions Club since it started in Tullamore fifty years ago.
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Remembering Séamus O’Dea of St Columba’s/ Coláiste Choilm, Tullamore, Offaly. By Declan McSweeney. No. 17 in the 2025 Offaly History Anniversaries Series. Blog No 716, 31st May 2025
The 2011 demolition of the old Coláiste Choilm building brought back many memories for former staff members. The last member of the staff when the school moved from Convent Road to High Street/O’Moore Street was Séamus O’Dea, who died in 2017 at the age of 93.
In an interview many years ago with the Offaly Express, Mr O’Dea recalled how he joined the staff of the old St Columba’s Classical School in 1955. Located at the junction of Convent Road and St Bridget’s Place, that school had opened in 1912.
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Thomas Lalor Cooke the Mr ‘B’ of Birr with his Dublin Penny Journal article of 1834 on Seir Kieran. No. 16 in the 2025 Offaly History Anniversaries Series. Blog No 715, 28th may 2025
John O’Donovan was in Birr in early 1838 and having obtained a copy of The Picture (1826) by Thomas Lalor Cooke thought better of him as a scholar, but one subject to some foolish ideas after the school of Charles Vallancey. O’Donovan identified Cooke as ‘B’ in the Penny Journal articles he wrote and one of these was on the monastery of Seir Kieran at Clareen. It is interesting to compare the article in the 1834 issue of the DublinPenny Journal with that in the 1875 publication. Also of interest is to take into account the manuscript annotations to the Picture of 1826, now in Birr Castle Archives. And if that was not enough Cooke has letters and other MS sources in the RIA, NLI and the National Archives. In his letters of 1850 to the Cork antiquarian, John Windle (now in RIA) he tells Windle that he was the author under the pseudonym ‘B’ of articles in the Penny Journal and under his own initials of articles in the Dublin Evening Post. Despite the published work of George Petrie on the Round Towers (1833 and 1845) Cooke continued to put forward the Vallancey-style notion that the origin of the round towers lay in early times and were temples of fire.
Read more: Thomas Lalor Cooke the Mr ‘B’ of Birr with his Dublin Penny Journal article of 1834 on Seir Kieran. No. 16 in the 2025 Offaly History Anniversaries Series. Blog No 715, 28th may 2025 (more…)
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Thomas Lalor Cooke (TLC) ‘the only antiquarian now living’ according to John O’Donovan in letters from Birr in 1838. The first in a series of articles to mark Cooke anniversaries. No. 15 in the 2025 Anniversaries Series from Offaly History. By Michael Byrne. Blog No 714, 21st May 2025
Thomas Lalor Cooke’s Picture of Parsonstown was first published in 1826 and a revised edition by his son William Antisell Cooke in 1875. So this year marks the 150th anniversary of the revised issue and in 2026 we mark the 200th anniversary of T.L. Cooke’s first and now rare book, the Picture of Parsonstown. A reprint of the 1875 greatly expanded history was issued by Esker Press in 1989 with a new introduction by Margaret Hogan. It is now also out of print. A reissue of the 1826 book is now under active consideration.
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Anne Jellicoe (1823-80) of Mountmellick, Clara and Dublin: ‘a quiet but determined revolutionary’ who let the credit roll. No. 14 in the 2025 Anniversaries Series from Offaly History. Blog No 713, 14th May 2025
Hopefully Clara will soon honour Anne Jellicoe with a street name. Susan M. Parkes, the author of a history of Alexandra College, Dublin contributed a valuable short life of Anne Jellicoe to the Dictionary of Irish Jellicoe (now online) was a pioneer in establishing a craft industry in Clara during her ten years there in 1848–58. The early 1850s was a time when many craft industries were established by boards of guardians and convents. Some such as that connected with the Mercy convent schools, Tullamore lasted less than five years. That at Clara was also to have a short life. Michael Goodbody in his The Goodbodys (Dublin, 2011) noted that John Jellicoe, a quaker miller from Monasterevan leased the Erry, Clara mill from John Dugdale in 1848. The mill was destroyed by fire in 1849 and rebuilt, and after Jellicoe’s time was worked by the Perrys. It was in 1850 Goodbody states that John Jellicoe’s wife Anne started a lace making school in Clara to provide work for local girls. She also began to teach embroidery, an idea taken from Mountmellick. By 1854 the craft school was in trouble because ‘the new priest beat the work girls from Anne Jellicoe’s school to make them attend his own’. The source of the row may have been religious instruction (Goodbody, 2011, 216). By 1856 the contents of the lace school were auctioned off. Clara would have more trouble with its parish priest and bishop in the 1890s. The Jellicoes left Clara in 1858. There are further references to the Jellicoes in the diary of Lydia Goodbody published in 2021 under the title 100 years of Clara history: a Goodbody family perspective. Anne Jellicoe would be a fitting inspiration in the event of new housing state in Clara needing a name. Dead over 100 years now there could hardly been an objection from Offaly County Council.
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Fr Paddy Kelly, Tullamore and the Battle of Manila in 1945. By Mairead O’Brien. No 13 in 2025 Anniversaries Series. Blog No 712, 7th may 2025
February marked the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Manila. Fought in the closing months of World War II, the operation to liberate the Philippine capital from Japanese tyranny turned into a massive slaughter of 100,000 non-combatants and the destruction of that beautiful city. Not widely known is that among those killed were five Irish Columban fathers who were based in the parish of Malate in Manila. One of them was Fr. Patrick Kelly from William Street in Tullamore. The others were Regional Superior, Fr. John Henaghan from Louisburgh, Co. Mayo; Fr. John Lalor from Cork; Fr. Peter Fallon from Dunmore, Co. Galway; and Fr. Joseph Monaghan from Banbridge, Co. Down.
On December 8th, 1941, just hours after they bombed Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, Japanese troops invaded the Philippine Islands. The defending forces, under General Douglas MacArthur, consisted of American and Filipino troops. Inexperienced and ill-prepared for battle, they retreated to the Bataan Peninsula, leaving Manila, the capital, undefended. By January 2nd, 1942, an advance column of Japanese soldiers had entered the city. Thus began a brutal three-year occupation of the islands.
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Sharavogue Shinrone, County Offaly and the King’s County Polo Club. By Aidan Doyle. Blog No 710, 23rd April 2025
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.
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