Category: Tullamore

• Reporting the Tullamore Town Council. By Declan McSweeney. Blog No 511, 9th August 2023

  The abolition of Tullamore Town Council in 2014 evoked many memories for me of my years covering that body and its predecessor, Tullamore Urban District Council (UDC) from 1988 to 2007 for the Offaly Express, and for a year and a half before that for the Offaly Independent. I also covered a number of meetings as a freelancer for the Express following my ill-fated return from England.

      When I first covered the council, I had the advantage of knowing all the councillors. Six of those early councillors are now deceased – Ernie McGuire and Lar Byrne of Labour, Billy Bracken of Fine Gael (FG), Ann Fox of Fianna Fáil (FF) and independent representatives May Keeley (who, in 1974, was the first woman ever elected as a councillor in Tullamore) and Anne O’Toole.

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  August 9, 2023

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• The Battle of Mag Léna. By John Dolan. Blog No 509, 2nd August 2023

  Mag Léna is of interest for two events that occurred in the early historic period. The first event is the pseudo historic Battle of Mag Léna.  The second event was the significant Synod of Mag Léna and the Letter of Cummain, part of the Irish church row with Rome over the dating of Easter.

  Both incidents caused a split in Ireland!

  What’s in a name?

  Mag Léna is mentioned in logainm.ie as Moylena and places it in the parish of Kilbride, Co. Offaly.  Mag or Magh translates as a plain or open country, there is no information provided on the meaning of the word Léna.  Unusually, there are no additional references other than the basic location details, also this older relic from the original card index system below. A 13^th century manuscript mentions Cath Mhuighe Léana.  Magh Léana is mentioned elsewhere. In his Survey Letters we find O’Donovan used a variety of spellings for the name – Moylena, Moyléna, Moyleana, Moleany and Moy-leana.

  

  Logainm index card for Mag Léna.

  As usual there are difficulties with the older Gaelic placenames and how they were recorded over time.  Today the only memory of the name is in Tullamore, where the Moylena road joins the Clara Road and eventually joins the Rahan Road through Glendaniel.

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  August 2, 2023

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• Offaly evacuated,  not a British policeman or soldier now in the county.  Tullamore R.I.C. barracks occupied by I.R.A., troops march in with fixed bayonets, headed by St. Enda’s pipers. 7 March 1922. An Offaly History contribution to the Decade of Centenaries. Blog No 508, 29th June 2023

  The dismantling of the barrack structure of the British military establishment advanced rapidly in the aftermath of the signing of Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921. The great exodus in Offaly began in February 1922. The newly issued Offaly Independent (absent since November 1920 due to its destruction by the British military) was now able to report that

  

  , “They are going with a vengeance,” but now it is the army of occupation, not the natives of the country, that is leaving our shores, going while a great sigh of relief goes up, and no pang of regret is felt at the departure of those who held is in bondage for so long. What a change the front of St. Conleth’s School in Daingean now presents from what it did a short time ago. The front gates are now thrown open for the first time in nearly two years, as when the local police barrack was destroyed the splendid group of houses inside the gates of St. Conleth’s School which had been used for the purpose of housing some of the tradesmen employed in the institution were commandeered and used as a barrack for police and Black and Tans until Wednesday of last week when the evacuation took place. From an early hour on that morning the residents of the barracks were astir and it was easy to see that something out of the common was about to take place. Before long it was evident that the long-wished for hour had come and that the Crown forces were about to clear out, bag and baggage. At mid-day lorries arrived from Edenderry carrying the Black and Tans from that district, and all assembled at the Grand Canal Bridge, Daingean for the final parting. Such musical instruments as accordions, mouthorgans, etc., were produced and the disbanded heroes made the welcome ring to the strains of “Come back to Erin” (we hope they won’t). “It’s a long way to Tipperary”, “You’ll Remember Me”, and other items. The townspeople viewed the scene unmoved and the farewells were not returned. On the following day the members of the old R.I.C. force prepared to leave Daingean, and by Friday not a single policeman was to be seen in the place, while a new force guarded the town (OI, 11 2 1922).

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  July 29, 2023

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• Closing the old Tullamore distillery in 1983. By John Flanagan. Blog No 507, 26th July 2023

  Work continues on the Irish Mist Liqueur book to be published by Offaly History with the support of Creative Ireland in October. The book will have 240 photographs and a good quality text by a number of contributors. This product was the first such liqueur in Ireland and employed up to sixty people before its sale to C&C and move to Clonmel in 1985. In this extract from the new book John Flanagan (the production manager up to 1985) looks at the closing of the famous Sally Grove warehouse, no. 13, forty years ago this month. It was located close to where the Central Hotel was built on the new Main Street after 2000. Sally Grove warehouse had great maturing qualities for whiskey and so was the last to go of the old system of maturing in oak casks. Tullamore distillery ceased production in 1954, but with 400,000 gallons in stock it remained open to dispose of that resource. The development of Irish Mist was part of the solution to overstock and helped use up some of the over supply available. That was only the beginning for a product that was uniquely associated with Tullamore and the Williams family.

  John Flanagan writes:

  The B. Daly & Co Ltd distillery was founded in Tullamore in 1829 and held the licence to distill and warehouse whiskey. Later, Pot Still, Malt and Grain whiskeys were all produced in the distillery. After 1900 the bottling of all the whiskey was done at the Bond Store at Bury Quay, under the Tullamore Dew brand name. ‘Give every man his dew’ was the famous slogan thought up by Daniel E. Williams, the owner of the distillery in succession to Michael Molloy and Bernard Daly. Other brands were bottled too, including a special brand called ‘Private Stock’ for the directors only.

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  July 26, 2023

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• Private John Dargin, Tullamore, County Offaly fought at Waterloo. By Stephen Callaghan. Blog No 504, 12th July 2023

  208 years ago, the Battle of Waterloo took place in Belgium. The armies under the command of the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon, putting an end to the Napoleonic Wars, which had begun in 1803. To mark the victory and acknowledge the men that fought at the battle, a campaign medal was decided upon by the House of Commons. Rather than given for acts of bravery, it was given to all those involved in the campaign. Similarly, other counties in the coalition issued medals of their own, however the medals issued by the British were named to the recipient, making it possible to trace them. In today’s post, we will look at one of these Waterloo medals, which was awarded to Private John Dargin of the 54^th Regiment of Fo

  John Dargin was born near the parish of Kilbride or Tullamore. He enlisted in the British Army on 6 May 1812 and was a labourer. Assuming he would have been around 18 years old at the time of his enlistment, this would place his birth around the 1790s.

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  July 12, 2023

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• The Irish Mist Figurine/ Soldier. By John Flanagan. Blog No 503, 8th

  This week we provide an extract from the book to be published in November 2023 on Irish Mist Liqueur, a unique Tullamore-based product for almost forty years. Many homes have the Irish Mist Soldier in pride of place on a dresser so here is some more information about it from John Flanagan, the production manager with Irish Mist for twenty-five years. The book will be published in the autumn. You can email us to reserve a copy for you. No money now thanks. The book has support from Creative Ireland and Offaly County Council.

  The Irish Mist ceramic figurine was made by Coronetti, Cunardo, Italy. Each one was individually hand-painted by different artists in the factory. The figurine is a replica of an Irish soldier (officer) in the Austrian army about 1756. The Austrian connection is associated with the founder of the recipe for Irish Mist Liqueur who was Austrian. Irish Mist was known as the Legendary Liqueur.

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  July 8, 2023

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• Declan McSweeney on the Offaly Express. Blog No 502, 30th June 2023

  The closure in 2012 of Offaly Express, where I served as a staff reporter from 1988 to 2007, marked the end of an era in local journalism.

  When I was a schoolboy, living in Tullamore, the dominant local paper was the Offaly Independent, though the Midland Tribune circulated to a degree from Birr. The growth of Tullamore led to a feeling that a specifically local paper was needed, and in 1978, the Tullamore Tribune was launched, under the editorship of the late Geoff Oakley. He remained in that post until he retired in 1994, when he was succeeded by Ger Scully.

  The Offaly Express emerged as a sister paper of the Portlaoise-based Leinster Express, which began to circulate around Tullamore in 1984, though it already had a presence in Edenderry and the eastern half of Offaly. Much of the credit for the Offaly edition must lie with the late Kevin Farrell, who would surely have enjoyed the irony of the fact that his death in July 2012 took place the very day on which the Offaly Express ceased publication and that it had to hold on to report the sad news of his passing.

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  June 30, 2023

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• Exploring High Street, Tullamore: no 11 article on High Street in the Living in Towns Series. By Michael Byrne. Blog No 500

  High Street is still the principal street in Tullamore and this has been so for the past two hundred years. It, together with Bridge St., O’Connor Square, O’Moore St., and Cormac St., deserve detailed attention because of the quality of the surviving urban fabric. The same might be said of the terrace in Church St. and Bury Quay/Convent Road Terrace. Patrick St. has a few houses of very high quality. The designation of principal street applies to the quality of the surviving houses and not to extent of business, or the number of those living in the houses as owner occupiers of the original residences. A walking tour of O’Connor Square and High Street, Tullamore organised by Offaly Historical and Archaeological Society on 18 June 2023 has promoted this review of what we have published so far on High Street (see the articles listed in the appendix to part 2 of this article (next week) and all online at http://www.offalyhistory.com). This work is supported by the Heritage Council.

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  June 21, 2023

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• ‘Sweet Tullamore’ and Williams’ Red Cup tea, as described ninety years ago by A.K. in the Irish Press. A contribution to the Decade of Centenaries. Blog No 497, 7th June 2023

  A contribution to Tullamore 400 and the Living in Towns initiative of the Heritage Council. Sit down and have a cup of tea with this blog!

  A visit by an Irish Press journalist to Tullamore in 1933 provided a nice puff for the Williams tea business and its brand Red Cup Tea. At the time Williams provided regular advertising in the Irish Press for its tea and Edmund Williams (d. 1948) was a founder director of Irish Press. D.E. Williams’ interest in tea can be traced back to 1895. In the Chronicle and the rest of the local press for February 1895 advertisements appeared in connection with the opening of a wholesale tea business by Daniel E. Williams. In a comment the Chronicle stated that most of the blending was done in London where D.E.W. had larger stores than hitherto. The draft 1917 accounts for DEW Ltd show sales at £8,324. This had risen to £13,807 by 1923. The business was much expanded in the 1930s led by the blender, a Mr O’Shea.

  

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  June 7, 2023

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• Banking in Tullamore: The Hibernian Bank now part of Bank of Ireland. One of Tullamore’s finest buildings at the junction of Bridge Street and O’Connor Square.  By Michael Byrne. Blog No 495, 3rd June 2023

  A contribution to Tullamore 400 and the Heritage Council’s Historic Towns Initiative.

  The Hibernian Bank opened in Tullamore’s Bridge Street in 1864. The footprint of the original site was the  Ridley leasehold of 1786. In 1948 the bank was extended by the inclusion of the Berrill shop on Bridge Street. About 1970 the Wakefield shop was added to the property portfolio and soon after the second Ridley leasehold in O’Connor Square being the ‘Brick Building’ erected by T.P. & R. Goodbody in 1871. We had a blog article on 12 O’Connor Square in June 2022 under the title The ‘flamboyant three-storey Ruskinian Gothic warehouse’ in Tullamore. Today we are looking at no. 10, 11, and 12 Bridge Street

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  June 3, 2023

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