offalyhistoryblog

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.