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The Queen, Princess Margaret and Dooly’s Hotel, Birr by Cosney Molloy. Blog No 168, 28th December 2019

I was in Birr over the Christmas and chatting in Dooly’s I recalled that it will be 59 years this weekend since the first visit of a Royal princess to Ireland – Princess Margaret and Anthony Armstrong Jones- and that was the first royal visit to Ireland in over thirty years. The son of Anne, Countess of Rosse (by her first husband), Anthony Armstrong Jones, married the Queen’s only sister in May 1960. It was a grand affair and the Countess of Rosse, always one for beauty and glamour, was the finest dressed of the three mothers-in-law present at the royal wedding. The happy couple visited Birr six months later on New Year’s Eve 1960. The town of Birr witnessed an influx of pressmen never seen before in the midlands and perhaps not till that EC meeting in Tullamore ten or fifteen years ago.

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December 28, 2019
The first aerial photograph of Tullamore 101 years ago – on the eve of the War of Independence. Michael Byrne. Blog No 167, 21 December 2019

Tullamore town in August 1918 in the first known aerial photograph

The first aerial photograph of Tullamore was published in the press in 1918 as part of the work of the Irish Recruiting Council and in an effort to promote voluntary recruiting. Variants of the aerial photograph and the story behind it are also to be found in competing historical accounts of the Great War and the War of Independence.
A by-product of the accelerated interest in flying in the war years was that of aerial photography with happy results for the study of Tullamore’s urban history. In September 1918 an aerial photograph of Tullamore was published and described as ‘Tullamore gathering/Aerial Activity/Co-operation with Voluntary Recruiting by the Irish Recruiting Council.’ The same picture was also published in the magazine Irish Life at the time. The picture was taken by Captain Norman Herford Dimmock and was described as an ‘Aerial view of Tullamore horse fair taken by RAF biplane in 1918.’ What may have attracted Dimmock in his aerial reconnaissance for subversive activity was the extent of the movement of people in the town on that fair day on 16 August 1918. Tullamore town centre fairs were to last until the 1960s, but this is the only such aerial photograph of the farming event and the first aerial picture of the town.

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December 21, 2019
The curtain falls: Hugh Carr – 9 December 2019. By Geraldine Clarke. Blog No 166, 14th Dec 2019

On Wednesday last we said goodbye to a dear friend, Hugh Carr as he was buried in Clonaslee graveyard beside his beloved wife Máire Eibhlín, who predeceased him in 1982. We joined Hugh’s family and friends as mummers – travelling actors who traditionally visited houses in disguise, singing and rhyming. We did not go in disguise but went in memory of and tribute to, Hugh’s great play The Mummers of Reilig. In 1979 Hugh and Máire Eibhlín gathered a large cast and we started rehearsals for what was to become an 18 month journey together – culminating in winning best play at Listowel Writers’ Week in 1980. (more…)

December 14, 2019
The Story of Brickmaking in Pollagh, County Offaly. By Caitriona Devery. Blog No 165, 7th Dec 2019

Pollagh Heritage Group’s first book The Story of Brickmaking in Pollagh, County Offaly will be launched by Cathaoirleach of Offaly County Council, Peter Ormond, on Sunday 8 December at 2pm in Pollagh Community Centre. The book represents almost two years of work by the group to locate, collect and represent research materials including recorded interviews, photographs, historical reports and minutes, newspaper archives and academic articles.

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December 7, 2019
A Victorian Romance: Charlotte Bronte and her association with Banagher. Offaly History event, 5 December at 8 pm. Blog No 164, 30 Nov 2019

Arthur & Charlotte: A Victorian Romance Remembered is the title for a dramatic evening to be presented by Offaly History in Hugh Lynch’s Pub, Tullamore on Thursday 5th December at 8 p.m. The event will chronicle the story of Arthur Bell Nicholls of Banagher and his romance with and marriage to the famous Victorian novelist, Charlotte Brontë of Haworth in Yorkshire. Using contemporary source material the presentation will narrate this intriguing love story in written word and song. Readings will recall Arthur’s early years when he lived in Cuba House with his uncle the Reverend Alan Bell, Master of the Royal School of Banagher, his subsequent ordination and appointment as curate to the Reverend Patrick Brontë in Haworth.

Extracts from Charlotte’s letters will describe her marriage to Arthur and her honeymoon in Ireland. The production will close with an account of Arthur’s life following Charlotte’s death in 1855 and his return from Haworth to Banagher in 1861, up to his death in 1906.The event will be performed by the Martello Tower Players from Banagher, All proceeds from the evening will go towards the new Offaly Archives recently completed in the Axis Business Park, Clara Road Tullamore. Tickets are €12 each and can be obtained from Offaly History Centre. Telephone: 05793 21421 or email: info@offalyhistory.com and James Scully, Banagher

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November 30, 2019
Renovation of a 210-year-old Tullamore house in Store Street. By Bernard and Melissa Westman. Blog No 163, 23 Nov 2019

Over three years later and we are settled in our 210-year-old house in the heart of Tullamore, far from finished but we are happy to date. We tried to keep as much character as possible within the house with the stone walls. We also kept the original height of the ceilings in the bedrooms which are over 14 feet. Two of the bedrooms have the old iron cast fireplace and we restored them by sanding and spraying them back to their original look.

Store Street and the old church in the mid- 1880s with two or three of the big houses demolished . O’Connell Hall is now the Parish Centre.

Store Street is one of the quieter streets in Tullamore now, but from 1800 to the 950s it was a busy place with the canal stores in use beside the busy harbour. The passenger boat traffic finished in the 1850s with the advent of the railway and the canal hotel became a parochial house for the Catholic clergy. Besides the bustle of draymen was that boys heading up to the old St Brigid’s School from the late 1870s to 1961 while the younger children attended the convent primary school on the corner of Thomas Street and Store Street. Like Harbour Street the new Store Street of the early 1800s owed its origins to the building of the Grand Canal to Tullamore in 1798. The new chapel on the site of the present one was completed in 1802 and the CYMS hall (later St Mary’s Hall) and now the Parish Centre was in use from 1860 to the 1960s for meetings and dancing. If Store Street was quiet as to houses (only 12 to 15) it was still a busy spot at mass and school times and with the comings and goings of horses and drays to the canal stores (burned about 1960).

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November 23, 2019
Shackleton’s photographs of Tullamore and west Offaly in the 1890s. Michael Byrne. Blog No 162, 16th Nov 2019

Jane W. Shackleton’s Ireland compiled by Christiaan Corlett (Cork, 2012) is an attractive large format publication from the growing stable of books issued by Collins Press and consists of 180 well produced photographs by Jane Shackleton. Jane Shackleton (nee Edmundson) was born in 1843 and in 1866 married Joseph Fisher Shackleton of the famous Ballitore, County Kildare family of Quakers. Thirteen Shackletons are included in Richard S. Harrison’s, Dictionary of Irish Quakers (second edition, Dublin, 2008) including Jane’s husband, Joseph Fisher Shackleton. Like his father he was a miller and in 1860 took over the Anna Liffey Mills in Lucan.

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November 16, 2019
Johnny Gorman the tailor of Ferbane. The Story of a Fenian. By Tomas O Cleirigh M.A. and Offaly History. Blog No 161, 9th Nov 2019

Johnny Gorman, 1847-8 – 143

Some died by the glenside, some died ‘mid the stranger,
The wise men have told us their cause was a failure;
But they stood by old Ireland an’ never feared danger,
Glory O! glory O to the Bold Fenian Men”
Peadar O’ Cearnaigh

Ferbane is a little place of about three hundred inhabitants. They often been wonder why the Shannon Scheme went out of its way to come to them. It’s queer to see it all lit up at night, because I think the whole three hundred go to bed at nine. There is bog all around it- miles and miles of good, hard bog, and a clean cold wind that makes fine men. Johnny Gorman is one of them.
Johnny is a brisk and blue-eyed little fellow – a tailor by trade with a halo of glory by way of his having been once upon a time a bold Fenian man. I went to see him early on a Monday morning, and wondered if he could spare me a few minutes. That made Johnny laugh;
“Musha, it’s not in New York ye are now, my son, and even so, sure Monday’s tailor’s holiday and I can stay talking to you all day if you wish.”

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November 9, 2019
Going in on the Altar or an altar boy`s apprenticeship in West Offaly in the 1950s. By Pádraig Turley. Blog No 160, 9th Nov 2019

This episode in my life dates from the early 1950s. I was about nine year old at the time. I lived with my mother, grand-parents and uncle on a farm in the townland of Clerhane, near the village of Shannonbridge. My father worked in Dublin.
Our house was what was then called a rambling house, where friends and neighbours would gather for a chat, and to generally sort out the problems of the world. I must add that my grandmother, a somewhat severe woman, felt these matters could be sorted out elsewhere. My grandfather loved these evening chats, so it was unlikely my grandmother`s desire would ever prevail.

1. The Sacristy of the old Church in Shannonbridge where Willie Fallon introduced me to my life as an altar boy.

Great craic and the curved ball

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November 9, 2019
Stories and traditions from the historic ruins in Ballinagar. Specially Contributed by John Malone, Blog No 159, 2nd Nov 2019

‘At Ballinagar a large and handsome R.C. chapel was in the course of erection in the ancient English style of architecture’.

Samuel Lewis in 1837 remarks that ‘at Ballinagar a large and handsome R.C. chapel was in the course of erection in the ancient English style of architecture’. This church replaced an earlier thatched building on the same site which probably dated back to the latter half of the 18th century on the relaxing of penal laws. When the present day church was reopened after being burnt in 2004, the wooden tabernacle of the original church was gifted by the Hackett family to the church and is now kept in the sacristy.
Lewis also remarks that near Ballinagar are the ruins of a church. There is local tradition that there was a church on Hackett’s lane on the Geashill road in Ballyduff south. There was a church in Clonmore called Balleen Lawn church and there also was a reference by Dr Comerford in his history of Kildare and Leighlin to a church graveyard in Clonadd which is between Ballinagar and Daingean.

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November 2, 2019

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