offalyhistoryblog

Arthur Bell Nicholls’ Return to Banagher, 1861 – 1906, Part 1: A New Lifestyle by James Scully. Blog No 21, 15 March 2017.

Haworth

Arthur Bell Nicholls first came to Banagher in 1825 when he and his brother Alan were adopted by their uncle, the Rev. Alan Clerke Bell, master of Banagher Royal School and his wife, Harriette. Following a successful education there he entered Trinity College Dublin and graduated in 1844. The following year he was ordained and entered the curacy at Haworth in Yorkshire where Patrick Brontë was perpetual curate. He remained there for sixteen years. During this time he became a dedicated and trustworthy friend of the Brontë family and would have witnessed at close quarters the joyful and heartbreaking events that befell them. Within the first three years of his curacy the Brontë sisters had their poems and first novels published. Jane Eyre by Charlotte, Wuthering Heights by Emily and Agnes Grey by Anne were all highly acclaimed. Tragically between September 1848 and May 1849 Branwell, Patrick’s only son, and both Emily and Anne died leaving Charlotte as the last surviving of the six Brontë siblings. (more…)

March 15, 2017

Banagher, Bronte, Literature, nineteenth century
Hugh Mahon: Patriot, Pressman, Politician (1857-1931) From Killurin to Kalgoorlie. Blog No 20, 11 March 2017.

This year marks the 160^th anniversary of the birth of Hugh Mahon, a native of County Offaly, who, after a difficult start in Ireland, found fame and fortune in Australia, where he rose to high political office, as a Labor member of the Australian parliament and a government minister. A new book, Hugh Mahon: Patriot, Pressman, Politician tells the fascinating life-story of this son of the county, whose relations still live in and around Tullamore. The book will be launched at Offaly History Centre, Bury Quay, Tullamore on Thursday 27 April 2017 at a lecture to be given by the book’s author Australian historian Jeff Kildea. (more…)

March 11, 2017

Hugh Mahon, Kalgoorlie, Killurin
Kilbeggan – a reason to believe. Blog No 19, 04 March 2017.

Kilbeggan is Tullamore town’s nearest neighbour to the north and was once part of the Tullamore Poor Law Union. It has been part of the county of Westmeath since the 16^th century. Like Tullamore it depended greatly on milling and distilling. Locke’s Distillery fell into decay in the 1960s and was restored by the local community in the 1980s. It is again an active distillery. Thanks largely to the foresight of John Teeling the name of Kilbeggan is once again known throughout the world. Two midland towns, Tullamore and Kilbeggan, have given their name to world-class products. Both towns now have thriving whiskey distillery visitor centres.

Community activist and historian, Stan McCormack tells the story and looks to the future.

We seem to be living in this strange twilight zone, where a billionaire reality TV host becomes President of the USA, with issues regarding women, immigrants, tax, and ‘alternative facts’; where Britain exits the EU almost by mistake; Putin waits for his next move on Ukraine; and Kim Yong plays with nuclear bombs in North Korea, plus other right wingers waiting in the long grass. It is a reason to be, at the very least, afraid economically. The recovery of metropolitan areas in Ireland, where almost all the multi-national jobs have gone, has not travelled to rural areas. The myth of recovery

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March 4, 2017

Distilling, local development, Urban history
The Rosse Papers in Birr Castle Archives. Blog No 18, 25 February 2017.

The Muniments Room

The Muniments Room in Birr Castle is a special space. Based in the eastern flanker of the castle, it was once a smoking room and contained a much painted-over and practically hidden Jacobean plaster frieze, the oldest complete example of its kind in Ireland. In 1980, on inheriting the castle, the present Earl of Rosse, set about restoring the frieze to its former glory and applied for an Irish Georgian Society grant which allowed master stuccadore Séamus Ó hEocha to undertake the painstaking restoration work soon after. It was the first act of modern restoration work in the castle and its results were startling. (more…)

February 25, 2017

Birr Castle, Muniments Room, Rosse Papers
Offaly GAA: Slivers of History. Blog No 17, 18 February 2017.

To coincide with the release by Offaly History Archives of a collection of Offaly GAA minute books and records (1906-1980), Dr Paul Rouse takes us through the history of the GAA in Offaly from its establishment in the county in the 1880s to the present day.

Without Gaelic games, there is nothing that unites Offaly. The county boundaries were first laid out in 1557 during the plantation of Leix-Offaly – but this was effectively a nominal administrative division that did not translate from maps, bore no relation to the divergent customs of the region and was largely ignored by the populace. Offaly sprawls across five Catholic dioceses and includes within its area, the ancient fiefdoms, or parts of fiefdoms, of a host of Gaelic chieftains. (more…)

February 18, 2017

Archival collections, Offaly GAA
The Crowd in O’Connor Square, the spatial strategy and Tullamore as the ‘Kilkenny of the midlands’. Blog No 16, 11 February 2017.

O’Connor Square has been an open space and at times a crowded place over its 300 years in existence. Described as a market place as early as 1713 it was not until 1789 that the market house (now the Rocket restaurant) was built. For over 250 years the square fulfilled the important market function of any provincial town. A place where town met country and where people came to sell their farm produce and livestock. Trading was carried on in the formal setting of the market house for just thirty years. By 1820 that function in the square was modified with the provision of a new Cornmarket (now the Market Square) off Harbour Street and close to the Grand Canal harbour. (more…)

February 11, 2017

O’Connor Square, Planning, Tullamore
The war memorial in O’Connor Square: the first of the public memorials in Tullamore Town. Blog No 15, 04 Februarys 2017.

The 2016-17 €3m enhancement plan for Tullamore town contains a broad proposal that the war memorial in O’Connor Square be moved to a widened footpath opposite the Brewery Tap. The reasoning is unclear, but may be to have a broad sweep in the square for a covered market or band stand idea to the front of the library. A Fergal MacCabe drawing of 2013 was able to provide for the retention of the war memorial where it was first placed in 1926. The purpose of this article is to provide a history of this and other memorials in the square with a quick overview of Tullamore’s monuments to recall ‘those who should not be forgotten’. (more…)

February 4, 2017

O’Connor Square, Planning, Tullamore
The families of O’Connor Square, Tullamore over two centuries. Blog No 14, 28 January 2017.

There may be no families resident in O’Connor Square in 2017 and the area is now almost entirely a public and commercial space with well-designed buildings, a memorial in memory of the war dead of 1914-18, a public library, the restaurant ‘Bake’ and a market house/’town hall’ to which the public have access for the most part due to its being a restaurant at ground level. The great footfall recipient today is the Post Office, fulfilling in the square what the credit union does in Patrick Street. (more…)

January 28, 2017

O’Connor Square, Planning, Tullamore
Tullamore is the best town in the county and ‘Little inferior to any town in Ireland’. Blog No 13, 21 January 2017.

Some of the options around the €3m Enhancement Plans for Tullamore town envisage O’Connor Square as a tree-lined open space with perhaps a band stand and from time to time one assumes the holding of local markets including a Christmas market. The market function goes back over 300 years and survived intact for the first 100 years up to the 1820s. By that time the town had expanded and a new market function, near the commercial harbour (an inland port) was developed in a rectangular area perhaps twice the size of O’Connor Square. Even so the main square continued to be used for the sale of light goods on the big trading days or Fair Days. That custom pertained until the 1980s when it came under fire from a pincer movement (more…)

January 21, 2017

O’Connor Square, Planning, Tullamore
Planning in Tullamore and the making of O’Connor Square. Blog No 12, 14 January 2017.

Agreeing on what will make Tullamore better is not a simple task

O’Connor Square, Tullamore is in the news because of the proposed enhancement works for Tullamore based on a budget of €3m which will see Main Street connected to the Bridge Centre, the laying underground of cables in some of the streets and the re-ordering of O’Connor Square to remove the motor car, in so far as politically possible. What are proposed now are enhancement works to have more pedestrianisation (more…)

January 14, 2017

Charleville, O’Connor Square, Planning, Tullamore

To coincide with the release by Offaly History Archives of a collection of Offaly GAA minute books and records (1906-1980), Dr Paul Rouse takes us through the history of the GAA in Offaly from its establishment in the county in the 1880s to the present day.