Athy Eye On The Past

It was a full house at last week’s lecture in Castledermot organised by the Castledermot local history group. The lecture delivered by James Durney, author of several books and historian in residence with Kildare County Council, dealt with the Graney ambush in 1922. The events of that fateful afternoon, Tuesday 24^th October, 1922 were part of the ongoing Irish Civil War which pitched Free State army recruits against those opposed to the Treaty, commonly referred to as the Irregulars.

96 years have passed since the Graney ambush and all those involved are now dead. Nevertheless the deadly ambush which resulted in the death of four soldiers of the Irish National Army has the potential to re-awaken old controversies. This was clearly in the mind of Michael Dempsey, Chairman of the Castledermot History Group, when in his opening remarks he referred to the emotive subject and requested restraint in any contributions from the large audience. The lecture went ahead without any controversy and many in the audience heard for the first time a detailed and accurate account of what happened that day at Graney Cross.

I had previously written of the ambush but was not aware that the Irregulars were part of what James Durney described as the ‘O’Connell Column’. The O’Connell in question was Thomas O’Connell, vice commander of the Carlow Brigade 1920-1922 and officer in command 1922-24. He was a native of Edenderry and worked for Betty O’Donnell’s father Thomas Prendergast in Carlow as a French polisher. I have written in a previous Eye on the Past of Thomas O’Connell and of the memorial cross erected near Maganey where he was killed in a road traffic accident on 31^stAugust 1924. That memorial cross was presented by Mrs. Kearney of Brown St., Carlow to the members of the Old I.R.A. Carlow for erection at the Maganey accident scene. Regrettably the cross was broken and stolen about three years ago and now only the base of the memorial remains just a few miles distant from the Graney crossroads where O’Connell and his men ambushed their former comrades.

The place chosen for the ambush was where four roads converged at what is known as Graney Cross. Earlier in the day Free State soldiers under Comdt. Hugh Kenny travelled in a Crossley Tender from Baltinglass for Athy. Between Castledermot and Athy the Tender ran out of petrol and one of the soldiers went into Athy to get a supply. On his return the Comdt. decided to go back to Baltinglass and after stopping at Castledermot Post Office for a few minutes continued on the road towards Graney. Unknown to the Free State soldiers Thomas O’Connell, who with his comrades had taken the Anti-Treaty side, having learned of the soldiers earlier trip through Castldermot and their likely return, set up the ambush at Graney. All of the ambushers have not been positively identified but amongst those who have been were Laurence O’Neill, James Lillis, Christopher Murphy, Thomas Toole, John Shannon, James Rice, Mick Woods, Ned Kane, Hugh O’Rourke, Seamus O’Toole and Myles Carroll.

Three Free State soldiers were killed that day. They were James Murphy of Baltinglass, Edward Byrne of Hacketstown and Patrick Allison of Carlow. A fourth soldier, James Hunt, the driver of the Crossly tender, died the following Saturday.

Thomas O’Connell was subsequently captured and imprisoned, but he managed to escape and was on the run for over a year. James Lillis was later captured and imprisoned in Carlow Military Barracks where he was executed on 15^thJanuary, 1923. Lillis as adjutant of the Carlow Brigade was one of three officers who entered the Sinn Fein hall in Castledermot on 15^th June 1922 to take the hall from Irregular troops. One of the Irregulars, Thomas Dunne, was shot that day. Ned Kane from Castledermot was also captured and imprisoned in Carlow and like Lillis was to be executed. However, with the help of Paddy Cosgrave, another Castledermot men and a high ranking Free State army officer, he was spirited out of the prison and allowed to go on the run. Seamus O’Toole and Myles Carroll were shot by Free State soldiers at Shean less than two months after the Graney ambush. O’Toole died at the scene of the shooting, while Carroll died soon afterwards.

Thomas O’Connell’s involvement in the War of Independence and the subsequent Civil War and that of his brother Patrick’s service as a British soldier during World War I indicates the apparent and sometimes obvious conflict in allegiances which prevailed in Irish society and amongst Irish families of that time. Thomas O’Connell’s brother Patrick had joined the Royal Irish Regiment in December 1915 and was killed at Cambrai on 30^th November 1917.

The Civil War was a ruthless cycle of ambushes, killings and executions which left a legacy of bitterness for years afterwards. Those involved have now passed on and today’s generation can look back at those years of war free of bitterness to hear the stories that for decades remained untold.

The past is slipping away with a quickening pace which increases as the years pass. My thoughts as I attended the funeral of Sr. Cecelia Hall, a Sister of Mercy, who entered the convent in Athy almost 77 years ago. A native of Killenaule, Co. Tipperary, she joined the Sisters of Mercy with her own sister, later Sr. Claude, on 8^thSeptember 1940. Sister Cecelia and Sr. Claude were just two of the many young female siblings who over the years entered the Convent of Mercy here in Athy. Families as far afield as the counties on the Western seaboard gave us young girls who devoted their lives as Sisters of Mercy to education, patient care in the County Home, later St. Vincent’s Hospital, and social work among the poor of Athy.

Just eleven days before Sr. Cecilia’s funeral another funeral journey to St. Michael’s Cemetery saw the removal of the remains of Sr. Immaculata to the Sisters of Mercy section of the local cemetery. The death of these two elderly nuns represents another breach in the extraordinary line up of religious whose lives were committed over a period of almost 165 years to service within our community here in Athy.

I have always been intrigued as to how young girls from counties as far apart as Kerry and Mayo and so distant from the Lily White county came to the convent in Athy. Was it due to the encouragement of religious in their own parishes to join the Sisters of Mercy and the subsequent distribution by higher authority of postulants to various Mercy houses throughout Ireland? I gather that those wishing to join the Sisters of Mercy were not encouraged to enter convents in their own area and so movement throughout the country was an inevitable consequence. Even though local girls were generally encouraged to enter convents some distance from their native towns there are several instances where a number of local girls had joined the local convent. Amongst these were a sister of Dan Carbery of St. John’s who was professed as Sr. Frances de Sales and Sr. Michael, one-time superioress of the convent who was a Hickey from Kilberry.

The enormous contribution which the Sisters of Mercy made to education and the welfare of our local community can never be adequately measured. However, as I wrote at the top of this piece the past is slipping fast. As each member of the Sisters of Mercy pass away their legacy recedes further and further. Not too many years ago the extensive building known as the Convent of Mercy housed a full complement of nuns and postulants. The convent closed in May 2000 and the aging Sisters of Mercy left behind in the grounds of their old convent the small cemetery which held the remains of the nuns who died over the years. The first death was recorded on 29^thApril 1866 with the passing of a young postulant, Mary Ryan. She was one of three Ryan sisters who entered the convent in Athy less than 20 years after the Great Famine.

The new St. Michaels Cemetery now has a section reserved for the Sisters of Mercy as it has for the Christian Brothers and members of the clergy who died in recent years. Sadly the Sisters of Mercy who died during the currency of the Mercy convent remain in the small cemetery which was attached to that convent. The subsequent development of apartments in the vicinity of the cemetery has consigned that sacred space to virtual obscurity which given the proud history of the Sisters of Mercy in Athy is a sad reflection on our passing history.

The past is slipping away, especially that past which was inhabited by religious sisters and brothers. They came to Athy just a few years after the Great Famine to provide badly needed education for young boys and girls of the area who up to then lived without much hope of improving their lives. The Sisters of Mercy and the Christian Brothers gave you, me and many others the opportunities which come with education. Their value to our community and Irish society in general cannot and should never be understated.

As the past slips away there is always a danger that even people and events of recent times will be overlooked, misunderstood or incorrectly described. I came across recently in our local newspapers two references to ‘McDonald Drive’ and in conversation with a few people it would seem that many do not know that the correct name of the estate is ‘McDonnell Drive’. The estate was built by Athy U.D.C. and opened by the th

[en Minister for Local Government on 24^thSeptember 1953. It was named after Archdeacon Patrick McDonnell, Parish Priest of St. Michael’s for 28 years who died on 1^st March 1956.

We have a proud history here in Athy, but pride must always be accompanied by accuracy if we are not to confirm Henry Ford’s claim that ‘history is bunk’.

The planned opening of Athy’s new library in the architectural gem which was the Dominican Church prompts me to hand over this week’s Eye on the Past to my daughter Carol, from whose article ‘Reading in the Duke’s ballroom’ the following extracts are taken. The full article appeared in No. 49 of the Dublin Review five years ago.

‘When I came to write about a library, I began to think about community. And when I thought about community, the first that sprang to mind was one that I had left behind. In Dublin, we usually went to the library on Saturday mornings. It was one of the weekend rituals, like trotting to the newsagent along the small path dozens of children had worn through an undeveloped patch of housing estate. To a six-year-old, the estate was vast, a concrete prairie. The town we moved to, Athy, seemed more hemmed in. Passing strangers were much more likely to call you by name to ask if you were doing the messages, or remark on who you looked like, or tell you that they knew your grandfather. Until we moved there, I didn’t look like anyone but myself. And I was shy. Urban anonymity, I quickly decided, suited me much better. Even now, when I come back to Athy, strangers will tell me they haven’t seen me in ages, or give me something to pass on to my father, or continue a story that they assume I understand……….

Athy library is typical of libraries in those small rural towns that the Carnegie movement never reached. Instead of the Romanesque buildings found in Dublin suburbs, or the contemporary architectural showpieces that popped up in some of the larger provincial towns during the boom, most rural libraries occupy buildings constructed for other purposes: market houses, churches, courthouses. On a grey day, the streets surrounding Athy library can seem shabby. The vacant shop windows are multiplying. But the anchor for these meandering streets is the imposing stone building that divides the large market square, the oldest part of which dates to the 1740s. It was then a market house with a broad arcade. By the early nineteenth century that arcade was blocked in with stone, but the building still retained a degree of elegance until a third floor was added in 1913, leaving it fat and heavy, with a more forbidding appearance. Over the preceding century it had become the administrative centre of the garrison town, serving as courthouse and home to the borough council. This was where Lord Norbury, the infamous ‘hanging judge’ presided over the trials of those implicated in the rebellion of 1798. On the front wall, there are still two stone reliefs displaying the scales of justice, one overlaid with the Irish harp, the other with the British crown. It is in the first-floor ballroom, added by a later duke, that the library now resides……….

Reading is a solitary activity, but the library is a social space. It is a funny contradiction, and one I used to resolve by spending as little time in libraries as possible. But this modern community library is far from the place I remember. In the straitened 1980s, Athy library was still housed in a dark room in the courthouse building across the square. To a small child, it seemed very likely that the librarian had taken inspiration from the magistrates who preceded her. Getting to the appropriate shelves meant clattering through a series of low chairs and tables that were always too closely spaced. Clattering back in the opposite direction was not encouraged. Straying from child to adult sections was not allowed. Supervision was total. The strange darkness was a product of the building’s Tudor Revival architecture. At the back there was still what looked like a barred cell sitting open to the air……….

When I visited the library as a child, it was generally for escapism. And perhaps I spent more time playing outside in the cells than I did in the dank reading room. I did not pay attention to it, any more than I paid attention to a sense of community, or history, or belonging. It was simply there. In the hotchpotch of a building at the centre of the town that houses the current library, I now realize, is stored nearly three centuries of community life. And I also realize by now that the stories I grew up on, about the town I refused to belong to, long ago seeped in without my noticing. So I came to understand that this community library is Athy’s natural heart and its best resource.’

In the days immediately following the Great Famine Athy had a reading room where a lending library was available with books to borrow, in addition to the Irish and English daily newspapers. That first library was operated by the Athy Literary and Scientific Institute which was founded in September 1848, its facilities being available for ‘the young men of Athy engaged in mercantile pursuits during the day.’ The Institute’s stated objective was ‘the study and advancement of science and literature.’ The Institute’s library was established following a committee meeting on 2^nd December 1848 and while books could be borrowed by members, dictionaries, atlases and periodicals were not to be lent. The library received gifts of books from many locals including shop owner Alexander Duncan who stated that he was doing so ‘as an earnest of the interest he felt in the society.’

A year later on 3^rd October 1849 the institute became known as ‘The Athy Mechanics Institute’. The Grand Jury room in the Town Hall which had been used for meetings and lectures and housed the institute’s library, proved inadequate. On 1^st August 1850 the members of the Mechanics Institute agreed to rent three rooms in Edward Duggan’s house. The location of Duggan’s house is not known but a letter to the local press in November 1863 referred to ‘a large swamp around the rooms of the lamented exchange bounded on the west by the Barrow, on the east by the dock and the Literary Mechanics reading room and on the south by that part of Emily Square known as “rotten row” and on the north by public houses and the bridewell’.

The select committee of the House of Commons on public libraries heard evidence in 1849 and in relation to Ireland Mr. G. Hamilton M.P. claimed: ‘The Irish people do not read because they have no access to books, not because they cannot read.’ The Mechanics Institute Library, restricted as it was to members who paid ten shillings per year membership fee, was a private members library and so could not be regarded as Athy’s first public library.

The first public library in the town of Athy opened in the Town Hall on 1^st December 1927. It was operated by Kildare County Council as the local Urban District Council had earlier relinquished its powers under the Public Libraries Act. A local library committee was set up and was intended to comprise the local Parish Priest Canon Mackey and his three curates, Fr. Ryan, Fr. Browne and Fr. Kinnane who were to be joined by Rev. Dunlop, the local Church of Ireland Rector and Rev. Meek of the Presbyterian Church. The six clerics were to have had as fellow committee members five local Urban District Councillors and the Town Clerk James Lawler who would act as the library secretary. However, Canon Mackey, who had earlier crossed swords with the local Council, refused to come on the Committee for what he declared were ‘reasons obvious to the Council’. He was joined in his boycott of the library committee by his senior Curate, Fr. Kinnane. The Committee in time brought on board more lay members and the first librarian appointed was Mr. B. Brambley of Emily Square.

Choosing ‘suitable titles for Athy folk’ as reported in the local newspapers, was a task assigned to the library sub-committee comprising Fr. M. Browne, T.C. O’Gorman, Manager of the local Hibernian Bank and P.J. Murphy, draper from Emily Square. The library opened on 1^st December 1927 and initially stayed open one evening a week from 7 to 9 p.m. This was soon extended to two evenings a week. From these early beginnings the library service in Athy developed, moving from the Town Hall to the Courthouse and back again to the Town Hall, all the time staying within the confines of Emily Square. On Thursday March 1^stour new library will be officially opened in the former Dominican Church on the opposite side of the River Barrow to Emily Square.

I remember the library of the 1950s. It opened in the evening times only to give access to the books which were shelved in a small room in the Town Hall which up to recently was used as a reference room. Accessed by the doorway and stairs opposite the house of Mrs. Josephine Gibbons, the scarcity of motor traffic presented no great dangers for library users. Nowadays that same entrance leading onto Emily Row is deemed too dangerous to use and is permanently closed.

The new community library which opens on Thursday March 1^stwill be a formidable addition to the cultural landscape of Athy. The Heritage Centre, the Arts Centre and the community library form a cultural triumvirate ready to celebrate our place, our people, our past and by doing so enrich our lives and make Athy a better place in which to live.

Men and women from both parts of the island of Ireland played prominent parts in World War I. Their response to the call for volunteers was a cross community response. However, when it came to commemorate and remember the awful events of those troubled years the community’s response in the South and in the North of this island were radically different.

Here in the South World War I commemorations during the 1920s and early 1930s were largely confined to participants who had returned from the war. Armistices Day parades were somewhat muted affairs in the South and in Athy these parades were not actively supported by the local population. However, it was accepted that the men who had gone overseas should be allowed to commemorate their colleagues who fell in battle. It was an ambivalent attitude by the local population whose church and civic leaders during the war years had actively encouraged local men to enlist. Many did enlist – Athy earning for itself the oft repeated claim of having given proportionately more men to the war than any other town in Ireland. ‘Do as Athy has done’, urged the recruitment officers as they sought to swell the ranks during the final years of the war.

Despite this, World War I commemoration in Athy and generally throughout Southern Ireland was always problematic. 19^th July 1919 was designated ‘Peace Day’ in Britain and plans were made to mark the day in Dublin. A large parade was organised to start from Dublin Castle and included a large number of demobilised soldiers and sailors organised by regiment and led by their former officers. The Dublin newspapers reported however that upwards of 3,000 Irish Nationalist Veterans boycotted the event and also reported that ‘some cheers were raised as demobilised soldiers passed, but the regular troops were received by the most part in silence.’ Later that evening scuffles broke out in the city between Sinn Fein supporters and some of the participating soldiers, a clear indication that war commemoration in the capital city challenged cultural and political allegiances.

The subsequent Armistice commemorations in Dublin also led to disorder as it did in the following years. On 11^th November 1923 and 1924 a temporary cenotaph was erected in College Green outside Trinity College and a large crowd attended to mark the anniversary. Fighting between Nationalists and ex-service men prompted the Garda Commissioner to refuse permission for College Green to be used again. In 1925 the commemoration moved to St. Stephen’s Green and a year later to the Phoenix Park where it was held for the next decade. Following the election of a Fianna Fáil government in 1932 and the start of the economic war it became less easy to continue the Remembrance Sunday commemorations and the annual ceremonies ceased in and around the mid-1930s.

In July 1919 it was agreed to erect in Dublin a Great War Memorial home to be used by ex-servicemen. This did not meet with official approval and the plan was dropped but in the meantime it was agreed to have some form of a war memorial erected. Funds were contributed by the public and approximately £42,000 was collected. £5,000 of those funds was used to publish ‘Ireland’s Memorial Records’ of which 100 copies of the eight volume set were printed and distributed to all the principal libraries in Ireland. A further £1,500 was spent on replacing wooden crosses with stone crosses on battlefields where the Irish Divisions had fought.

In 1924 a committee was formed to consider proposals for a permanent memorial in Dublin to Irish men and women killed in the First World War. The committee suggested Merrion Square and later St. Stephen’s Green as suitable memorial sites. Public opposition to these proposals prompted the Irish government lead by W.T. Cosgrove to set up its own war memorial committee.

Eventually the war memorial committee completed its work and a site at Islandbridge across the River Liffey opposite the Phoenix Park obelisk about 3 kilometres from O’Connell Street on grounds not too far distant from Kilmainham Jail was chosen. Work on the Islandbridge Memorial started in 1932 but it was not until 1938 that it was completed. The Islandbridge memorial park designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens is one of four gardens in Ireland designed by this world famous architect and is not only a place of remembrance but also of great architectural interest and beauty. An official opening planned for July 1939 was postponed indefinitely due to the threat of war.

From 1940 to 1970 the British Legion held annual Armistice Day ceremonies at Islandbridge. Because of the troubles in the North the Park memorial was closed between 1971 and 1988. It only reopened in 1988 in response to criticism of the Irish government’s attitude to World War I remembrance in the face of the Enniskillen bombings of the previous year.

Another six years were to pass before the Islandbridge memorial park was formally opened in 1994 and for the first time an Irish government minister attended with the then Minister for Finance, Bertie Aherne, representing the Irish government.

……………….TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK…………..

In Athy where 223 men from the town and the surrounding district died during the 1914/18 war, I joined a few friends on Remembrance Sunday 1986 to publicly commemorate for the first time in over 50 years the local men who had died in that war. The ceremony was held in St. Michael’s cemetery where six World War I soldiers who died at home were buried and I am proud to say that the Remembrance Sunday commemorations have been held every year since then, with ever growing numbers attending.

It is often claimed that commemorations in the North of Ireland were organised for many years on religious or political grounds. For many Catholic families who had lost sons or fathers in the war, collective commemoration in public was not deemed appropriate, particularly in nationalist areas of Belfast. For many Catholics in the North the 1914/18 commemoration were viewed as loyalist events and the war itself as a futile conflict to be ignored. Participation in the annual commemoration events was seen as a badge of loyalty. The divergence of opinion was noticeable from the first Armistice Day commemoration held on the 1^stof November 1919 when in Belfast businesses stopped for two minutes silence at 11.00 a.m. At the same time there was no mass observation in Derry city. In Dublin a demonstration was held on that first anniversary, but it was accompanied by rowdy scenes, with clashes between Unionist and Nationalist supporters. The newspapers reported ‘hardly had the Trinity students concluded the singing of “God Save the King” when a crowd of young men, mostly students from the National University, appeared in College Green shouting and singing “the Soldiers Song”. A scene of wild disorder followed.’

In 1966 the Taoiseach Sean Lemass, a one time critic of remembrance ceremonies in Ireland acknowledged that Irish men who had enlisted in the British Army during World War I ‘were motivated by the highest purpose and died in their tens of thousands in Flanders and Gallipoli believing they were giving their lives in the cause of human liberty everywhere, not excluding Ireland.’

One of the first cross community approaches in Northern Ireland in re-telling the 1914/18 war story in a bipartisan way was the 1993 publication by the West Belfast Youth and Community Development Project which told of the Somme story as one involving both the 36^th Ulster Division and the 16^th Division. It was after all the Battle of the Somme which brought Republican and Loyalists together as one and where both traditions suffered huge losses fighting in a common cause. Despite this the Somme had always been seen by Loyalists as a 36^th Ulster Division conflict which was highlighted on many orange lodge banners as central to loyalism. The 1993 project recognised Republican involvement and losses on the Somme for what was the first time in the North’s modern history.

The IRA ceasefire in 1994 prompted the SDLP in Belfast to attend as a body for the first time Remembrance Sunday commemorations in that city. That same year the SDLP took part in commemoration ceremonies in Armagh, Omagh and Enniskillen. The SDLP Mayor of Derry, John Kerr, was the first Mayor to lay a wreath during the 1995 ceremonies in Derry and two years later Belfast’s first nationalist Mayor, Alban Maginness participated in the city’s remembrance ceremonies. He was accompanied by the Lord Mayor of Dublin when laying a poppy wreath during the Somme commemorations on the 1^st of July.

The first cross border approach to joint commemoration resulted in the opening of the Irish Peace Park at Messines in 1998 by the English, Irish and Belgium Heads of State. This was an initiative by Glen Barr and Paddy Harte, a Fine Gael T.D. The park with the round tower commemorates Loyalist and Republican involvement at Messines in June 1917 when they fought side by side as part of the 10^th, 16^thand 36^th Divisions.

Perhaps one of the most far reaching participations in Remembrance Sunday events in recent years was that of Belfast’s first Sinn Fein Mayor Alex Maskey in 2002. His participation and that of all the other participants previous mentioned was a long overdue recognition that people from both traditions shared the losses and sacrifices which marked the 1914/18 war.

The renewal of interest in commemorating the dead of World War 1 has seen the establishment of a Western Front Association in 1980 and the setting up of branches of the Dublin Fusiliers Association in Dublin and Belfast. The Somme Association set up in 1990 provides a platform for the communities in Northern Ireland to share a common heritage – a heritage of loss and sacrifice endured by the men from Northern Ireland of the 16^th and 36^th Divisions.

Nevertheless, First World War commemorations will remain for many a controversial subject for some time to come given its roots and the complexities of what is a contested past.

St. Patrick’s Day is the one time in the year when the Irish diaspora gets to celebrate our national festival. Its origins lie in a feast day celebrated by the Catholic church since the early 17^thcentury, but nowadays it has become the focus of cultural events internationally.

This led me to reflect on the contributions made by those men and women who have left our shores over the last century and a half for economic and other reasons. One such individual was James Quinn. There is some confusion over Quinn’s birthplace. A lot of early publications cite his birth place in 1819 as Athy, while more recent research indicates that he may have born in Rathmore, near Naas. Notwithstanding same it is clear that he had strong and ongoing links with Athy during his life. I touched on Quinn’s life briefly in an Eye on the Past many years ago when writing about the Parish Priests who had served in the Catholic Church here in Athy.

Quinn was an interesting, if not divisive, character who trained for the priesthood in the Irish College in Rome, graduating in 1845. After his ordination he returned to Ireland and he began a lifelong association with the Sisters of Mercy. He was based in Blackrock and also acted as a chaplain to the Sisters of Mercy in Baggot Street, Dublin. He particularly assisted in sourcing volunteers amongst the Sisters of Mercy to travel to the Crimea to nurse British soldiers wounded in the war there. Quinn himself wrote of a journey to Kinsale in the company of two Sisters of Mercy to a convent seeking volunteers for this expedition to the Crimea. Arriving early in the morning in Kinsale he went to the Convent’s chapel to perform his morning’s devotions, admitting somewhat ruefully that he fell asleep while kneeling in the chapel, only to be awoken by a Sister of Mercy perplexed at the presence of a man in her chapel at such an early hour. Quinn had previously travelled to Amiens in France with the Sisters of Mercy in 1852 to make a tour of the hospital system. This mission was of fundamental importance in the establishment of the Mater Hospital in Dublin.

By the time the Mater Hospital was founded in 1861 Quinn was already on his way to Australia after his appointment as the first Bishop of Brisbane. His was a dynamic, if not domineering presence in this young diocese which he found in a weakened and financially parlous state. His dynamism did not endear himself to a lot of his parishioners, nor to some of the local clergy and he found himself in a number of quarrels which appeared to bedevil his episcopacy in the decades thereafter. Utilising his good relations with the Sisters of Mercy he encouraged the establishment of a novitiate in Brisbane for the training of sisters for the order. With the assistance of his brother, Dr. Andrew Quinn, who was a Parish Priest in Athy, many young women left Athy for the novitiate in Brisbane. Several of the young women sent back accounts of their voyage to Australia. One wrote, ‘we could not sleep for the incessant uproar of sailors, ducks, sheep, etc. which were perhaps sea sick or else giving way to great rejoicing at the prospect of a pleasure trip to Australia.’ The exigencies of the voyage did not prevent these young women from performing their religious obligations. One described a Saturday afternoon on the deck of the ship as follows:- ‘Confessions on deck, the captain helped to make the confessional, poles covered with the sail. On Sunday 30 communicants. All assembled for rosary at 10. We are getting at home in our strange abode. It seems as if almighty God has taken the power of fretting from me.’ Another nun wrote of her initial impression of the native aboriginal people of Australia, as follows:- ‘I never saw such fearful looking creatures as the natives, especially the women. Some are bare headed, others so completely covered with feathers that one would think feathers, not hair, grew on them. They are painted in all colours.’ And on arrival:- ‘On Saturday we reached Brisbane. The Bishop and Fr. Connolly came for us and drove us to the convent where we got a very warm reception. The prayers of the Sisters saved us. For 3 whole weeks it was gale after gale. All is over now and we are quite well and happy.’

Quinn’s own brother Matthew, who had also studied in Rome, had gone to India as a missionary in 1847 but because of health issues returned in 1853. After assisting in raising an army of Irish volunteers to defend the papal states in the 1860s he went out to Australia in 1865 and was appointed the first Bishop of Bathurst. In all, four Quinn brothers joined the priesthood.

James Quinn died on 16^thAugust 1881 and his funeral was attended by representatives of many faiths, including the Anglican Church and also Rabbi Phillips. He is commemorated in a number of places in Queensland and principally by a life size statue by Signor Simonetti in St. Stephen’s Cathedral which was installed in 1892.

They gazed at the photographer with a sense of wonderment, while their class teacher, a Sister of Mercy, in all probability stood behind the man with the camera. The photograph was of my class in St. Joseph’s School.

I first attended St. Joseph’s School on the day of my fourth birthday, which coincidentally was also the day chosen by Mrs. English of St. John’s Lane to send her oldest child, Frank, to the same school. It was only in recent years when I had access to the St. Joseph’s School roll that I became aware that my dear friend ‘Harry’ English and myself joined St. Joseph’s School on 12^th May 1946.

Looking at the photograph I cannot identify all of the 36 young boys pictured on the driveway to the Sister of Mercy Convent. It brings back memories of a time when the Sisters of Mercy were entrusted with the first three years of young local boys education before they graduated to the local Christian Brothers School in St. John’s Lane. Under the care and guidance of St. Bernard, Sr. Brendan and Sr. Alberta we learned the three Rs and prepared for the celebration of the first big event in our young lives – First Communion in the nearby Parish Church. I have treasured memories of my years in St. Joseph’s School and this photograph recalls for me school friends, some of whom have since passed away, while others like myself, have passed the biblical three score and ten.

I would be delighted to have your help in identifying the young boys in the photograph, even if it is only one boy you can name let me know so that one element of the story of St. Joseph’s Boys School can be fully revealed.

Sitting here on the night of the 2004 budget I marvel at how different, how improved, our lives are compared to those who lived 50 years ago. Many would no doubt take issue with me on that simple assertion, citing personal reasons why it is not so. But really, taking the ups with the downs, life in Ireland has improved considerably since the 1950’s. Unemployment I am told now represents 4% or thereabouts of the total working population. How different it was just five or six years after the end of World War II. In Ireland, jobs were then few and far between, but thankfully just beyond the Irish Sea our closest neighbour was embarking on a war recovery programme which would utilise the brawn and the sweat of the Irish.

I am reminded of this every time I hear or read of a former emigrant from Athy who has passed away. Dinny Prendergast died last week after 49 years in Bermingham, to where he emigrated to join his sister Marie in 1954. He was just one of the many young men from Athy, Dinny being then just 18 years old, who every year took the emigrant boat to Holyhead.

The Prendergast family are an old Athy family. Dinny’s grandfather worked for the Lefroys of Cardenton and it was in the gate lodge of Lefroys that Oweny Prendergast, Dinny’s father, lived as a young man. When Oweny married Mary Timpson, a sister of Jimmy and Paddy Timpson, two old Athy families were brought together. In the early 1930’s Kildare County Council built a number of isolated cottages in South Kildare, one of which at Milltown was allocated to Oweny and Mary Prendergast where they were to rear their ten children.

Oweny as a young man played Gaelic football and he was a member of Rheban Gaelic Football Club when it was founded in 1929 by the Moore brothers, John and Tom. When the club won its first football game, defeating Suncroft at the Showgrounds in Athy, Oweny Prendergast was a team member and many years later he was the proud recipient of a gold watch presented by the club on the 50^th anniversary of Rheban G.F.C. Oweny was also a member of the Kilberry Pipe Band with whom he played the drums and for a time both Oweny and his son Dinny, who also played the drums, marched together as members of the Pipe Band.

When writing of Oweny Prendergast and his family it is difficult to avoid references to Bradbury’s Bakery, for Oweny was employed as a bread van salesman by Tom and Peg Bradbury shortly after they set up a bakery business in Stanhope Street. In those early years Bradbury’s was quite a small operation, with the husband and wife team assisted by Mick Lawler, Oweny Prendergast and Mick Corr. Oweny was engaged in bread sales locally and travelled throughout the town in a horsedrawn bread van which I’m sure many of my readers will remember. When the business expanded with the move to a larger premises in Leinster Street, Oweny’s mode of transport changed and a motor van was provided. In time, staff numbers increased and Paddy Murphy and Tommy Deering were also employed as bread salesmen for what was one of the most popular provincial bakeries in the country.

Oweny Prendergast travelled each morning with bread supplies for Portlaoise but in the afternoons he travelled on the country byroads bringing Bradbury’s breads and confectioneries to rural shops. Monday afternoon the run was to Stradbally, Timahoe and Ballyroan. Tuesday afternoon it was to Baltinglass, with Castledermot the following afternoon. The rest of the week was spent going back over the same routes. The friendliness of life in those far off days was typified in the story told to me some years ago of how Oweny on his daily trips through the countryside collected shoes and boots to be dropped off for repair by Ned Wynne in his premises in Leinster Street. I’m told that the only seat in the bread van was that on which the driver sat and anyone wishing to join Oweny on his circuitous journey through the Irish countryside had to sit on a butter box.

Of Oweny’s ten children, six of them would be employed in Bradbury’s Bakery. Dinny, Paddy, Damien “Boy” and Eugene worked at different times in the bakery, while their sisters Jo and Rose were in the confectionery section where so many other local girls found work over the years. Dinny Prendergast started work in Bradbury’s soon after leaving school and he worked with Paddy Hayden of St. Patrick’s Avenue, and later still with John Mealy of Geraldine and Jackie Murphy and his brother Paddy of St. Joseph’s Terrace, not forgetting the three Brennan brothers from Cardenton, Sean, Michael and Willie. As well as working by day and part of the night in Bradbury’s Bakery, Dinny was also a member of the Sorrento Dance Band founded by Paudence Murphy of Offaly Street. He was 18 years old or so when he emigrated to England in 1954. He travelled to Bermingham to join his older sister Marie and there he was to remain for the remaining 49 years of his life and where he died last week. He was married and is survived by his wife and four children.

Dinny Prendergast was of a generation which did not have the economic and social benefits we take for granted today. He was just one of the hundreds of young local men and women who made the journey by rail, boat and rail again to the industrial centres of England, there to be met and greeted, if they were lucky, by a brother or sister or perhaps a friend on their first day in a strange land.

The typical Irish emigrant, devoid of daily contact with family and kin, generally led a lonely existence until time and memory dimmed and new friends and relationships were formed. Those who left these shores 50 years or so ago are now in old age and each year brings news of another Athy born emigrant who has breathed his or her last. Over 80 years ago a generation of Athy men died violent deaths fighting a war which was neither glorious or great, but which nevertheless robbed our town of a generation’s life blood. In this, the first decade of the 21^st century, a later born generation of Athy men and women who were lost to the town of their birth 50 years or so ago, have made or are soon to make their final journeys.

The story of one Athy family is typical of many an Irish family whose long rooted ties with a locality could not always be maintained due to the harsh economic conditions of the day. How different it is today as the Minister for Finance announced his budget, dealing with figures which were unimaginable 50 years ago. The bread delivery man is no longer part of our daily lives, the dance band days are but a memory, but somehow, somewhere, there is a part of us which yearns for the pleasant, unhurried days when a lift, even sitting on a butter box, was a generous neighbourly gesture.

Paddy Wright has always been something of an agitator. The playing field, sometimes his work environment and nowadays the public forum of local politics have provided Paddy with readily accessible venues on which to engage the “enemy” in battle. Now recently retired as caretaker of St. Michael’s Cemetery, Athy, a job which he held for 28 years, Paddy talked to me recently about the ups and downs of his very interesting life.

Born in Moone in 1938, Paddy was the eldest son of Mary O’Shaughnessy of Broomfield House, Moone and Johnny Wright of Bawn, Churchtown. The young family moved to 3 Geraldine Road, Athy two years later and it was there that Paddy’s siblings, Annie, Noel and John were born.

Johnny Wright was a member of St. Patrick’s Pipe Band, Churchtown and served as Pipe Major for the Band over many years. Many are the stories I’ve heard over the years of the part played by the Churchtown Pipe Band and its Pipe Major Johnny Wright, unwittingly perhaps, in local political rivalry between the Wars. Apparently many of the Churchtown Band Members were avid supporters of de Valera and as such piped him into Athy on his arrival at the Railway Bridge for an open air meeting in the Square. However, when the supporters of Willie Cosgrave sought the same facilities for their man, the Churchtown Band declined to co-operate, a decision which is recalled with some mirth, even after the elapse of over 70 years.

The Wright family moved to the Town Hall in 1949 when Johnny Wright replaced “Sixty” Kelly as caretaker of the complex which was then still owned by the Duke of Leinster. The Town Hall was the social centre of Athy in those days where dances, plays, musicals and variety shows took place in the ballroom on the first floor, which now houses the town’s library. The youngest member of the Wright family, Brendan, was born in the family quarters in the Town Hall.

Paddy on his own admission left school at 13½ years of age, unable to read or write, and for a few years found himself on the periphery of delinquency. Sport played a very important part in his subsequent youthful development and the local sporting scene provided him with his first public platform. He was a member of the 1956 Athy minor team which won that year’s minor championship, defeating Clane by 12 points to no score. The only other time a defeated minor team failed to score was in the 1936 final, played just one year before the start of World War II when Athy defeated Kill on the score of 3-8 to no score. Paddy declares the 1956 minor team as “the best team ever” and right enough several of the team, including Paddy, subsequently played senior football on the County team. These included Mick Carolan, Mick Coughlan, Jimmy Dooley and Liam O’Shea.

It wasn’t long before Paddy was in the wars and the first of his many battles with authority arose when the local G.A.A. club officials had him suspended for playing soccer. When the suspension ended Paddy joined the Castlemitchell Club, where he was to finish his playing days many years later.

The Castlemitchell teams of the 1950’s were a mixture of footballing skills and brawn with the latter qualities more often than not employed in the quest for victory on the field of play. Paddy himself acknowledges this when declaring that “Castlemitchell’s problem was fighting - you can’t fight and win football matches.” It was a rough, tough arena for a young man to find himself in but Paddy contributed to the mayhem which generally marked the onward march of the Castlemitchell men. However, it was the delayed league final between Athy and Kilcock which saw Paddy, by then a Castlemitchell club player but temporarily back in the Athy fold for the postponed final, incur suspension. Apparently he took exception to some of the referees decisions and promptly thumped him. The outcome was an enforced absence from the playing field for some months thereafter.

It was a short time later that the entire Castlemitchell team, including Paddy, was suspended for life following a fracas with Round Towers. Paddy by then was a member of the Senior County Team panel and the County Board contrived to lift the suspension on Paddy so that he could line out for the County team in a second round championship match against Louth at Croke Park. Louth went on to win that game but Paddy was to continue playing with the County team for sometime thereafter.

Paddy, who worked in the Wallboard factory for twelve years, where his father was also employed as a sawman, emigrated to England in 1959. A short stint spent in Birmingham and then in London was followed by his return to Ireland where he resumed his footballing career with Castlemitchell and for a short while with the County Senior team. Two of Athy’s most prominent buildings, the Dominican Church and the Minch Norton Silos, were constructed in the early 1960’s and Paddy proudly declares that he was a steel fixer on both projects. The high rise silos under construction by Crampton’s of Dublin afforded Paddy the first opportunity for a foray into public disputation when he lead the workers out on a two day strike to further their demand for danger money. Another spell in England, this time tunnelling on the Victoria Line Underground, provided Paddy with the unique distinction of being the only Kildare man to work on the tunnelling project which was largely the preserve of men from the Innishowen Penninsula of Co. Donegal.

While in England Paddy attended evening lectures in the Working Men’s College in Camden town where the Irish Socialist, Desmond Greaves, was a tutor. Hyde Park Corner on Sunday mornings was also another favourite venue and in time Paddy overcame the literacy problems which were the legacy of misspent years in the local Christian Brothers School.

Paddy spent a number of years going back and forth between England and Ireland until he finally returned to settle down in his home town in 1968. For a few years he was self employed and when Paddy Rowan, caretaker of the local cemetery, retired in 1975, Paddy was appointed in his place. It was around the same time that Paddy was elected a member of Athy Urban District Council and he has remained a Council member for the past 28 years while he also served a number of terms as a member of Kildare County Council. Never one to understate his position, Paddy has been the most colourful character on the local Council. His sometimes raucous contribution to the staid deliberations of the Town Fathers no doubt causes eyebrows to be raised in some quarters, but Paddy remains largely unconcerned by the public’s reaction.

The agitator who in his time took on allcomers has never shirked a battle, no matter how unevenly the odds are stacked against him. We might not always agree with him, and indeed there is seldom reason to do so, but nevertheless his contribution to local affairs is always entertaining. He is the master of the carefully honed sound bite which is inevitably guaranteed to catch the ears of even the most bored reporter.

During our conversation Paddy spoke of the traumatic experience he had as a young nine year old. He recounted with feeling and emotion how his father, Johnny, after a Sunday morning shooting trip to Killart left his loaded gun aside when he returned to his Geraldine Road home. Young Paddy picked up the gun and innocently fired it, causing serious injury to his uncle Daniel O’Shaughnessy. It was an experience which affected Paddy for many years and the pain and trauma he experienced is still apparent in reliving the events 56 years later.

The recent recipient of an artificial hip, Paddy in his retirement now enjoys a new lease of life. He is a great raconteur whose stories of Athy in the 1950’s are not only embellished in the telling, but provide a ready backdrop for the singing of a local ballad for which Paddy has now become famous.

Paddy Wright, social agitator, raconteur and ballad singer, has in turn entertained, frustrated and often annoyed many of us with his sometimes outrageous statements on local issues. However, one can never find fault in the man, who having left school at 13½ years of age subsequently dedicated himself to self improvement and thereafter to a life of local public service. He retains, even now as a pensioner, all the attributes of a likable rogue whose outlandish statements are overlooked because, although Paddy is unique, he is one of our own.

Many generous people have in the past contributed handsomely to the maintenance of the social and religious fabric of our ancient town. Some are remembered, even if only by dint of research into long forgotten archives and minutiae of the previous century. Many however, are the acts of generosity which were never recorded, or if so have since languished in the forgotten layers of our local history.

Who for instance was Ann Fitzgerald of Geraldine who played a major part in establishing a Mercy Convent in Athy in 1852? She was probably a daughter of Colonel Fitzgerald of Geraldine House, who some decades previously had built the first school premises for the poor children of Athy on part of what was commonage of Clonmullin. Other generous benefactors, particularly of religious institutions in Athy, were Mrs. Goold and her daughter of Leinster Street. Indeed, if memory serves me right, the present Parish Priest’s house was gifted to the church authorities by Miss Goold. She also donated sufficient funds in 1877 to guarantee the employment of a fourth teacher in the local Christian Brothers School and to ensure that the classics continued to be taught in the school.

Patrick Commins is recorded as having given significant financial help to the Catholic Church in Athy in the middle of the 19^th century. He was originally a clerk in Minch’s and in 1841 he married Mary Moran of Leighlinbridge, Carlow. She was a sister of Patrick Francis Moran who was created a Cardinal of the Catholic Church in 1885.

Commins had a farm out the Ballylinan road and is noted as having a connection with the canal company, but in what capacity I cannot say. His relationship with Cardinal Moran is of interest because Moran was in turn the nephew of Cardinal Paul Cullen who was from Ballitore. Commins father Hugh was married twice. The first time to Elizabeth Murphy and they had one daughter, Alicia, who was to be the mother of a future Cardinal, Patrick Moran. Commins second wife was Mary Maher of Donore and Paul Cullen, the first Cardinal in the Irish Church, was one of their 15 children.

Mary Maher was the brother of Patrick Maher of Kilrush and William Maher of Burtown, or Birtown as it was known in the 19^th century. The Kilrush farmer, Patrick Maher, was perhaps Athy’s greatest ever benefactor insofar as he made many donations over many years to the local Catholic Church as well as to the Sisters of Mercy Convent and the Christian Brothers School in Athy. One of his daughters was Sister Teresa Maher who was appointed first Superior of the Athy Convent in 1855. Patrick Maher’s wife was Louise Dillon, whose sister Mary Dillon was married to Pat Lalor of Tenakill. Pat and Mary Lalor had 11 children, the eldest of which was James Fintan Lalor. Pat Lalor was elected as an M.P. for Queens county, as Laois was then called, in 1832 and he supported Daniel O’Connell during the repeal of the Union Campaign. However, Pat Lalor’s fame was eclipsed by that of his eldest son James Fintan Lalor and a younger son, Peter Lalor, both of whom achieved national recognition which has endured to this day.

James Fintan Lalor who died in 1849, aged 42 years, is remembered in Irish history as a land agitator who was much influenced by William Conner of Inch, Athy. Both were deeply involved in seeking land reform and Lalor’s influence in particular had a profound effect on the Young Ireland movement and later still on Michael Davitt and the Land League Movement. His brother Peter Lalor emigrated to Australia and there he lead the insurgent miners at the Eureka stockade in December 1854 which precipitated the Victorian Constitutional Reforms of the following year.

The ties between the Lalors of Tenakill and the Mahers of Kilrush extended beyond the Dillon sisters who had married into both households. Pat Lalor, M.P. for Queens County and Daniel O’Connell’s faithful supporter shared with Patrick Maher an unswerving refusal to pay tithes for the support of the established church. On several occasions the Maher’s cattle were seized from his Kilrush fields and driven to markets where they were sold to satisfy the unpaid tithes. We are told that on one such occasion when 25 of Lalor’s sheep were seized, bailiffs drove them all the way to Dublin as no one would deal with them in Laois or Kildare. In Dublin they fared little better and the sheep were eventually shipped to Liverpool. There one of the leading livestock firms was Vendon and Cullen, the Cullen being a nephew of Patrick Maher of Kilrush so that the bailiff’s plans to sell the sheep were again thwarted.

Patrick Maher was a man with great personal connections, not only in terms of Irish national politics but also as regards the 19^th century Catholic church. His nephew was the Archbishop of Dublin and Irelands’ first Cardinal, while another relation was Cardinal Moran of Sydney. Three of his daughters were members of the Sisters of Mercy, while his brother in law was the famous Fr. James Maher, Parish Priest of Carlow Graigue.

Patrick Maher, Miss Goold, Ann Fitzgerald and Patrick Commins are just some of those who in the 19^th century proved themselves generous benefactors of Athy and many of its Catholic institutions. One would like to know more of these men and women who for the most part are forgotten by those who live in Athy today.

It was 1952 when the senior curate in Athy, Fr. John McLaughlin, addressed what the local newspapers described as “a well attended and representative meeting” of parishioners in the Christian Brothers School one Friday night. It was the first night of a campaign which would continue for over 20 years to give Athy a new Parish Church. Fr. McLaughlin or “Fr. Mac” as he was affectionately known came to Athy in the summer of 1948, a senior curate to the ailing Archdeacon McDonnell. It was not long before Fr. Mac gave proof of his rare business acumen and genius for organising. This was not surprising, given that his sibling was Thomas McLaughlin who as a young engineer left Ireland in December 1922 to work with the German firm of Siemens Sehuckert. Thomas McLaughlin recognised that electricity was the key to Ireland’s economic development and he it was who suggested and developed the Shannon Electrical Scheme which was completed in 1929.

Fr. Mac was a former I.R.A. man who fought in the Irish War of Independence and I have before me a press report of April 1950 which under the headline of “1,000 Veterans Parade Athy” described how Fr. McLaughlin addressed veterans drawn from eight midland counties who had arrived in Athy for the Easter Parade organised by the County Kildare Old I.R.A. Association. He welcomed them as men who had fought for Irish freedom, but claimed that they had failed miserably in not handing on to their children the splendid tradition of faith and fatherland for which they fought and which was passed on to them by their parents.

Two years later when addressing the public meeting in the Christian Brothers School Fr. McLaughlin indicated that £60,000.00 was required to build a new parish church. The foundations he claimed could be laid within two years and the church completed by the end of 1956. He spoke of the old Parish Church situated in Chapel Lane which was torched following the 1798 Rebellion and of the difficulties experienced by the local clergy in the years immediately thereafter in procuring alternative suitable premises in which to say Mass. Eventually a site was obtained from the Duke of Leinster in the area known as “the Slough of Athy” which was marshy ground forming part of what was once the commonage of Clonmullin. It was there the new Parish Church of St. Michael’s was built in 1808 and it was still in use when Fr. McLaughlin spoke at the meeting in the Christian Brothers School 144 years later.

As far back as 1908 consideration was given to replacing the early 19^th century Parish Church and following a partial roof collapse in 1937 the issue became even more urgent. It was around then that Fr. McDonnell, later Archdeacon McDonnell, arrived as the new Parish Priest. In 1951 architects carried out a detailed examination of the church structure which confirmed that urgent remedial work was required which for substantial expenditure would only serve to postpone for a comparatively short time the issue of building a new church.

Fr. McLaughlin acted immediately. Consulting Engineers were engaged to make trial holes at a number of sites in the town to consider their suitability as a location for a new church. The Abbey at the rear of Emily Square, the site of the first Dominican Friary in the 13^th century, was one of those locations, the others being the Old Mill site at Duke Street, a field at Greenhills, the Maltings in Stanhope Street and the grounds of the existing Parish Church.

In the meantime a weekly Parish Draw was inaugurated which attracted support from 2,700 parishioners and contributed almost £100 per week to the Church Building Fund. The planned Giving Campaign, which is still ongoing, was inaugurated a few years later and with a combination of many other fundraising events the funds required to build the Church were painstakingly accumulated over many years.

On 24^thSeptember, 1960 the Parish Church of St. Michael’s which had served the people of Athy for over 150 years was vacated for the last time. Immediately work began on demolishing the old structure to make room for the new Parish Church which by then was estimated to cost £150,000. Also demolished was St. Joseph’s School where generations of Athy boys had started their schooling under the tutelage of the Sisters of Mercy. The C.Y.M.S. rooms were next to be leveled to the ground, as were the adjoining buildings which had been used as part of St. Mary’s Secondary School. The first sod on the site of the new church was turned by Fr. Vincent Steen, Parish Priest, on 29^thSeptember 1960 and on 15^th October the following year Archbishop John Charles McQuaid laid the foundation stone of the new St. Michael’s Church.

On Sunday, 19^th April 1964 the new Parish Church of St. Michael’s was blessed and opened by the Archbishop of Dublin. The Parish Priest, Fr. Vincent Steen, celebrated the High Mass on the day of the opening, assisted by local man Fr. Paddy Finn and by Fr. Seamus Conway. The Parish Curates, Fr. Frank Mitchell and Fr. Joe Corbett assisted the Archbishop while the Master of Ceremonies for the day was their colleague Fr. Philip Dennehy who is now our Parish Priest.

Built at a cost of approximately £200,000 it had taken the main contractors, Messrs C. Creedon & Sons of Newmarket, Dublin, three and a half years to complete the new Church. The architects were Richard Guy and Patrick V. Moloney of Dublin. Approximately £90,000 had been collected within the parish for the Church Building Fund before the official opening, leaving the balance to be gathered over the following years.

Designed in the Lombardic Romanesque style the Church had a seating capacity for 1,100, which capacity was subsequently reduced following changes to the layout of the Church interior. The Church generally is constructed in brickwork, facing bricks being used as finishes to both the internal and external wall surfaces, with reconstructed stone dressings to window and door surrounds, eave bands and string courses.

In the new church the windows of the transept had been donated by Mrs. J. Owens, Nicholastown, the windows of the nave by the Men’s Sacred Heart Sodality and the baptistery windows by the Women’s Sacred Heart Sodality. The Tabernacle was donated by the employees of Bowaters Wallboard Mills, the sanctuary lamps by Athy C.I.E. station employees, the altar crucifix by the men employed on the building of the church and St. Joseph’s Shrine by a Mr. Byrne of Willesden, London. [Can anyone tell me what was Mr. Byrne’s connection with Athy] Incidentally Fr. McLaughlin, who 12 years previously organised the first meeting which would give us a new Parish Church, left Athy in November 1957 to become Parish Priest of Celbridge.

Architecturally the Parish Church of St. Michael’s, Athy has its detractors, the common complaint being its size which many feel lacks scale, while its style is not to everyone’s likening. Probably the fourth Catholic Parish Church in the town, St. Michael’s is the proud inheritor of a tradition extending back beyond the Penal Law decades and the pre-Reformation period when the first St. Michael’s Church served the medieval village of Ath Í.

This week the Church of Ireland in Athy suffered the tragic loss of its recently appointed pastor, Reverend François Murenzi. Everywhere in town this week there was a measurable sense of heartfelt sorrow for the young man of religion who tragically died following a car accident. For his wife and young children it is a personal tragedy of immeasurable proportions. For the local Church of Ireland community it is a serious blow comparable to that suffered by a previous generation whose Rector, Rev. F.S. Trench died following an accident in Offaly Street in November 1860. It was Reverend Trench who had the rectory in Church Road built and the first major refurbishment of that fine building was undertaken by the Church Body shortly before Rev. Murenzi’s introduction as Bishop’s Curate of Athy on the 18^th of July this year. The sad coincidences which mark the deaths of Rev. François Murenzi and that of one of his predecessors Rev. F.S. Trench are a reminder of the strong links which bind us together as one community, especially so in times of tragedy such as this. May he rest in peace.

Just a few short weeks ago a school colleague of mine passed away following a long illness. Jimmy Doyle, like myself, attended the Christian Brothers School here in Athy and from school Jimmy left to join the army where he spent a number of years. Later on he worked in the I.V.I. Foundry in Leinster Street. As I wrote that last sentence I wondered if there was any need for me to indicate where the factory was located. It closed down about 15 years ago, perhaps even less, yet today there are no visible traces left of what was once an extensive factory premises. [I’m sure many of the younger generation don’t even know what the I.V.I. was] Jimmy Doyle left the I.V.I. in 1966 or thereabouts following the death of his father Andrew who had been employed by Kildare County Council. The late Mossy O’Sullivan, Engineer in charge of South Kildare, took Jimmy onto the County Council payroll in place of his father Andrew and Jimmy remained with the Council until he retired earlier this year. He ended up as a road ganger under current road engineer, Dave O’Flaherty, whom I understand has been in that position with Kildare County Council for the past 28 years. Jimmy married Rose McCarthy and is survived by her and his sister Mary who lives in Limerick. His brothers Pat and “Thrush” Doyle predeceased Jimmy. May he rest in peace.

The Christian Brothers School which Jimmy and I attended was also the alma mater of 15 young classmates who comprised the 1966/1967 Leaving Certificate class. I understand they will be having a Class Reunion dinner in Tonlegee House on Saturday, 29^th November where they will be joined by their former teachers, Brother Dalton, Mick Hannon and Mick Kelleher. Tom Doyle of Ballyshannon is one of the principal organisers of the event and he tells me that Martin Miller, formerly of Burtown, will be there, as will local builder Jim Lawler and Matt Page, formerly of Bray and now a teacher living in Kilmallock in County Limerick. Not too far from him is Kevin Ryan, Vice President of Limerick University who will be joining John Fingleton, now of Portlaoise and John Fitzpatrick, formerly of Geraldine and now living in Dublin. Michael Perse, an E.S.B. official living in Kill went to the C.B.S. from the Coneyboro, while Frank Fingleton made the daily trip from St. Joseph’s Terrace and on this occasion will travel from his home in Balbriggan in Co. Dublin. With them will be Joe McNamara of Stanhope Street, now an E.S.B. official in Portlaoise and John Kelly, son of the late Alex Kelly who is a teacher in North Kildare. Tony Murphy of Ballylinan will have a short journey to make, as will Christy McKenna, formerly of McDonnell Drive who now lives in Castledermot. Paschal O’Flaherty, whose father Jim worked in the Post Office before moving as Post Master to Greystones, is now in Limerick and will join his former class mates on the 29^th. Missing will be Paschal Stynes, formerly of Leinster Street. He is a doctor based in Australia and understandably is not expected to be able to make the trip on this occasion.

It is nice to see the Christian Brothers Alumni keeping in touch, and perhaps just as important, given the times in which we live, by coming together with their former teachers, giving lie to the oft repeated claims made against the religious orders in Ireland.

News of a rowing regatta organised by Athy Rowing Club prompted a search through the archives for the last reported reference to a similar event in Athy. Just eight years after the ending of the Great Famine the Athy Regatta was revived after a lapse of some years. It took place on Friday, 15^thAugust 1856 with six races. The highlight of the Regatta was the competition for the Silver Challenge Cup, confined to two oared boats, the property of persons living at least 12 months in the town of Athy to be rowed and steered by local residents. The Regatta continued each year until 1861, when it was believed, for whatever reasons, that it was not to be held again. This was particularly upsetting to two locals, Daniel Cobbe and Francis Dillon who had won the Silver Challenge Cup, renamed the Corporation Challenge Cup the previous year, and demanded the right to challenge all comers to a race on the River Barrow. They apparently made arrangements for a boat race which they duly won, thereby claiming the Challenge Cup for the second year. Faced with the same official reluctance to hold the Regatta in 1862, Cobbe and Dillon again issued a public challenge and succeeded for the third time in a race against two other local lads, Delaney and Keeffe. Cobbe and Dillon then claimed the right to keep the Corporation Challenge Cup, having won it three times in succession thus bringing to an end the Athy Regatta Races. I wonder what happened the silver cup which Cobbe and Dillon retained?

I end this week by recalling the invitation which issued from the Select Vestry of the Athy Union of Parishes for the introduction of the Reverend François Murenzi by the Archbishop of Dublin at St. Michael’s Church, Athy on Friday, 18^thJuly last. How tragic it is to realise that the expectation and joy of that summer day has given way in just four months to grief and sorrow. Our deepest sympathy goes to the family of the late Reverend François Murenzi and to the Church of Ireland members of our local community.

Ever since my younger brother Seamus was killed in a car accident on the Dublin road just outside Athy in November 1965, the eleventh month in which we commemorate the dead has held for me an extra special significance. Especially so when to the long list of those who have passed through this life has been added the name of another who was near and dear.

Last week a grand old lady passed away in her 95^th year. She was my mother-in-law, Hannah Spellman. I first met her 37 years ago when she was living in the heart of Connemara. A Cork woman and proud of the fact, she first came to Connemara just four years after the founding of the Irish Free State and remained there for 46 years amongst the Gaelic speaking community of Fermoyle and the neighbouring villages of Gleanicmurrin, Seanafeistin and Knockadoo. It was there among the rugged beauty of the Connemara countryside that she reared her family.

I remember my first trip to Connemara in a Morris Minor car which I had borrowed from my father. Most of us, although I wasn’t at that time, are familiar with the main road out past Barna, Spiddal and Tully and on to Carraroe, but to get to Fermoyle I had to turn off at Rossaveal and wend my way another seven or eight miles deeper and deeper into the Connemara countryside. By then the road was tarred, but just a few years previously it was nothing more than a graveled roadway. Small cottages and bungalows were visible on the hillside, clustered together as if to protect themselves against the encroachment of the heather cloaked bog which surrounded them.

Half way on the road to Fermoyle the one-roomed schoolhouse where the Spellman children and their scattered neighbours had attended National School was pointed out to me. It was another three miles or more to Fermoyle Lodge and to a “townie” who had leisurely walked to his school and sprinted home at lunchbreak, it was a bit of a jolt to be told that Connemara youngsters walked three or four miles to school each day, hail, rain or snow.

My introduction to the Connemara way of life in the late 1960’s coincided with the last days of an older generation which had seen life under English rule and the emerging Irish Free State. Stories of Black and Tans and the escapades of Johnny Broderick, a Galway I.R.A. man and a family relation, was told against the backdrop of Fermoyle Lodge which World War I General, Kincaid Smith had often used as his fishing and shooting lodge.

The Spellman house was a céili house for the locality and at night time the local men (why never the women I now ask myself) gathered in the kitchen swopping stories, local news and jollity and smoking tobacco pipes. Every now and then somebody would get up and go to the back door and stand there looking up at the sky as if checking the weather. Nothing would be said as the back door was closed and the weather gazer stepped out into the dark. He always returned, apparently cheered and warmed, and it was sometime before I came to realise that the neighbours invariably brought with them a bottle of poitín which was carefully concealed in the bushes away from the house. Poitín making was, and probably still is, a tradition in the area, but ever mindful of the need not to implicate neighbours, the potent concoction was never brought indoors. Hence the constant toing and froing between kitchen and the garden where the treasured bottle was laid on the ground as gently as a new born babe in its first crib.

I remember the names of some of those men, all of whom have long passed on. The commonality of surnames in the West often required references to one’s antecedents so that identification could be properly and quickly made as conversation flowed. So it was that a man from Connemara was seldom simply called Sean or Pat. He invariably also bore the name of his father or grandfather, if required, as it generally was, to distinguish him from another of the same name. Hence Joeín Paudge Séan Dan was a well known figure in Fermoyle village and all the names were needed to distinguish him from another Joeín. Tom Máiread was a gentle quite spoken boat man whom I got to know in that part of Connemara. Tom was the son of Máiread and Mick, the son of Pat Mór, who was known as Mike Pat Mór and his good wife was known as Máire Pat Mór.

It was amongst the Gaelic speaking Connemara folk that Hannah Spellman, the Doneraile born Cork woman came to live. She spoke no Irish and over the years, whether through choice or otherwise, she never lapsed into the native tongue, even when conversing with her neighbours. They spoke Irish to her which she apparently understood and replied in English which they equally seemed to understand and both continued the conversation in different tongues without any apparent loss of meaning or understanding on either side. The first time I witnessed this it was a mesmerizing experience but both parties seemed to regard their linguistic exchanges as perfectly normal.

Another puzzling aspect of Connemara life for “a midlander” was the ease with which a few houses perched precariously on the side of a Connemara hillside could be referred to in conversation as “the village”. The first time I came across this I was puzzled when Mrs. Spellman, referring to a neighbour in the village, pointed across the open expanse of Connemara bog to the far hillside where three isolated cottages could be seen. That I learned was the village of Fermoyle, unadorned by the presence of Church, pub or post office. Indeed these facilities were to be reached only by travelling at least eight miles down the road which led in the direction of Rossaveal. The willingness of the Connemara folk to bestow civic status on a few isolated cottages was in a way similar to the American practice of designating anything larger than a crossroads as a city.

As befitting someone who had spent her entire adult life among the Connemara’s, Hannah Spellman was a gifted story teller. How often I heard the stories of the poachers, pronounced “poochers”, who netted the river for salmon to the disgust of the rod-men and the local boatmen. The dangers of the Connemara hills and bogs was recounted in the story of her husband John Spellman who was lost in freezing fog for two days but kept himself alive by continuously circling around a large rock until the fog had lifted. She was also a great advocate of the literary works of Canon Sheehan who as Parish Priest of Doneraile had baptised her in the local Church.

To my shame, although I had talked of doing so, I had never recorded her stories of life in Connemara. Some weeks ago I mentioned the possibility of organising an oral history project in South Kildare which would help to record experiences, stories and past happenings of this area so that future generations might better understand their past. The response to that piece would indicate that there may be enough people interested in pursuing the idea, and hopefully arrangements can be in place in the new year to start the project. More information about that at a later date.

Hannah Spellman was laid to rest in Bohermore Cemetery in Galway last week, a few months short of her 95^th birthday. Her life was a long and happy one and as the cortege passed the mass grave of those who died in the K.L.M. crash off Shannon in 1954, I thought of those unfortunate men, women and children, some of whom were never identified, whose lives were cut short in such a violent way. To live a long and happy life is a privilege which not everyone is destined to enjoy.

During the past week I read a publication edited by Kildare poet, Ann Egan, in which a number of our senior citizens published their memories of times past. Among the contributors was Michael Wall of Chanterlands.

This week I am giving over the Eye on the Past to some extracts from Michael’s memories of when he was a young boy in County Mayo.

“In the early twenties the War of Independence was raging and like most people of that era, my father was an ardent supporter of Sinn Fein. To counter the British hold on the country, Sinn Fein set up their own Courts and administered justice, the best possible. The Court for South Mayo was in Claremorris and my father cycled to these Court sessions. The Judge was a local Solicitor – later to become Lord Chief Justice for Ireland – Conor Maguire. My father and one other acted as his Court clerks. When a client was convicted for some offence he was hooded and kept “incommunicado” for one week and was fed bread and water. Prisoners were never molested in any way. After one week they were released and warned to behave themselves. As a result of these courts there was very little crime in the area.

As a result of my father’s activities he became known as the local Sinn Fein activist. To use a mafia term, the local R.I.C. Sergeant put the finger on him and he became ‘a marked man’. One night they raided the village and searched the house looking for my father. My mother was terrified but they pushed her aside and felt the bed clothes. ‘The bed was warm but the bird had flown’. He took to the hills and was ‘on the run’ for a few days.

My next memory as a child was being taken out of bed and being hoisted up by a dark stranger. He tells me I’m a grand wee lad. I tell him – you’re a ‘quare aul lad’. He tells me I have great use of my tongue. There is also another stranger present. He is the leader of the South Mayo Flying Column. Men from this column used to train in one of our sheds and used dummy rifles. Both these men were involved in a major ambush in West Mayo. Some weeks later sadly the ‘quare aul lad’ was killed.”

Michael’s grandmother had a grocery shop in Ballinrobe and here he takes up her story.

“Business was booming during the War years. She sent one son to train in Edenderry as a cabinet maker; another went to Rome to train as a Franciscan. The third and youngest son she kept at home and bought a car for him for hire work. Around about 1920 number two son was being ordained in Killarney and the family set off for Kerry. To get there was just a nightmare journey as the War of Independence was at its height and many bridges had been blocked or blown up. They criss crossed from one county to another but finally got there. Number three son was just sixteen at the time.

Often in those days the ‘Black and Tans’ called to the bar for drinks and failed to pay. The Granny let them know what she thought of them. One day when my uncle was out on a call he was captured by them and for one week he was forced to drive them around the country. He returned safely however, much to the relief of the family. Some weeks later the I.R.A. called him in and told him that they knew of his exploits with the Tans. He replied that it was at the point of a gun. He drove them around for another week. During the Civil War both Grandad and Uncle were captured and taken prisoner for one week by the anti-treaty factions. Grandad always called them – the Bolshevics. They were not harmed but the car was burnt out.

Tension was very high in that part of South Mayo in 1923. The local Parish Priest spoke out against them (I.R.A.) at all parish functions, much to their great discomfiture. As a result of such opposition they torched the local Post Office and then proceeded to the church armed with tins full of petrol. The Parish Priest met them in the Church and threatened them with ‘fire and brimstone’ so that they moved on. About that time the Anti-Treaty Group (I.R.A.) made an attempt to torch the local workhouse. My Grandad and Uncles were making hay in a field close by and seeing smoke issuing from the building they rushed in and were lucky enough to extinguish the fire. They certainly weren’t ‘flavour of the month’ in certain quarters in South Mayo.”

In 1929 Michael’s parents bought a farm in County Laois and the Wall family moved to Mountmellick which Michael described as “a colossal house, single story in front and rising to two stories at the back.” It was, he later discovered, a safe house for Republicans during “the troubles” and during the Civil War was often home to anti-treaty forces. During the 1926 election the Mountmellick house, which the Walls were to take over three years later, was district headquarters for Fianna Fáil. De Valera was a frequent visitor, while Countess Markievicz and Terence McSweeney’s widow stayed there for the duration of the election campaign.

Another important episode in Irish history was recalled when Michael wrote of his grandmother who as a youngster going home from school one day saw a man surrounded by soldiers being escorted to the local R.I.C. Barracks. He was Captain Boycott of Lough Mask House and on the next day the man who gave the word “boycott” to the English language departed from the local railway station for his home in England.

Recalling such memories gives an immediacy to the re-telling of Irish history which academic theses can never hope to do. My thanks to Michael Wall for allowing me to share his very interesting memories of times past with my readers.

May I take the opportunity of wishing the readers of “Eye on the Past” a very happy Christmas and every good wish for the New Year.

I wrote in Eye on the Past No. 1174 of volunteerism and of the many men and women in and around Athy who with advantage to themselves and to the voluntary sector make themselves available for voluntary work within their local community. I mentioned then the local Heritage Centre which was looking for volunteers willing to make themselves available for a few hours each week to help staff exhibitions in the Town Hall Centre. There was a good response to that request and I was reminded to put out the call again for volunteers to do some voluntary work on a regular basis in our local community. There are a large number of local organisations staffed by volunteers which one could join. For instance, the local St. Vincent de Paul Society which I regard as one of the most important voluntary organisations in the town does extraordinary good work assisting families who are experiencing difficult times. The members of the Society organise an annual collection in the weeks leading up to Christmas. The monies collected are but a small proportion of the Society’s outlay in helping local families in distress. The St. Vincent de Paul Society relies not only on the annual collection but also on the continuing generosity of families at local and national level who are in a position to help to alleviate the hardships endured by less well-off families. The Society meets weekly and operates a charity shop in William Street. I was in Geraldine Park last Thursday evening for a young girls football match between Athy Gaelic Football Club and the arch enemy of old, Castlemitchell Gaelic Football Club. Times have changed, not only in terms of the now friendly relationship between local clubs, but also insofar as the once male dominated sport, at junior level at least, is attracting increasing participation from young girls. Looking after the young players involves a huge commitment from parents and GAA club officials alike and the latter particularly deserve our praise for their unstinted voluntary commitment. There are many other examples of local boys and girls, men and women, giving of their time and working behind the scenes for local clubs or for the good of the local community. One group whose work is very much in the public eye, but whom I feel are nevertheless not as appreciated as they should be, is the Tidy Towns Committee. How often have I seen those volunteers at evening time armed with sweeping brushes and shovels working away tending to public areas in the town and cleaning up the litter which if left unattended would disfigure so many of our local neighbourhoods. The current Tidy Towns Committee has been in existence since its reorganisation in 1997. Indeed, Tidy Towns Committees in Athy go back to a time when I was a member of Athy Urban District Council and it was one of several committees established at that time to promote the wellbeing of the local community. The very first Tidy Towns Committee worked under the chairmanship of Dr. John Macdougald. The present Committee operates under the chairmanship of Ger Kelly and he is ably assisted by members of the committee, including Hilary May, Brendan Moloney, Patricia Berry, Martin Donnelly and Brian Fitzpatrick. The Tidy Towns volunteers meet in Emily Square at 7.00 p.m. every Friday and from there start their work on your and my behalf to clean up areas which need attention. Called the ‘Tidy Towns Committee’ their work has resulted in a huge improvement in the appearance of the town and the approach roads to Athy. However, much work remains to be done and more volunteers are needed. If you are in a position to help why not drop down to Emily Square next Friday at 7.00 p.m. I gather anyone turning up to do some voluntary work will be very welcome. The success of the Tidy Towns Committee’s efforts can be measured by the huge improvements in votes received by Athy in the annual Tidy Towns competition. Athy did not enter the competition in 1996, but did so the following year after the then Town Clerk, Tommy Maddock, with the help and encouragement of others re-established the Tidy Town Committee under the chairmanship of Ger Kelly. Athy’s efforts in 1997 gained 166 points in the National competition. Last year that figure had increased to 274 points, thanks to the work of the committee and the volunteers past and present. The Committee’s work in cleaning up the banks of the River Barrow was the subject of a Millennium Award and a few weeks ago the annual river clean up was again the focus of the volunteer’s work. There are many organisations and clubs in the town staffed and run by volunteers and it is that same type of voluntary work which prompted the Leinster Express in July 1859 to declare ‘there is not in Ireland an inland town which can boast of more public spirit than Athy.’ That spirit is still evident today and the men and women of the local Tidy Towns Committee embody that public spirit which our community cannot do without. When I sat down to write this piece I wondered how many clubs/organisations are there in Athy? There is no directory for the town which one can consult, and its absence prompts a suggestion that there is a need for a town directory.

On Sunday 13th May at 3.00 p.m. the annual Great Famine Commemoration Service will take place in Athy’s former workhouse cemetary. The once neglected cemetary of St. Mary’s located just over the canal bridge on the road leading to Ballintubbert has in recent years been reclaimed and restored to reflect its importance as the last resting place of the more than twelve hundred men, women and children who died in the workhouse and the nearby fever hospital during the years of the Great Famine. The Great Famine of the 1840’s, so called to distinguish it from the all too frequent famines which over the centuries caused so much distress and hardship in Ireland, was a cataclysm unequalled in Irish history. More than one million Irish men, women and children died during the period 1845 to 1849 while another one million or so fled overseas to escape starvation, disease and death. While growing up in Athy in the 1950’s and attending school in the town, I was aware of the Great Famine as it affected towns and villages on Ireland’s western seaboard. There was, however, no reference by the teachers in our local school to the effects of the Great Famine on the people living in the short grass County of Kildare. Undoubtedly, the greater loss of life resulting from starvation and disease was witnessed in the poor regions of Counties Cork, Kerry and Mayo but what prompted the absence of any collective memory here in Athy of the unfortunates who died in the local workhouse? After all the Great Famine brought about a substantial fall in the population in County Kildare. Between 1841 and 1851, the County’s population fell by almost 16.5 per cent and population decline in the County continued thereafter until the first population increase was noted in 1946. Athy’s population which in 1841 totalled 4698 had fallen to 3873 in 1851 which figure excluded the inmates of the local workhouse. This represented an actual loss of 825 persons or a 17.5 per cent decrease. Between 1831 and 1841, the town’s population had increased by 4.5 per cent and given a similar likely increase in the ten years to 1851, the town population would have reached 4909 at the end of that period. The famine can therefore be seen to have caused a possible fall in Athy’s population of upwards of 1036 persons. Of course, not all of that loss is likely to have resulted from starvation or disease as perhaps some families left the town of Athy to make a new life overseas. Adding to the misery of the time was a cholera outbreak which reached Athy in June 1849. A temporary cholera hospital was opened in the town to cater for those affected by the outbreak. Cholera was particularly rampant amongst the poor people who lived in the unsanitary overcrowded conditions to be found in narrow lanes and courts of Athy town. The census figures for deaths in the local workhouse, the adjoining fever hospital and the temporary cholera hospital during the years of the Great Famine show that 1,205 deaths were recorded. With the reduction already noted in the town’s population, the possibility of approximately 2,000 deaths in Athy from starvation and/or disease during the Great Famine of 1845 to 1849 can be suggested. Next Sunday we can remember those unfortunate men, women and children from our town and district who died during a catastrophic period in our history. The ecumenical service will start at 3.00 p.m. in the former workhouse cemetery of St. Mary’s. The announcement of the closure of Athy’s Coca Cola plant brought gloom and dismay to our town which was already struggling to regain the commercial success of past years. The announcement came the day before the official opening of Athy’s new library and represented a setback for those working on the regeneration plan for the town. However, as explained by the C.E.O. of Kildare County Council, Peter Carey, the library opening was another positive implementation step for the towns regeneration and will be followed in the short to medium term by the Southern Distributor Road, the town square improvement scheme and the improved extension for the new Heritage Centre/Shackleton Museum. Minister Michael Ring when opening the library spoke of the Government’s commitment to the growth of industry in Athy which will be hugely facilitated by the new by-pass road. The jobs to be lost in Coca Cola must be replaced quickly but we are fortunate that the current town regeneration plan gives us a unique opportunity to achieve this aim.

With the death of Canon Owen Sweeney, former Parish Priest of St. Michael’s, the Irish Church has lost one of its most energetic clerics who during his time in Athy gave positive expression of the church’s concern and care for the people of the parish. He was born on 27th July 1927 and was ordained on 25th May 1952. From 1960 he worked in England as part of the Irish Emigrant Chaplaincy Scheme which evolved from a decision of the Episcopal Committee for Emigration established in 1953 by the Irish hierarchy. That early decision to send a Columban priest to England to develop the mission effort amongst Irish men working on the building of English motorways lead to the founding of the Irish Emigrant Chaplaincy Scheme and its extension to other job situations employing Irish emigrant labour. Fr. Sweeney was part of that chaplaincy scheme from 1960-1963 and again from 1964-1966. Incidentally another subsequent Parish Priest of St. Michael’s, Fr. Gerard Tanham, spent four years from 1973 as a member of the Irish Emigrant Chaplaincy Scheme. Fr. Sweeney was president of Clonliffe College Dublin from 1976-1980. Founded in 1854 as the seminary for the training of priests for the Archdiocese of Dublin, Clonliffe today holds the burial place of it’s founder, the Ballitore born and first Cardinal of the Irish church, Paul Cullen. It was following his presidency of Clonliffe that Fr. Sweeney came to Athy in 1980 as our Parish Priest. He was to remain here for five years, during which time he showed qualities which endeared him to the people of Athy and district. The 1980s perhaps marked the beginning of the withdrawal of centuries old commitment of the Irish to the Catholic Church. It was still a period marked by regular Mass attendance and commitment to devotions, sodalities and all the religious events which those of us of a certain age associate with our younger days. Canon Sweeney was an energetic friendly individual who oversaw the religious welfare of his parishioners, assisted by a full team of curates. However, his concern for the welfare of the parishioners of St. Michaels extended beyond their religious or spiritual needs. He took an active part in helping to develop a community centre for Athy and committed parish funds to help acquire the vacant Dreamland ballroom. The ballroom on the Kilkenny Road was opened on Friday, 14th July 1961 by the Reynolds brothers with the legendary Victor Sylvester orchestra on stage. That same night Paddens Murphy’s local band members provided support for Sylvester’s orchestra for what may have been the most important engagement of their musical careers. By the early 1980s the once flourishing showband dancing had collapsed and Dreamland ballroom, which for 20 years had been such a huge part of all our social lives, had fallen idle. Canon Sweeney on behalf of Athy Parish of St. Michaels in conjunction with Athy Lions Club purchased the ballroom for use as a community centre and ownership was vested in trustees nominated by the local Lions Club and St. Michael’s Parish. Today the centre, now renamed A.R.C.H., continues to provide community sports space as well as a club premises for Aontas Ogra members. Canon Sweeney’s active involvement in the acquisition and subsequent development of the A.R.C.H. Centre was but one of his many contributions to the welfare of the local community here in Athy during his period as Parish Priest. Since Canon Sweeney’s departure from Athy nearly 33 years ago the townspeople have helped celebrate the 750th anniversary of the arrival of the Dominican Order in Athy. Sadly, not too many years since then the Dominican mission in Athy came to a close and a proud chapter in our local history was completed. With the falloff in vocations to the priesthood the work of the priest has become more difficult. Here in Athy the priests of St. Michael’s Parish have to serve the needs of the congregations of six churches, five in rural areas as well as the town’s Parish church. It is a challenging responsibility in difficult times and prompts us to remember with gratitude the good work done in the past by men such as Canon Owen Sweeney whose passing at an advanced age is much regretted.

‘Published by Castledermot Press’ was what caught my eye as I perused the books in the Connolly book shop located next to Dolphin House Court at the rear of the Clarence Hotel in Dublin. My immediate thoughts were that the well known Castledermot born writer John MacKenna had escaped from his mainstream publishers to start his own publishing house. But no, the address of the Castledermot Press was given as Bray, Co. Wicklow and the book ‘Having it Away – a story of freedom, friendship and I.R.A. jailbreak’ was authored by Seamus Murphy. The juxtaposition of the name and the words ‘I.R.A. jailbreak’ brought immediate recognition for I had intended a few years ago to write an ‘Eye’ on the young Castledermot man who was involved in the I.R.A. raids on a British army depot at Arborfield near London in August 1955. I made some enquiries at the time but never met Seamus Murphy and the intended article never materialised. Now the book I had taken from the shelves of the Dublin book shop gave me the opportunity of reading a first-hand account of the raid, the subsequent imprisonment of three of those involved and the escape of Seamus Murphy from Wakefield Prison in February 1959. Accounts of prison escapes have been a frequent enough source of material for books published by I.R.A. members, whether veterans of the War of Independence or members of the various splinter groups which emerged in more recent years. One of the earliest publications of that type was written by Fr. Patrick Doyle, later Parish Priest of Naas, while he was Rector of Knockbeg College in Carlow. ‘The escape from Mountjoy – and other prison experiences of an Irish Volunteer – Padraic Fleming’ told the story of the imprisonment of the man from the Swan and his escape from Mountjoy Jail. His story was retold in the 1971 Anvil book publication ‘Sworn to be free – the complete book of I.R.A. jailbreaks 1918-1921’. The chapter on Fleming was written by Lochlinn MacGlynn and he recounted in depressing detail the privations and hardships endured by the Laois man before he finally escaped on 29th March 1919. As Ireland emerged from the Second World War, Noel Hartnett edited a series of talks first broadcast from Radio Eireann and published under the title ‘Prison Escapes’. Amongst the stories was that of Piarais Beaslaoi’s escape from Strangeways Prison Manchester in October 1919 and Eamon de Valera’s escape from Lincoln Jail in February of the same year. The story of Irish republicans imprisoned in English jails and post 1916 Welsh detention camps have been well documented and Dr. Ruan O’Donnell of Limerick University has brought the story up to date with his two recent volumes on I.R.A. members in English prisons from 1968 to 1985. Seamus Murphy’s book is a valuable addition to the growing literary output dealing with the incarceration of Irish republicans in English prisons. The three most famous personal accounts of this genre were of course O’Donovan Rossa’s ‘Prison Life – Six years in English prisons’, Tom Clarke’s account of his 15 years behind bars in ‘Glimpses of an Irish felon’s prison life’ and Michael Davitt’s ‘Leaves from a prison diary’. In ‘Having it Away’ Seamus Murphy tells us of his involvement in the I.R.A. raid on the arms depot in Arborfield in 1955 when he was just 20 years old. The I.R.A. raiding party of ten men, led by Ruairi O’Bradaigh, seized a large amount of guns and ammunition, all of which were subsequently recovered and three of the raiders were captured. Seamus Murphy, Donal Murphy (no relation) and Joe Doyle were later tried and sentenced to life imprisonment. It was from Wakefield Prison that Seamus Murphy escaped, where one of his fellow prisoners was the I.R.A. Chief of Staff, Cathal Goulding. His escape was facilitated by an I.R.A. splinter group associated with Joe Christle, working with Cyprian rebel sympathisers living in London. Seamus Murphy died aged 80 years on 2nd November 2015, survived by his wife Betty, his son Pearse and his two sisters. I end with the opening lines of his book which are a beautifully worded description of his prison cell. ‘It measured little bigger than a tomb. In the whitewashed walls the pattern of the brickwork stood out, irregular lines of staggered rectangles, ridged edges black and grimy with the dust of years. At one end was a long narrow window, set high in the wall, it’s small squares of cracked glass were coated in grime, and stoutly encased in a lattice work of flaking rusted metal. Generations of spiders had found quiet refuge in the holes and fissures that scarred the plasterwork about the window frame, adding their webbed traceries and mummified flies to the accumulation.’

Athy of the 18th century had a population mix of Catholics, Established Church adherents, Quakers and other dissenters, each socially removed from each other yet commercially interdependent. Catholics, excluded from holding land or government office, concentrated on commercial pursuits as did the Quakers who came to Athy towards the end of the 17th century. By 1750 Catholics owned a large proportion of the local ale houses. Despite their commercial involvement, Catholics had no voice in the running of their town and would have none for another 80 years. Little or no effort appears to have been made by the numerically superior Catholics of the town to gain some measure of representation on the Borough Council. The poorer classes were powerless in the face of religious and economic hardship while their better off co-religionists, for the most part shopkeepers and innkeepers, saw little merit in jeopardising their position and status by engaging in public agitation. Inland towns such as Athy benefitted enormously from improved road making practises of the 18th century. Prior to then, responsibility for road repairs rested on individual householders organised on a parochial basis. Under an Act of 1612, each warden of the Established Church was obliged to convene meetings of his parish on the Tuesday and Wednesday of Easter week. At these annual meetings, two parishioners were appointed surveyors of whatever road works were considered necessary. Over a period of 6 days each year, every householder was required to provide free labour on the roads, while landlords and farmers supplied horses, carts and drivers. In this way, the 17th century Irish roads were maintained. In 1727, the first Turnpike Act was passed. In time, turnpike roads led to most of the important towns in Ireland. These were built and maintained by business people and landlords, who derived an income from tolls collected on traffic using the turnpike roads. Athy had a turnpike road running through the town from Kilcullen through Castlecomer to Kilkenny. There were three turnpike gates on the road in and around the town of Athy where tolls were paid. One gate was located on the Dublin Road on the town side of St. Michael’s Medieval Church, while another gate was placed across St. John’s Street (the present Duke Street) at its junction with Green Alley. The third turnpike gate and the longest to remain in use was on the Castlecomer Road at Beggars End approximately 700 yards from White’s Castle. The following advertisement in the Universal Adviser of 2nd July 1757 indicates how important road improvements resulting from the Turnpike Acts were in developing public transport to and from Dublin. ‘Whereas there is now set up a STAGE-COACH, which begun to run the 14th of June, 1757, from the City of Dublin thro’ Athy and Castlecomer, to the City of Kilkenny. It sets off from Dublin on every Tuesday, and from Kilkenny on every Friday; and as the Road is 12 Miles shorter than the Carlow Road, the Owners of the Coach are determined to charge but 12s. each Person which is 2s less than any other Stage-coach charges, allowing twenty Pound Luggage to each inside Passenger, and ten Pounds ditto to each outside Passenger. The Road from Kilcullen thro’ Athy to Kilkenny being now in the best Repair of any Turnpike in this Kingdom, and the Inns well situated, and furnished with all Kinds of Entertainment for Man and Horse, it is not doubted that the Munster Gentlemen will, for their own Conveniency, make Use of this Road. The Stages the Coach stops at are as follows, viz. Going from Dublin they breakfast at Rathcool, dine in Kilcullen, and lie in Athy; next day they breakfast in Castlecomer, and dine in Kilkenny. Coming from Kilkenny they breakfast in Castlecomer, dine in Athy, and lie in Kilcullen; next day they breakfast in Johnstown, and dine in Dublin – The Company may see the Safety and speedy Dispatch of this Coach, which is by dining at their Journey’s-End the second Day, instead of coming into Town late at Night. – Prices from Dublin for each Stage, are, to Naas, 5s. to Kilcullen, 6s. to Athy, 8s to Castlecomer 10s. 6d. – Returning from Kilkenny to Athy, 6s. to Kilcullen, 8s. to Naas, 9s and so in Proportion to or from any other Place on said Road. Places to be taken at Mr. Edmond Cavanagh’s, Grocer at the Raven in High-street, Dublin, and at Mr. Dunphy’s, at the Sun in Cole-Market, Kilkenny, and sets off precisely at six o’Clock in the Morning. And any Person who does not attend at said hour, forfeits their Earnest Money. Half of the Money to be paid as Earnest, the Remainder at the End of their Journey. – The Proprietors beg Leave to assure their Company and Friends, that the greatest Care shall be taken to keep the best Horses, and the Coach to be always in Good Repair.’

The Graney Ambush of 24th October, 1922

Sr. Cecilia Hall and Sr. Immaculata of the Sisters of Mercy, Athy

Carol Taaffe's Essay on Athy's old Libratry

Athy's libraries of the past

Ireland's commemoration of World War 1 since the 1920s(1)

Ireland's commemoration of World War 1 since the 1920s(2)

Bishop James Quinn (brother of Athy's Parish Priest Dr. Andrew Quinn)

Photograph of St. Joseph's School boys school circa 1949

Oweny Prendergast - Death of Dinny Prendergast

Paddy Wright

Historic Links with the Sisters of Mercy

Fund Raising for and Building of St. Michael's Parish Church

Death of Rev. Francois Murenzi / Jimmy Doyle / CBS Class Reunion

Hannah Spellman

Michael Wall's Memoirs

Volunteerism in Athy

Great Famine Commemmoration 2018

Canon Owen Sweeney

'Having it Away' by Seamus Murphy

Ancient road works and the turnpike road through Athy