Athy Eye On The Past

When he died in August 1972 at the comparatively young age of 59 years Tom Bradbury passed to his family a business which was known the length and breadth of Leinster, if not further afield, for unique ‘fancies’ commonly called ‘Bradburys Cakes’. The fondant dips, almond fingers, japs, almond macaroons and franzipans were but some of the colourful tasteful ‘fancies’ which graced the Bradbury premises and brought visitors and locals alike to what was once Hamilton’s Hibernian Hotel in Leinster Street. This year Bradburys celebrate 80 years in business and the story of how it all started commenced with an advertisement in the British Baker, a newspaper for the industry which is still being published today.

Young Tom Bradbury, a native of Elworth near Crewe in England, was the son of a bicycle repair man. In the inter war years young Tom worked part time for an Elworth baker and confectioner and there learned the skills which would later bring him to Ireland. He enlisted in the Grenadier Guards, hopeful that it would eventually facilitate his desire to join Scotland Yard which had been his early ambition in life. It was not to be however as it soon became apparent that the big young Englishman had blood circulation problems which militated against his continuing army career and he eventually had to leave the Grenadier Guards.

It was an advertisement in the British Baker placed by O’Leary’s Bakery in Bray, Co. Wicklow seeking a baker/confectioner which caught Tom Bradbury’s attention and resulted in his travelling to Ireland where he would live for the rest of his life. He moved from O’Leary’s Bakery to other jobs before eventually joining Egans Bakery in Portlaoise. There Tom, a Methodist, met and subsequently married Margaret Marsh, a Catholic from Portlaoise. The religious background of both is important in order to appreciate the relevance of the information given to me by their son Johnny who described his parents as having married ‘in the porch in Carlow’. In response to my obvious question Johnny, two years my junior and who has recently handed over the running of Bradburys to his own sons John and Tom, explained that Tom and Margaret, who was known as Peg, were only allowed to use the porch of Carlow Cathedral for their wedding ceremony. This was in the mid 1930s, a time within living memory, when the intolerance of another age had yet to be discarded.

The young couple fortified by a loan from the groom’s father in England, purchased in 1938 a premises in Stanhope Street, Athy where the name Bradbury went over the front door for the first time. The bakery and small bread shop was located next to Carolans Corner shop and between it and O’Rourkes saddlers was another small premises which Tom Bradbury would eventually purchase. Bradburys Bakery business prospered in the town which up to then had boosted bakeries operated by Bradleys in Duke Street and Cawleys in William Street. Paddy Hayden of St. Patrick’s Avenue who had worked in Bradleys Bakery now came to work for Tom Bradbury and Paddy would remain with the firm until he retired. Paddy, a member of the Carlow/Kildare Brigade of the I.R.A. during the Irish War of Independence ran the bakery end of the business for many years for the former English Grenadier Guardsman Tom Bradbury.

Bradburys did so well in Stanhope Street that Tom was able to buy the small premises next door which he subsequently leased to Claire Behan of Leinster Lodge who used it as an outlet for selling milk from her farm. Does anyone remember Bradburys when it was located in Stanhope Street and the next door premises where milk brought each morning from Leinster Lodge by Mick Leahy was sold?

The premises soon proved too small and when Hutchinsons in Leinster Street, formerly the Hibernian Hotel, came on the market Tom Bradbury bought it and moved his business to its current location. From the extended premises Tom was able to expand the bakery business, opening a restaurant and wholesaling bread and confectionery. Paddy Murphy, Plewman’s Terrace, was the first bread delivery man employed by Bradburys and he had a horse and a dray with which he made deliveries to other shops in Athy such as Lily Kanes, Munsie Purcells and many more, all of which with the sole exception of O’Brien’s of Emily Square are now closed or have changed hands. The horse used on the Bradbury’s bread van run was called ‘Dolly’ and she was stabled at the back of Noonans in Stanhope Street. The normally placid ‘Dolly’ on one occasion acted out of character when frightened by something or other careered out of Bradbury’s yard straight across Leinster Street and through Jim Nelson’s pub door, only coming to a halt when the shafts of the dray stuck in the windows on either side of the pub door. The same Jim Nelson had a lucky escape that day for it was usual for him at different times of the day to stand at his pub door with his arm extended above his head on the door jamb observing traffic and locals passing by.

‘Dolly’ and the dray were eventually replaced by Ford vans, four or five of which were used for bread deliveries in counties Laois, Wicklow and Kildare. Ownie Pender of Milltown was another of the bread delivery men, while his sons Paddy, Damien, Denis and Eugene and daughter Rose were also working in the Leinster Street bakery.

The war years posed difficulties for Irish bakeries and one of the more frustrating problems was the embargo on the use of white flour. On many an occasion the enterprising bakers in Leinster Street sieved the brown flour so as to obtain an acceptable form of white flour to satisfy the requirements of ‘special customers’. Equally enterprising was the exploits of many other businessmen during the war years and later as attempts were made to overcome the food shortages which curtailed businesses so much. Johnny tells the story of how his father Tom, through a colleague in the business in Kilmacthomas, County Waterford, obtained a large quantity of sugar which of course was rationed during the emergency years. Anxious to get currants and raisins which were also in short supply he contacted what he believed was a Dublin based baker who was prepared to trade some fruit for sugar. Borrowing Mick Rowan’s truck Tom motored to Dublin with the sugar only to find himself confronted by the Customs and Excise men who had entrapped him and no doubt many others in a sting operation designed to cut down on the black market.

Many men and women worked in the bakery, in the shop and in the restaurant operated by Bradburys over the years. In the early years sisters Mary and Nancy O’Rourke of Stanhope Street were confectioners, while Nan Breen of Offaly Street worked in the shop and Paddy Murphy’s wife Lil worked in the restaurant. Mick Lawler ran the office and his impeccably maintained office journals are still retained as records of the business operated by Bradburys over the last 80 years. Some others recalled included Tommy Deering, George Robinson, Margo Higginson, Mrs. McConville, Brigid McHugh, Mag Chanders, Joan Walsh, John Mealy, Bridie Shortt, Bridie Connell, Kathleen Mahon, Ger Mulhall, Kathleen Keating, sisters Linda and Nuala Hayden and brothers P.J. and Leo Delaney and Tom and John Brennan. Many members of the same family worked for Bradburys including Christy, Martin, Tony and Cora Eaton, while the Walsh family of John, Eddie, Michael, Joseph and Gerard probably provided the largest family grouping to work there.

Tom Bradbury died on 19^th August 1972, survived by his wife Peg, five sons and one daughter. His young son Leslie died approximately 18 years earlier at a young age. The bakery and confectionery business was subsequently operated by his sons Jimmy and Johnny and is now currently run by his grandsons John and Tom.

Bradburys has been part of the commercial life of Athy for the last 80 years and in that time has become a well known and treasured establishment on Leinster Street.

This coming October Bank Holiday weekend visitors from the UK, the U.S., Canada, Norway and all over Ireland will be coming to Athy to attend the 9^th annual Ernest Shackleton Autumn School. The school was established in 2001 by a group of local polar enthusiasts in conjunction with Athy Heritage Centre. The school was established to commemorate the year of heroic polar exploration of which so many Irishmen were key figures including Ernest Shackleton and Tom Crean. Such has been the consistent interest in the school that it has gone from strength to strength since its foundation. Many of us will recall the wonderful performances of Liam O’Flynn and his fellow musicians in the Dominican Church Athy for the premier of his piece specially commissioned by the Heritage Centre to commemorate Ernest Shackleton’s exploits. The piece was an eloquent tribute to Shackleton and all those men who served with him and hopefully one day Liam will release a recording of it. In the intervening years there have been a number of different events during the school which have left indelible impressions on those who attended it. Chief amongst these must be Aidan Dooley’s wonderful evocation of the life of Tom Crean. Aidan’s extraordinary virtuoso performance gave life to this wonderful Kerry man whose exploits earned him a reputation almost on par with Ernest Shackleton. Last year one of the most significant events was the hosting of the Face to Face polar portraits exhibition. This exhibition, on loan from the Scott Polar Research Institute of the University of Cambridge, was the first time that the Scott Polar Research Institute had brought a full exhibition to this country. It is testament to the growing reputation of the Shackleton School that the Scott Polar Research Institute were pleased to be associated with it. The exhibition displayed a wonderful array of historic polar photography over the last 150 years, again featuring prominently many Irishmen, including Ernest Shackleton and Tom Crean as well as the Dundalk-born Arctic explorer, Francis Leopold McClintock.

This year the school will be marking the centenary of Shackleton’s Nimrod Expedition. This is the expedition which established Ernest Shackleton’s international reputation where he came within 90 miles of the South Pole. His pragmatic decision to return to his base without having reached the South Pole was a tribute to his leadership qualities insofar as he was unwilling to risk the lives of his men to achieve his geographical object. He famously wrote to his wife Emily Shackleton afterwards that he presumed that she would prefer to have a ‘live donkey than a dead lion.’

The Heritage Centre this year will host an exhibition of material and artefacts from the Nimrod Expedition including Shackleton’s own sledging flag and some of the equipment used on the expedition. Many of the artefacts will be on loan from the Scott Polar Research Institute and from private collectors from all over the world.

The Exhibition is only one of a number of events which is sure to draw particularly good crowds this year to Athy. Dr. Michael Rosove, from California will lecture on Shackleton's books and writing. Mr. Hans Kjell Larson, a grandson of Captain C.A. Larson, one of the most distinguished Antarctic pioneers, will be travelling from Norway to lecture about his grandfather. Dr. David Wilson, a grandnephew of Dr. Wilson, a member of the polar party who perished with Captain Scott in 1912, will be talking about his new book ‘Nimrod Illustrated Pictures from Lieutenant Shackleton’s British Antarctic Expedition’.

Professor Andrew Lambert of Kings College, London and Dr. Russell Potter of Rhode Island College, U.S.A. will also be talking about aspects of the famous Franklin Expedition lost in the Arctic, which to this day continues to generate a huge degree of scholarship in this area of Arctic history. A living link with modern Arctic life will be provided by Lady Marie Herbert. The Dublin born writer and traveller will speak about her life with the Inuit. A notable first for the school in that it follows the very successful talk given by her daughter Kari Herbert last year. A particularly interesting feature this year will be a session on historic polar cinematography to be hosted by Dr. Hugh Lewis Jones, the curator of art at the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge and Dr. Russell Potter, Professor of English from Rhode Island College. They will present, perhaps for the first time in Ireland, a series of historic polar films from the early 20^thcentury, many of them unlikely to be ever seen in this country again. There will also be a few surprises as there will be a number of contributions from special guests yet to be announced.

On the Friday night the school will begin with the launch by American polar historian Regina Wilson Daly of her latest book titled 'The Shackleton Letters - Behind the Scenes of the Nimrod Expedition'. This will be a particularly significant book launch in this the centenary year of the Nimrod Expedition. The launch will be followed by the Shackleton memorial lecture to be delivered this year by Caroline Casey. Caroline, a social entrepreneur and disability activist, was the founder of the Aisling Project, recently re-named Kanchi which has been to the forefront in heightening awareness of and enhancing the relationship between disability and society. One of her most significant achievements has been demonstrating that disability should not be a bar to an individual’s active participation in society or in the work place. The O2 Ability Awards, established by Kanchi, were the first Irish business awards which recognised best practice for the inclusion of people with disabilities as customers, employees and members of the community. Caroline’s extraordinary commitment and dedication has resulted in a series of significant acknowledgements and awards both nationally and internationally. She was the first Irish person to be appointed a young global leader of the World Economic Forum in 2006 and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the National University of Ireland in the same year. A hugely popular, energetic and charismatic speaker, her lecture on the opening night of the Shackleton weekend is not to be missed.

A very important part of the Shackleton School has been the social aspect particularly after the lecture sessions on the Saturday and Sunday and the friendships and relationships that have been fostered between the lecturers and the attendees has been an important factor in contributing to the continued success of the Shackleton Autumn School. It is true to say that while Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic endeavours established him internationally, the school which carries his name continues to promote Athy both nationally and internationally in a manner which was difficult to imagine when the school was first established in 2001.

Further details of the 2009 Ernest Shackleton Autumn School can be got from the Autumn School’s website: www.shackletonmuseum.com.

The first postcards of Athy were produced over 100 years ago. Using the Lawrence photographs taken in the last decade of the 19^th century these early postcards showed the town unchanged as it was for many years past. Of course, what has now become the iconic image of Athy, Whites Castle and the adjoining Crom a Boo Bridge has proved to be the most popular postcard image of the town. This was also the case when the Valentine and the Eason postcard collection featuring Athy were subsequently issued.

Over the years several local shopkeepers contracted to produce postcards of Athy including James’s of Duke Street and Ernest O’Rourke Glynn who had his premises at the corner of Woodstock Street and Duke Street.

Bernadette Gibbs who moved to Athy some few years ago and who is a prominent member of the Athy Photographic Group has recently produced a number of postcard images of Athy which are currently on sale. Her stunning photographs are a visual reminder of the important, if somewhat limited building heritage we have here in Athy. The Gibbs postcards will no doubt, in time to come, be an important part of the photographic record of the town or the ‘Marches of Kildare County’.

English literature has given us many associations which never fail to impress as one retraces the footsteps of writers through their literary output, or indeed their own lives. Dublin is for many associated with Dean Swift, surprisingly perhaps as 300 years or so have passed since he held the Deanship of St. Patricks, during which time there have been many other writers associated with the city. Amongst those of course was James Joyce who spent his adult life away from Ireland, yet whose book Ulysses reclaims for him the right to be associated, more than anyone else, with our capital city.

In the same way that the Bronte sisters and indeed their Irish born father Patrick are forever associated with the Yorkshire village of Haworth, the villages and towns of Dorset are forever Thomas Hardy country. The English novelist who had long given up writing novels before he died in 1928 and instead concentrated on poetry, created a body of work using the places and the people of his native Dorset. I revisited Dorset last week after an absence of many years, this time in search of the Thomas Hardy connections and the places associated with him and his literary work.

Dorchester is an ancient town founded by the Romans who called it ‘Durnovaria’ and the Roman presence has yielded up after almost 1600 years an extraordinary array of archaeological artefacts which today can be seen in the town’s outstanding museum. Not far from Dorchester in a place called Upper Brockhampton, Thomas Hardy, the son of a stonemason, was born just two years before Athy’s Workhouse was opened. The thatched cottage in which the Hardy family lived is still standing, today a Heritage Trust property which receives every day a succession of visitors. Not far away is the small village of Stinsford where Hardy who died aged 88 years had wanted to be buried with his first wife and close to his parents. The village cemetery in the grounds of St. Michael’s Parish Church were only to receive Hardy’s heart, while his ashes were interned in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey in London.

Stinsford also held another grave which I wanted to find but had great difficulty in doing so. It was the resting place of Cecil Day Lewis, English poet laureate, born in Ballintubbert just a few miles outside of Athy who is remembered each year in the Cecil Day Lewis Awards organised by Athy Heritage Centre. Day Lewis wanted to be buried as near as possible to Thomas Hardy’s grave. He had no connection with Stinsford but made his request out of his affection for Hardy’s poetry. When he died in 1972 Cecil Day Lewis was laid to rest in the quiet Dorset village cemetery near to Thomas Hardy. When I visited the cemetery last week I could find no gravestone for Lewis and spent some time looking for his grave until a local resident came to my help. Lewis’s grave had been opened just days previously and the grave stone removed to allow the burial of his second wife Jill Balcon who passed away recently.

The museum in Dorchester has been operating for many decades and the quality of its exhibits detailing the history of the town marks it out as perhaps the best County Museum I have yet visited. The Roman connection and the quite extraordinary array of archaeological artefacts on display give it a head start, but what makes the Museum unique is its exhibits of Dorchester’s literary connections.

Thomas Hardy’s study from his home at Max Gate just outside Dorchester has been relocated to the Museum, with all its furnishings, his library and those personal items with which the writer surrounded himself as he created the literary masterpieces with which his name is now associated. The Museum’s holdings of Hardy’s manuscripts and letters is also impressive but added to the cache of Hardy memorabilia are the further literary remains of William Barnes and the Powys brothers. Barnes was and is still regarded as the Bard of Dorset and his poetical works inspired Hardy. Barnes’s imposing statue is in front of St. Peters Church on the High Street in Dorchester next to the County Museum.

Only one of the literary Powys brothers was born in Dorset, although all of them would weave the Dorset countryside into their writings and spend much of their lives in the area. Llewelyn Powys was born in Dorchester and he and his brothers John and Theodore produced literary works of great merit. They were probably unique in that regard, even though the Irish born Collis brothers, John Stewart, Maurice and Robert can stand shoulder to shoulder with them in terms of literary achievements.

Irish connections with Dorset are relatively few but mention must be made of Thomas Clarke who spent 14 years in Portland Prison Dorset for involvement with the Fenians. Released under an amnesty in 1898 he was later executed as one of the leaders of the 1916 Rebellion.

Athy connections with Hardy’s ‘Wessex Countryside’ are even harder to find and come courtesy of indirect links with our historic town. John Keble, the divine and poet and one of the principals of the Oxford Movement, died in 1866 at his home in Exeter Road, Bournemouth which now forms part of a hotel. Keble and his wife were the guests of Rev. Frederick Trench at Kilmoroney House in August 1841 and officiated at the wedding of Trench’s daughter which took place at St. Michael’s Church in Athy. Trench as Rector of Athy supported the Oxford Movement and indeed encountered some difficulties with his parishioners on that account. Keble, after whom Keble College in Oxford is named, was noted by one of his biographers to have well employed his time ‘for a few days in seeing much that was interesting’ in the Athy area.

Another visitor to Athy was Richard Pococke who in 1745 noted in his journal as having seen ‘a new market house in Athy’. It was the same Richard Pococke who nine years later first noted the existence of the now famous chalk cut naked man at Cerne Abbas just a few miles north of Dorchester.

John Nelson Darby, founder of the Plymouth Brethern, was an associate of Rev. Thomas Kelly of Athy who founded the Kellyite sect. At one stage it was believed that the two groups would merge, but the Kellyites continued their separate existence until Kelly’s death. In the meantime Darby created the Exclusive Brethern within the Plymouth Brethern who became known as the Darbyites. John Nelson Darby died in Bournemouth in 1882 and is buried in the Dorset seaside town.

My trip to Dorset was principally a Hardy pilgrimage, however I did make time to visit yet again, after a lapse of 15 years or so, the tiny Dorset village of Tolpuddle from where in 1834 six farm labourers were transported to Australia for administering and taking secret oaths. The six men had come together to protect their jobs as farm labourers, but their employers brought proceedings, heard in the County Court in Dorchester, which resulted in convictions. The Courtroom in which the trials took place is retained today as it was in 1834 and the fame of the Tolpuddle martyrs has passed into history. The small village receives a steady stream of visitors each year and the tiny museum located in one of the six bungalows built by the T.U.C. in the 1940s gives a comprehensive overview of the events surrounding the Tolpuddle trials and the place of the Tolpuddle martyrs in trade union history. Incidentally the film ‘Comrades’made in 1987 which was based on the Tolpuddle story has recently been released on D.V.D.

Dorset, as you can see, is an interesting county for the enquiring mind.

Fr. Ross McCauley O.P. over the years gave comfort and solace to the dying and consoled the bereaved, all the time giving witness to his religious life as a Dominican priest. Now Fr. McCauley has gone to join his maker and he who was born in Athy now rests in the Dominican plot in the town of his birth.

How many other Athy men over the centuries left behind the lives of laymen to join the Order of Friars Preachers founded by St. Dominic in 1215? I don’t know the answer to my own question and a definitive answer is unlikely ever to be furnished since it would require a check back over 852 years of the Dominican Foundation’s existence in our town.

The Dominicans in Athy are our link with a past which in truth is sometimes very difficult to appreciate and understand. They arrived in the small medieval village located on the Marches of Kildare in 1257, just 50 years or so after the first French speaking Normans had settled in the area. The black cloaked Dominicans often referred to as Black Friars on account of their garb, were mendicant friars who depended on the generosity of the local people for their food and sustenance.

The first stone built priory was located on the east bank of the River Barrow in the area known to this day as ‘the Abbey’. The Athy Priory must have been a substantial one, for within 30 years of the Dominicans coming to Athy the first of a number of Dominican Provincial Chapters were held here. The initial land granted to the Dominicans for the siting of their Priory was followed by further land grants by several local benefactors, all of which added to the prestige of the local priory. How many Dominican Friars or Brothers were based in the Priory in the early years we cannot say. However, we can safely surmise that their numbers probably those to be found in today’s Priory.

We can also assume that none of those early Friars were Irish as the warlike Irish attacked the Norman settlers, including their priests, and many decades would pass before peaceful relationships were established and maintained. In the meantime the Statutes of Kilkenny passed in 1366 as a result of growing concern at the apparent Gaelicisation of the Anglo Normans included amongst its provisions a prohibition on Irish men joining Orders such as the Dominicans. Fr. Hugh Fenning O.P. in his recent publication on the Dominicans of Athy relates that it was at least a century later before two Athy Dominicans were noted as having Irish names.

King Henry VIII granted a Charter to the inhabitants of Athy in 1515, thereby incorporating the medieval village as a Borough with an elected Sovereign and a Borough Council. Little did anyone realise that within 30 years the same King Henry would suppress the Dominican Priory in the Borough of Athy. An examination of the property belonging to the Dominicans of Athy at that time which passed to Martin Pelles, Constable of the Castle of Athy, included a church with a bell tower, a chapter house with a dormitory, kitchens, etc. and a garden over a half acre in size, as well as 25 acres on the outskirts of the medieval town. We know that there was also a cemetery attached to the Priory, for several of those killed at the Battle of Ardscull in 1316 where Edward Bruce’s army fought the Anglo Normans were recorded as being buried in the Dominican Priory. The Friars’ ownership of an eel weir on the River Barrow was also the subject of a contemporary account in 1309 when several of the priests and brothers from the neighbouring Monastery of St. Johns were found guilty of stealing from the Dominican weir net. Clearly the Dominican Priory in medieval Athy was a substantial complex and the Friars themselves were men who feared no-one, including the Kavanagh clan who attacked and burned their monastery just a year before Henry VIII decided to take possession of the religious houses of England and Ireland.

The dispossessed Dominicans of 1540 were like the local people they served, subjected to the rigours of the Penal Laws and the expulsion of the Dominicans from Athy following the suppression of the Irish Monasteries lasted for 85 years or so. The Dominicans were back in the town by the third decade of the 17^th century and their Priory figured prominently in the Confederate Wars fought in and around Athy during the 8 years to 1649. Legend has it that General Preston after attacking Woodstock Castle subsequently set his guns against the Dominican Priory which was saved after an apparition was seen over the Priory. However, its destruction soon followed at the hands of Lord Castlehaven, one of the Confederate leaders. In the subsequent Cromwellian invasion a Dominican Priest, Richard Ovington, Sub Prior of Athy, was captured by Cromwell’s troops in Drogheda and put to the sword. 16 years later Fr. Raymond Moore, Prior of Athy, died in a Dublin prison where he was imprisoned as a result of religious prosecution. A further period of religious prosecution, this time lasting 50 years or so, was to follow the Battle of the Boyne during which the Priory of Athy was without a Dominican presence.

Around 1730 or thereabouts the enforcement of the Penal Laws became somewhat lax and the Domincans were encouraged once again to return to Athy. This time they based their Priory in a lane off Athy’s High Street, later called Leinster Street. This lane, leading to the Commons of Clonmullin, was later named Chapel Lane, an obvious indication of the location of the Dominican Church in what was a back street of the town.

The history of the Dominicans in Athy continued thereafter without disturbance or interruption. Today the Dominican Priory is to be found on the west bank of the River Barrow, almost directly opposite the original foundation site of the 13^th century.

Fr. Ross McCauley was part of a proud tradition of Dominican service stretching back over 750 years and his death reduces the number of elderly and not so young friars who now comprise the members of the Dominican Priory of Athy. As the Friars grow old and as vocations to the priesthood remain at a low level the future of Athy’s oldest link with its historic past becomes more doubtful. The Order of Friars Preachers, commonly called in the past the Black Friars, are part of our community’s history and the passing of a well loved Friar who first saw the light of day in our own town is a sad but timely reminder of the difficult future facing the Dominicans in Athy.

Glasnevin Cemetery is the largest cemetery in Ireland. Nearly 1¼ million burials have taken place there since Daniel O’Connell and the Catholic Association acquired the land, which in 1832 received its first remains. It is now regarded as an iconic embodiment of Ireland’s history in the 19^thand 20^th centuries, holding as it does the remains of so many of those who figured prominently in the struggle for Irish freedom.

I recently went on a guided tour of Glasnevin where the guide was Seamus Mac Thomáis who turned out to be a son of the late Eamonn Mac Thomáis, a man whose love for Dublin, its lore and its history was unrivalled. Within the time allotted for the tour it was not possible to cover the entire 120 acres or even to refer to some of the many historic figures who have a final resting place in Glasnevin. The Daniel O’Connell Memorial Round Tower is readily seen as one enters the cemetery and in the underground vault lies O’Connell with various members of the O’Connell family including a clerical relative from Kerry who was the last to be buried there 10 or 15 years ago. The remains of Daniel O’Connell who died in Genoa on 15^th May 1847 were brought back to Ireland, minus his heart which was brought to Rome. Accompanying the body was Fr. John Miley, a native of Narraghmore, who had travelled with O’Connell to Italy at the Liberator’s request. Miley gave the funeral oration in the Pro Cathedral in Marlborough Street, Dublin on the morning of O’Connell’s funeral.

Nearby are the graves of nine of the ten men executed in Mountjoy Jail during ‘the Troubles’ including Kevin Barry and Frank Flood, whose remains were exhumed from Mountjoy in 2001. The tenth man, Patrick Maher, was interned in accordance with the wishes of his family in County Limerick. The adjoining grave is that of Roger Casement, whose body was returned a few years ago from Pentonville Jail where he was hanged in August 1916, despite the efforts of such notable writers as Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesteron and George Bernard Shaw, all of who were involved in a petition to save his life.

The grave which appears to receive most visitors and is constantly covered in flowers is that of Michael Collins. Not too far away is the grave of his girlfriend Kitty Kiernan, who married Felix Cronin three years after Collins’s death. When she died in 1945 the love letters of Collins and Kiernan were found in shoe boxes amongst her personal effects and they were published in book form by Gill and MacMillan in 1983 under the title ‘In Great Haste’. The original letters were auctioned off in Dublin twelve years later and the former Fine Gael T.D. Peter Barry purchased them. In contrast to the flower covered grave of Collins is the unadorned de Valera family grave some distance away where Eamon de Valera, his wife and some of his children are buried. The modest gravestone belies the complex politician who presided over Irish politics for more than 50 years.

O’Donovan Rossa’s final resting place stirred thoughts of Padraig Pearse’s famous oration at the old Fenian’s graveside which catapulted the then little known Pearse into a very prominent position within the Volunteer movement. The Fenian John O’Leary who died 8 years before Rossa lies alongside James Stephens, the founder of the Fenian movement and nearby is the memorial to the Manchester martyrs Allen, Larkin and O’Brien.

The graves of Brendan Behan and James Larkin were noticed but not mentioned as we moved through the cemetery, as was also the grave of James Fintan Lalor. Charles Stewart Parnell had what is believed to have been the largest funeral ever seen in this country when on Sunday, 11^th October 1891 his remains were brought from the City Hall to Glasnevin Cemetery to be laid in the specially assigned plot not far from the O’Connell tomb.

At the far end of the cemetery in that part first opened for burials is to be found the tomb of John Philpot Curran who died in London in 1817. His remains were brought back to Ireland 17 years later as it was his dying wish to be buried in Irish soil. The man who ostracised his daughter Sarah when he discovered that she was secretly engaged to Robert Emmet lies in a sarcophagus of a classical Roman type.

Not far from Curran’s tomb lies William J. Fitzpatrick, a prolific writer in the second half of the 19^th century, who produced one of the first books to stir my interest in Irish history. ‘The Sham Squire’, published in 1866, dealt with the betrayal of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and his investigative work on Irish historical topics resulted in further books including ‘Ireland Before The Union’ and ‘The Secret Service Under Pitt’. He also wrote a biography of Bishop Doyle of Carlow and produced an important study on the correspondence and life of Daniel O’Connell. James Clarence Mangan was buried in the same area as Fitzpatrick and his writings, much of which appeared in ‘The Nation’ have recently been reissued as a multi volume publication.

As I passed on the footpath heading towards the section of the cemetery where the victims of the cholera epidemic of 1867 and the smallpox epidemic of 1872 were buried I saw the grave of Thomas H. Burke. With Lord Cavendish the newly appointed Chief Secretary of Ireland, Burke who was his Under Secretary, was murdered in the Phoenix Park on 6^thMay 1882 by members of the Invincibles.

Separated by a footpath from the last resting place of the Fenians, O’Leary and Stephens is the grave of the faithful servant of Robert Emmet, Ann Devlin, who died in poverty in 1851 aged 70 years. She spent two years in Kilmainham Jail as she underwent questioning in a vain attempt to get information about the 1803 insurgents and for over 40 years afterwards she lived in abject poverty until discovered by Dr. Richard Madden, chronicler of the United Irishmen. He befriended her in her last years. When she died she was buried in a paupers grave but Madden had her remains disinterred and laid in her present grave over which he placed a fitting memorial which read, ‘to the memory of Ann Devlin, the faithful servant of Robert Emmet, who possessed some rare and many noble qualities, who lived in obscurity and poverty and so died on the 18^th of September 1851, aged 70 years. May she rest in peace.’

Robert Emmet’s grave has never been discovered but the grave of Ann Devlin is to many a fitting place to pay respects to the young Irishman who was hanged in Thomas Street, Dublin in 1803.

Glasnevin Cemetery provides a fascinating reminder of our Irish history stretching back to the decade before the Great Famine. The names recorded on the gravestones include many of those men and women who gave their energies and time for their country and in some cases their very lives. Their presence in Glasnevin makes the cemetery a place of pilgrimage for students of Irish history.

Last week I found myself, just hours before flying out of Ireland, without the necessary documentation to permit me to fly. I want to thank the officials from Kildare County Council who came to my assistance at very short notice and provided the necessary documentation which allowed me to travel. It is not often I have reason to praise officials of Kildare County Council, but this is one such occasion. Well done to all concerned.

St. Michael’s Parish Athy has had 20 parish priests since 1670, including several clerics who have been Archdeacons, Canons or Monsignors. Church records indicate that Fr. John Fitzsimons was the local Parish Priest in 1670 at the height of the Penal Laws. It was around the same time that a local Dominican Friar, Fr. Joseph Carroll, was imprisoned in Dublin. The accession of the Catholic James II to the English throne in 1685 brought a brief respite for the Irish Catholics but following his defeat at the Battle of the Boyne the Penal Laws were again strictly enforced. The Dominicans who had returned to Athy in 1630 after an enforced absence of almost 90 years were again forced to flee.

Fr. Fitzsimons’s successor as Parish Priest was Fr. Daniel Fitzpatrick who ministered to his parishioners in Athy for 46 years from 1712. During that time he lived outside the town and said Mass whenever and wherever he could. The Dominicans returned to Athy around 1743 at a time when religious intolerance was on the wane. That same year John Jackson, a member of Athy Borough Council, informed Dublin Castle ‘I cannot find there is or has been any popish priests or regular clergy in this corporation. The priest lives in the Queens County about two miles from the town.’ The priest in question was Fr. Daniel Fitzpatrick, who in 1758 was succeeded by Canon James Nell.

Interestingly the last entry in the Parish Baptismal records for 1758 was made on 24^th January of that year and was followed by a note explaining that the absence of records for the succeeding 10 months ‘was occasioned by the prosecution against the Rev. Mr. Callaghan.’ What was the nature of this prosecution I can’t say but it may well have been related to the Penal legislation then in place.

Canon James Nell, following his appointment of Parish Priest of St. Michaels, remained in that position for 31 years. His name appears in the list of those who at the Assizes in Athy on 16^th February 1793 took an oath denying the Pope’s temporal powers and subscribed to the Oath of Abjuration. This was a requirement under a series of legislative enactments which reduced the penal restrictions on Dissenters and Catholics alike. One such concession allowed priests, then resident in the country, to perform their clerical duties provided those duties were not carried out within a church with a steeple or a bell.

Canon Maurice Keegan, appointed P.P. in 1789, had as his Parish Church a small thatched building located in Chapel Lane, just off the High Street, now Leinster Street. This is believed to have been erected in the middle of the 18^th century as the Penal Laws were relaxed. It was to fall victim to an arson attack on the night of the 7^th of March 1800. By all accounts it appears to have been a deliberate act of reprisal linked to ’98 rebellion activities in this area. A malicious damage claim lodged by the Parish Priest resulted in the payment of £300 from government funds and this with €1,700 collected in the town financed the building of St. Michael’s Parish Church which was built in 1808 on marshy grounds between Clonmullin Commons and the River Barrow.

Patrick Kelly, originally from Kilcoo, wrote a history of the ’98 Rebellion which was published in 1842 and the book contained a letter from Rev. John Lalor (sic) P.P. Athy dated 16^th September 1841 which was authenticated by the Parish Priest of Westland Row Dublin. This was the same Fr. John Lawler who was elected a Town Commissioner in 1842 following the abolition of Athy Borough Corporation the previous year. The 21 elected Commissioners included not only the Parish Priest but also the Church of Ireland Rector, Rev. Frederick Trench.

John Lawler was succeeded in 1853 by Andrew Quinn, the eldest of three brothers from Rathbane near the village of Kilteel, about six miles from Naas. All of them were ordained priests for the Dublin Dioceses and the two younger brothers later became Bishops in Australia. Andrew Quinn was one of the first students of the Irish College in Rome at a time when Ballitore-born Paul Cullen was Rector of that College. Quinn was ordained in 1842. Cullen would later be the Archbishop of Dublin and Ireland’s first Cardinal at a time when his former pupil was Parish Priest of St. Michael’s Athy. Six years after Andrew Quinn became Parish Priest of Athy his brother Matthew was consecrated Bishop of Brisbane, Australia. In 1865 the other brother Matthew Quinn was appointed as the first Bishop of Bathurst, Australia.

Bishop James Quinn was to the forefront in establishing Catholic schools run by religious orders in his Brisbane Dioceses and soon after his arrival in Brisbane in March 1861 he contacted his brother Fr. Andrew in Athy for help. The Parish Priest approached Mother Mary Teresa Maher, Superior of the local Convent of Mercy and the Sisters of Mercy agreed to open a novitiate to receive and train postulants for the Brisbane Dioceses. The first young girl to join the newly opened novitiate was Catherine Flanagan and others soon entered the Athy Convent to train for the Australian Mission. The last of the postulants to enter the Athy Convent for the Brisbane Mission left Ireland on 24^th February 1868 following which the Athy novitiate closed. Bishop James Quinn had an uneasy relationship with the Sisters of Mercy in Australia and history has not been kind to the County Kildare born Bishop who it is claimed exercised his Episcopal authority on monarchical lines. His older brother Andrew seemed to have had his own problems in St. Michaels as evidenced by his announcement in 1867 that the biannual collections for the Christian Brothers Schools in the town could no longer be taken up in the parish. ‘After five years of sad experiences I find myself unable to meet the necessary expenses.’ Fourteen years earlier he had withdrawn, amidst great controversy, similar collections for the local Dominican community.

Fr. Andrew Quinn left Athy in 1879 to become Parish Priest of Kingstown, as Dun Laoghaire was then called, and he was replaced by Fr. James Doyle who had been a curate in Athy for many years. He died in 1892 after a long illness, the local press reporting ‘though stern and reserved in appearance he was beloved by the poor who always called him Fr. James.’

Canon, later Archdeacon Germaine, was the next Parish Priest and the Golden Jubilee of his ordination was marked on 16^th April 1904 with the blessing of a marble pulpit which is still in use in the new St. Michael’s Church. He died the following year and in his place arrived Canon Joseph Keeffe who before he transferred to Rathfarnham in 1909 improved and beautified the Parish Church.

Canon Edward Mackey was the next Parish Priest and he would preside over St. Michael’s Parish for the following 19 years. During the First World War he joined local business and civic leaders on recruiting platforms in Emily Square to urge the men of Athy and district to enlist. When he died on 21^st March 1928 the annalist for the local Sisters of Mercy Convent noted ‘Canon Mackey was a man of noble ideals and sound common sense and an eminent theologian. Though adults might find his manner somewhat repelling, little children loved him. While he laid dying, during the whole of the night, the Parochial house was surrounded by sorrowing parishioners reciting Rosaries.’

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

Fr. James Doyle, Parish Priest of Athy, is buried in St. Michael’s Cemetery where his gravestone records that he was 64 years old when he passed away on 10^th November 1892. He had served as a curate in Athy for 17 years and Parish Priest for 13 years. I have been unable to locate the graves of six of his predecessors as Parish Priest of Athy, the seventh, Monsignor Andrew Quinn having died some time after he transferred to Dun Laoghaire. The clerical career of his successor, Archdeacon Germaine, is recorded on the latter’s gravestone in St. Michael’s Cemetery as, ‘1 year a curate in Dunlavin, 23 years a curate in Castledermot, 15 years D.D. in Avoca’ before becoming Parish Priest of Athy where he served for 12 years and where he died on 18^thApril 1905 aged 78 years.

Canon Edward Mackey was the next Parish Priest to die in office and his gravestone simply records ‘Edward Canon Mackey, In days gone by, P.P. Athy 1909 – 1928’. Incidentally he died on 31^st March and not 21^st March as mentioned in last week’s article. The whereabouts of the last resting place of Fr. Fintan Carroll who succeeded Canon Mackey is not known to me. Fr. Carroll who transferred from Castledermot to take over responsibility for the Parish of St. Michaels died unexpectedly in May, just a few weeks after coming to Athy. His was the shortest period as Parish Priest of any of the office holders stretching back to 1670, while the distinction of having the longest service belongs to Fr. Daniel Fitzpatrick, who, if records are accurate, served as Parish Priest for 46 years.

Fr. Patrick McDonnell replaced the late Fr. Carroll on 11^thJune 1928 and he remained as Parish Priest of St. Michaels until his death, aged 84 years on 1^st March 1956. It is as Archdeacon McDonnell that he is remembered today by the older residents. During the early part of his ministry in Athy he had a disagreement with the members of Athy Urban District Council over a remark made at a meeting of the Council when the Parish Priest and one of his curates, Fr. Maurice Brown, were nominated to the Council’s Library Committee. The remark was not reported in the local press but nevertheless word got back to the Parish Priest who refused to take up the Council’s nomination. The curate Fr. Brown who would later write a number of highly regarded books while he was Parish Priest of Ballymore Eustace felt compelled to follow the lead of his Parish Priest and so for a while the town’s Library Committee operated without the services of the local clergy. Relationships between the local Church and civic leaders were obviously fully restored by 1952 when on the proposal of M.G. Nolan, seconded by P.L. Doyle, the Council agreed that its new housing estate at Holland’s Field should be named McDonnell Drive ‘to mark the deep appreciation of the people of Athy of the invaluable services rendered to the Parish by our beloved Parish Priest.’ It was a significant honour in view of the fact that Archdeacon McDonnell had still another four years to live. When he died on 11^th March 1956 the Archdeacon was remembered as ‘gentle, unobtrusive, vain but not proud, easy of access and approach and very devoted to the confessional and Mass.’

My own memories of the old priest, for whom I often served Mass on one of the side altars, are coloured by my earliest contact with him. As a 7 or 8 year old I was in a class brought by Sister Brendan to confessions at St. Michaels where one of the confessors that school morning and occupying a temporary confessional specially fitted up for him, was Archdeacon McDonnell. At one stage during the confessions I forgot what I had to say, much to the annoyance of the elderly cleric who pushed his walking stick around the barrier between us and prodded me out of the confession box. I never forgot or forgave and was always conscious of the disagreeable and grumpy cleric whenever I had to serve his Mass in later years.

Parish Priests in the 1950s and earlier seemed to have been fashioned from the same block, as his successor Fr. Vincent Steen who was Parish Priest for 11 years until 1967 was to my young eyes another stern authoritarian. By the time he left for a Dublin parish on 26^th January 1967 I had been out of Athy for six years and another 15 years would pass before I returned.

In the meantime Fr. John Gunning replaced Fr. Steen and after four years it was the turn of Fr. William Rogan to take over as Parish Priest. Fr. Gunning had transferred to St. Anthony’s Clontarf and references to his time in Athy describe him as a priest ‘who endeared himself to the people he served.’ Fr. Rogan remained in Athy for nine years before transferring to another parish and he was replaced as Parish Priest by Fr. Owen Sweeney who had been President of Clonliffe College. His brief five years in charge of St. Michael’s Parish was marked by an energy and a commitment to religious and social development within the parish which made Fr. Sweeney one of the most popular men to have held the position of Parish Priest in recent years.

Fr. Philip Dennehy, happily still with us, arrived in Athy as our Parish Priest in June 1985 having previously served in the town as a curate for ten years from 1963. He proved to be a dedicated and inspiring Parish Priest, who having retired from the position remains on in St. Michael’s to help out in the parish.

Monsignor John Wilson came to us in 2006 and transferred last month to the Parish of Ballymore Eustace. His replacement, Fr. Michael Murtagh, on his first Sunday introduced himself as a Mayo man, a priest for 33 years whose first Parish was on the island of Inis Meáin where he spent three years followed by a similar period in Letterfrack. Two years were next spent in Mulranny, another Parish in the Tuam dioceses before he transferred to the concrete jungle of city parishes in our capital city. One of these Parishes was Killester, not too far from the Dublin Parish where I lived for 12 years and stories of the Mayo football enthusiast and priest have circulated far beyond the boundaries of Killester.

Fr. Michael played minor football for his native county and the depth of his support for what in recent times has been the GAA’s most persistently luckless All-Ireland finalists is understandable. The green and red of Mayo have featured on a few occasions on the morning of All-Irelands at services in Killester Church, while Fr. Michael officiated. I particularly liked the story (believe me its true) where the Mayo curate happily indulged by his Kerry-born Parish Priest bedecked a baby pram in the Mayo colours on the morning of an All-Ireland final and pushed it up the aisle, parking it to the side of the altar. At an appropriate time during the sermon he called upon a parishioner to approach the pram and open a large card which held up to the congregation read ‘Expecting SAM’. Unfortunately even the prayers and support of the Killester parishioners were not sufficient to secure a Mayo victory over Meath so that on the Sunday after Mayo was defeated the pram again made its appearance, still bedecked in the Mayo colours and pushed up the aisle yet again by Fr. Michael. This time when the card was removed from the pram and held up it read, ‘miscarried’.

When I heard the story and some of the other escapades involving our new Parish Priest I laughed heartily. Fr. Michael Murtagh is as far removed from the stern authoritarian Parish Priest of the past as is possible to imagine. The clerical austerity of 50 years ago and more is hopefully about to give way to a happy and inclusive relationship between parishioners and their Parish Priest. Long may it be so.

The Ploughing Championship for 2009 has come and gone and by all accounts it has been a resounding success. Returning to the area in which the first inter county ploughing contest was held in February 1931, this year’s event brought almost 150,000 visitors, compared to the 3,000 who were reported to have been present at the one day event held at Coursetown, Athy on Monday, 16^th February 1931. On that occasion there were ten counties represented in the ploughing competitions, with 52 horse ploughing competitors and six tractor competitors. The winning county was Wexford, with its team captain Edward Jones who used a Pierce plough winning the first prize and the gold medal for all round ploughing. Jones also won the ESMA Perpetual Challenge Cup as the champion ploughman of Ireland.

The Nationalist newspaper in its report of the 1931 ploughing championships mentioned 14 year old James Ryan of Athy who came third in the local class using a Ransome plough and whose work the reporter noted was ‘one of the outstanding features of the competition.’

Local ploughing contests had been a feature of rural life in Ireland for many years prior to then and local Kildare newspapers often carried reports of ploughing competitions at Levitstown, Kilkea and Narraghmore. However, it was J.J. Bergin of Maybrook, Athy with his friend Denis Allen of Wexford who first mooted the idea of an inter county ploughing contest following a ploughing match in the Athy area in February 1930. That first inter county contest was held on the lands of Captain Hosie at Coursetown, Athy on 16^thFebruary 1931. The organising committee for the event was chaired by D.C. Greene, with James Duthie as treasurer and J.J. Bergin as Honorary Secretary. Contrary to the oft repeated claims that the first competition was confined to ploughmen from Counties Kildare and Wexford the competitors in fact represented counties Carlow, Kilkenny, Offaly, Leix, Kildare, Wexford, Wicklow, Dublin, Cork and Louth.

Each county was represented by three ploughmen who provided their own ploughs, swings and marking poles, while pairs of plough horses were provided by local farmers where necessary. These horses were brought to the plough field by their owners and the various competitors then drew lots to decide which horses they could use for the competition. A very detailed set of rules were laid down by the Competition Committee including a ban on ‘coulters or any other gadgets’. Each competitor was allowed to avail of the help of the horse owners man at yoking his horses and the same man was allowed to accompany the competitor for the first round, ‘but must not handle the reins or plough’.

The David Frame Perpetual Challenge Cup and a cash price of £12 were offered for the overall county winners while the ESMA Perpetual Challenge Cup presented by Estate Management Supplies Association of Millicent Sallins and £5 went to the individual ploughman who was named champion of Ireland.

The tractor class also attracted prizes, as did the contest confined to County Kildare ploughmen and there were a number of other prizes ranging from best work by an Irish made plough to best turn out of horses and harnesses. However, the most unusual competition prize was that awarded to ‘the married competitor with the greatest number in family.’ That worthy individual was to receive a 10stone bag of flour presented by Mr. J. Gracie of Kilmeade.

The programme for the 1931 event carried a number of advertisements for local firms. Messrs Greene Brothers of Kilkea Lodge Maganey, auctioneers, valuers and livestock salesmen, advised potential clients that ‘all business entrusted to us will be attended to promptly and with care.’

Industrial Vehicles (Ireland) Ltd. advertised the sale of ‘universal trailers’ being part of their business as ‘main tractor dealers and trailer manufacturers’. Jackson Brothers of 58 Leinster Street were agents for Star ploughs and stocked ploughs and harrow fittings, as well as having ‘a fully equipped workshop for all motor and cycle repairs’ in addition to a high class grocery.

The Leinster Arms Hotel, telephone no. Athy 21, was fully licenced with a free garage and advertised itself as a first class family and commercial hotel. Minch Norton and Company Limited of Levitstown Mills, Maganey specialised in Decorticated cotton cake, Yefato yeast cake, standard pig meal and other animal feeds as well as importing American and English linseed cake, Rangoon ground nut meal and many other exotic sounding commodities.

The Central Hotel in Leinster Street owned by J. Hutchinson proudly advertised that it had ‘electric lights throughout’ with hot and cold baths, home comforts and excellent cooking. Thomas L. Flood, proprietor of the Railway Hotel, included in his advertisement the line ‘official caterer’. There was no further explanation, but I assume that this reference related to the hotel’s position as official caterer to the ploughing contest.

Duthie Large & Co. of the Foundry, Athy were agents for all the major plough manufacturers as well as Fordson tractors and Ford cars and trucks. E. Nolan of 1 Leinster Street was local agent for seed merchants Hogg and Robertson of Mary Street, Dublin. An advertiser unfamiliar to me was Eugene J. Fagan of Duke Street who described himself as Irish Sales and Service Manager for Beardmore Commercial Vehicles which were suited for the carriage of livestock, agricultural produce and general merchantise. He had offices in Athy as well as a service depot and stores.

The Nationalist newspaper reporting on the ploughing contest in Coursetown in 1931 mentioned that the weather was ‘extremely cold with rain and sleet, but this did not dampen the ardour of the spectators who took a keen interest in what has been well described as the battle of the ploughs’.

This year’s event, just a stones throws away in Cardenton, (indeed one of the car parks for the 2009 event was the site of the 1931 event) was marked with good weather and the many thousands who travelled from all parts of Ireland over the three days spent several enjoyable hours visiting the nine hundred or so exhibition stands and the ploughing events.

J.J. Bergin, an Athy man of tremendous initiative, was the driving force behind the early development of the National Ploughing Association and was one of the founders in 1952 of the World Ploughing Association. The continuing success of the National Ploughing Association and its annual event owes much to another local person, Anna May McHugh who since 1973 has served as Managing Director of the National Ploughing Association. The huge success of this year’s event is a fitting testament to Anna May’s organisational skills and the wonderful team which is the National Ploughing Association.

Twice this week I joined with friends, acquaintances and neighbours to pay tribute to members of our local community on Tuesday evening. I walked behind the funeral cortege of Kevin O’Toole, a young married man, on its journey to our local Parish church. A lone piper walked before the hearse as it passed down Duke Street and into Stanhope Street. The plaintive air of ‘The Dawning of the Day’ provided a sombre setting as the measured steps of local sympathisers approached St. Michael’s Church. Kevin’s passing was not unexpected as illness marked his last days, but the announcement at Mass of his death on Sunday filled me with sadness.

I knew Kevin from his involvement in the re-enactment group which he headed up and from the Medieval Festival he organised in the Town Square for the last two years. As Fr. Dennehy said at the Church that evening Kevin was a very pleasant man who was universally liked. He is survived by his wife and two young children, as well as his mother, sister and two brothers, to all of whom we extend our sympathy.

Earlier in the week I was one of an admiring group comprised of parents and young people who came to the local G.A.A. Centre to pay tribute to Aiden McHugh. It’s not every person who receives a well deserved accolade or acknowledgement during his or her lifetime. Indeed, for many such as the late Kevin O’Toole, the only time we show, as a community, our appreciation is when we join a funeral cortege. But last Saturday evening things were very different. A small group had got together and brought many more together on that Saturday night to pay a well deserved tribute to the man who for the last 35 years had organised and trained the members of Athy Gymnastics Club. Aiden McHugh is a native of Athy, his father Mick and his mother Kathy having raised a family of six in their home at St. Michael’s Terrace. He served in the Irish Army for many years where he developed an expertise in gymnastics which would eventually lead him back to his home town of Athy.

It was in 1972 that Brother Sykes of the local Christian Brothers started the Gymnastic Club which for the first year or so used a large building in Meeting Lane as the gym centre. Shortly thereafter the Club’s activities were transferred to the Christian Brothers School in St. John’s Lane where another Christian Brother, Br. Creevy, helped out. Some of the early members of that Club included Gabriel Dooley, Anthony Healy, Derek Donovan, Kevin McDermott and Colm Wall whose training, owing to lack of equipment, was confined to floor and horse exercises. This was soon to change when transfers amongst the Christian Brothers personnel prompted the Club to seek the services of an experienced gymnast. An approach was made to Aiden McHugh and in 1974 he took over as trainer and organiser of the young club.

The enthusiasm and expertise of the new trainer soon brought rewards for the youthful gymnasts who practised every Saturday under Aiden’s watchful guidance. The Club affiliated to the I.A.G.A. and its members started to compete in national competitions. The first Community Games in which the Athy Gymnastics Club participated was in 1975 and two years later the Athy gymnasts recorded what was their first success at national level. Athy Club members returned from the 1977 Community Games with four gold medals and one bronze, making almost a clean sweep of Ireland’s premier games for young gymnasts. The gold medals were won in underage competitions at Under 10, Under 12, Under 14 and Under 16 levels, while Conor Wall won a bronze medal in the Under 8 category. The gold medallists were Declan Porter, Michael Rowan, Niall Wall and Paul Porter.

The members of the Scottish Gym Council who attended the 1977 Mosney Games were so impressed by the Athy Club members that an invitation was extended to the South Kildare Club to travel to Scotland. The resulting trip was the first overseas visit by members of Athy’s gymnastic club which by the late 1970s had almost 30 members. In a few short years the club had become one of the best gymnastics club in Ireland, but as an exclusively male club it required pairing with female gymnasts from Sligo to allow for participation in mixed pairing events.

Early in the 1980s the club was opened to female members and before long the membership had increased to 100 or more and the premises at the Christian Brothers School proved no longer adequate. A move to the former Dreamland Ballroom, a move facilitated by the local Lions Club, provided much improved facilities and allowed the club to host several All Ireland competitions. However, a further move, this time to the GAA Hall at Geraldine Park, was necessary and it was there that the Club hosted the County Community Games for six years in succession. Following the opening of the new secondary school in Rathstewart the old Christian Brothers School again became available and the Gym Club relocated back to St. John’s Lane, now using rooms much larger than those previously available.

The female gymnasts soon showed abilities to match those of their male colleagues and Fiona McHugh, Rosemary O’Sullivan and Clara O’Neill were honoured to represent Ireland at an international event in Cobh, while Rosemary O’Sullivan and Susan Walshe were among the winners at an international competition in Germany.

The success of the Gymnastics Club was due to the extraordinary commitment and dedication of Aiden McHugh who over the past 35 years has guided the club and trained its young members. Former club members who could not be present at the function on Saturday night sent messages of congratulations. Mark Loughman, now in Boston, fondly remembered a club trip to London in 1983 and wrote of the happy memories he retained of his 10 years as a gymnast under Aiden’s supervision. Tributes were also paid to Aiden’s leadership by other former members who couldn’t attend. Ian Macdougald, Niall Wall and Conor Wall gave glowing accounts of happy days spent in the gym, while Paul Griffin, now in a Californian University, referred to ‘Aiden’s inspiration and dedication’. Several speakers in the G.A.A. Hall that night made reference to Aiden’s work with the club members as ‘enhancing so many young lives’. Aiden’s involvement also extended to providing since 1992 gym classes for youngsters with special needs in conjunction with KARE. The Gaisce Awards has seen the club’s most recent involvement with several young gymnasts taking part in the Presidents Awards Scheme.

While Aiden’s stepping down as club trainer was the occasion for the reception, reference was also made to his involvement in the Canoe Club which he started in Athy approximately 20 years ago. There was an earlier Canoe Club, founded by Athy Lions Club under the guidance of Lions members Michael Wall, Des Perry and Jerry Carbery in or about 1976 which had faltered. Aiden revived the Club some years later and his involvement in canoeing will continue into the future. However, in the meantime Aiden is off to Australia for further adventure to add to parachuting, hot air ballooning and other exploits which form part of his ‘bucket list’. Padraig Dooley from Nicholastown, perhaps the most successful gymnast to come out of the local club and an Irish international gymnast will take Aiden’s place as the club trainer.

Athy has benefitted enormously from the involvement in their community of Kevin O’Toole and Aiden McHugh and a week which sees the passing of Kevin and the stepping down of Aiden after 35 years heading up Athy Gym Club is a sad week for our local community.

With rain and dampness providing an unwelcome backdrop to the Emily Square market on Tuesday last my thoughts turned to past sunny days when footballing matters held my interest. I was prompted to do so after a meeting with Hugh Moran, a native of Athy who emigrated to England over 50 years ago. Hugh called on me on his first visit back to Athy in over half a century and talked to me of his footballing days with Athy and the Army team on the Curragh. He recalled many of his teammates on the Athy team and a week or so later I received a photograph of the Athy senior team on which Hugh featured in the late 1950s. The exact date when the photograph was taken and indeed the occasion are not known to me. However, I am fairly confident that many of you will be able to recall all of those details as well as naming the players, officials and supporters captured forever on film over 50 years ago. I would be delighted to hear from you.

The other photograph featured this week is of the Kildare senior team togged out to play Louth in the Leinster semi-final at Croke Park in 1957. It features Danny Flood and Paddy Wright, Athy’s only representatives on that team. Paddy told me that it was his first time on the Kildare seniors but the records show otherwise. The match against Louth who went on to win the All Ireland that year was played on the 16^th of June and Peadar Smith, then living in St. Patrick’s Avenue and working in the Asbestos Factory, played for the ‘wee County’. It was Paddy Wright’s second match with the Kildare seniors as four weeks earlier he had togged out against Offaly in a game played in Portlaoise. He played a few more matches for his native County and on the team in his final game for County Kildare were fellow Athy men Danny Flood and Brendan Kehoe. The Kildare senior team photographed in June 1957 was as follows, from left to right at back Tos McCarthy, Tom Connolly, Paddy O’Loughlin, J. Byrne, Des Marron, Micko Doyle, Danny Flood and Paddy Moore. In the front row from left were Seamus Aldridge, Michael Bohane, Eddie Hogan, Paddy Wright, Paddy Gibbons, Seamus Harrison and Paddy Feeley (Captain).

The Marian Shrine at Rathstewart is a constant reminder of the great community spirit which saw the men and women of St. Joseph’s Terrace coming together in what were difficult times to commemorate the Marian year of 1954. Throughout the past 55 years the shrine has been maintained exceptionally well and no tribute of mine can be sufficiently conscious of the dedicated work undertaken over the decades by many local people in that area.

The stone used in building the Marian Shrine was originally part of the main entrance of Lamberton House in Timahoe, Co. Laois and was donated by P.J. Hume Auctioneer Portlaoise. John Murphy of St. Michael’s Terrace erected the stone, as he did the entrance to St. Dominic’s Church and both remain a lasting testimony to his skill and craftsmanship.

Maynooth College presented the statute, while Matt McHugh of Offaly Street designed and made the gates in his Janeville Lane Foundry. Many others, including Tom Daly of Stanhope St. and Frank O’Brien Snr. Of Emily Square donated items for the Shrine. Fr. Vincent Steen, Parish Priest, donated the holy water font and the cross and also some shrubs from the grounds of St. Michael’s Parish Church. This Church was subsequently demolished and the surrounding ground cemented over so the shrubs still thriving in the Marian Shrine are a link with our treasured past. It’s of interest to note that when St. Michael’s Parish Church was demolished in 1960 grass sods were removed from the Church grounds and transplanted to the Shrine. The cross on the top of the Shrine also came from the old Parish Church.

The photograph of the Shrine was, I believe, taken on the occasion of the official opening and blessing which took place on Ascension Thursday in May 1955. I was a mass server that day and with a lot of my mass serving colleagues took part in the ceremony. Work on the Shrine had been delayed due to the cement strike and hence the time lag in blessing the Shrine some months after the Marian year had ended. The original Marian Shrine Committee included Jim Fleming, Paddy Doyle, Tony Byrne, Eddie Delahunt and Joe O’Neill. There were many more men and women involved in the venture and perhaps my readers can help me compile a full list of those who over the years were part of the Marian Shrine Committee.

The second photograph is a fine interior view of St. Michael’s Church which was built in 1808. It was in this Church that the first mission in Ireland was held by the Vincentian Fathers in 1842. The side altars were the gifts of Mrs. Hayden of Cardenton, grandmother of M.P. Minch of Rockfield House and of his grandfather. The stations of the cross were presented by Michael Lawler, Park House, while the pulpit on the left of the picture was gifted in 1904 by the local parishioners to mark the Golden Jubilee of the ordination of their Parish Priest Canon Germaine. The Church demolished in 1960 will be remembered by many, while the Marian Shrine in Rathstewart, now in its 55^thyear, maintains a constant link with that Church which served the people of Athy for 152 years.

Happy Christmas and a happy New Year to my readers.

Athy is soon to have a new post primary school built at a cost of €8 million with a capacity to cater for upwards of 400 pupils. It will replace the school building on the Carlow Road which was opened by the then Minister for Education Tomás O’Deirg on 3^rd December 1940. As a youngster growing up in Offaly Street in the 1950s I was familiar with the ‘Technical School’ as it was then called, before it was renamed St. Brigid’s Post Primary School in 1978.

Technical or vocational education first became the subject of State involvement with the passing of the Technical Instruction Act of 1889. At a time when Home Rule and the demands of the Irish Land League were hogging the headlines, the 1889 Act represented a move away from the laissez-faire theory of non-State involvement in the country’s economic development. Ireland then and for many decades thereafter was an agricultural based economy and here in Athy the only industry of note was brick manufacture which provided badly needed employment for males and females, particularly during the summer months. The Industrial Revolution which had marked England’s progress during the 19^th century had by and large bypassed Irish provincial towns. The intention of the 1889 Act was to provide technical education for young people in an attempt to grow an undeveloped Irish industrial base.

The local Board of Guardians which had been established in the years immediately prior to the Great Famine to direct, inter alia, the affairs of the Athy Workhouse, were empowered under the 1889 Act to expend the produce of one penny rate in providing technical instruction in Athy. The local guardians appear not to have exercised their powers in that regard and it was not until the passing of the Technical Instruction Act of 1889 that technical or vocational instruction first came to be provided in the South Kildare town. That Act gave local County Councils and Urban District Councils the powers to establish technical committees and the newly established Athy Urban District Council moved to adopt the Act on 24^thSeptember 1900. At the same time it was agreed to set up a Committee ‘comprised of six members of the Urban Council and six gentlemen in the town and neighbourhood to carry out the provisions of the Act.’

By the following November the 12 members of the Technical Instruction Committee had been appointed. The Council’s appointees were M.J. Minch M.P., Chairman of the Urban Council and his fellow Councillors Thomas Hickey, Thomas Plewman, Daniel Carbery, Michael Malone and J.P. Whelan. The ‘gentlemen’brought onto the Committee were the local Parish Priest Canon Germaine, Rev. E. Waller, Church of Ireland Rector, Fr. William Duggan C.C., Stephen Telford of Barrowford, P.J. Murphy of Emily Square and W. Whelan of Duke Street. Five years later the Urban Council sent four representatives to the County Kildare Joint Technical Committee. Thomas Hickey and P.J. Murphy were Urban Councillors, while the other representatives were local Catholic clergymen, Fr. Joseph O’Keeffe P.P. and Fr. William Duggan C.C.

Initially the classes which were conducted under the aegis of the County Technical Committee rather than the local Committee were held in the Christian Brothers Schools in St. John’s Lane. In early 1902 accommodation was rented in the C.Y.M.S. rooms at the corner of Stanhope Street and Stanhope Place for the sum of €25.00 per year. The classes initially attracted about 25 students. The local papers reported that ‘drawing classes were progressing satisfactorily and that the subjects being studied were designed with a view to their usefulness.’ A Mr. Michael Mor was mentioned as a lecturer in the as yet unnamed school.

In March 1904 the local curate, Fr. William Duggan, brought a resolution of the Athy Techical Committee to a meeting of the County Committee seeking a reduction in the fees charged for morning classes in Athy. The six week courses consisted of three demonstrations/lectures followed by three practical classes for which the Athy Committee felt a fee of five shillings was more than sufficient.

In May 1906 the local Urban District Council noted that the local people were not taking advantage of the local Technical Instruction classes. ‘At present we have a very competent instructress Miss O’Donnell in cooking and hygiene, but only one person attends the morning classes and only two persons the evening classes. An attendance of 12 persons was recorded at the same time for the poultry classes conducted by Miss Stafford.’

Twelve months later a further report submitted to the Urban Council acknowledged that the technical classes ‘were not proving a success.’ The evening class attendance during the winter of 1906/1907 was only one. This despite the fact that the absence of industry and the lack of employment opportunities in the Athy area in the first decade of the 1900s was amply demonstrated by a letter in November 1908 from Naas Military Barracks Commander which drew the local Council attention ‘to the Special Reserve (of the British Army) as a means of mitigating the distress amongst the unemployed of the district.’ Following the outbreak of war in August 1914 the Technical Instruction Committee gave use of his classrooms for the setting up of a war hospital supply depot where voluntary workers made splints, bed rests, bed trays and crutches for injured soldiers.

Taking its name from the Act under which it was established the Technical School continued to operate from the corner site in Stanhope Place until 1940. The Vocational Education Act of 1930 replaced the 1898 Act and provided for the setting up of County Vocational Education Committees to provide education to Leaving Certificate standards through subjects directly related to work. The first purpose-built Vocational School was provided in Newbridge in 1937 and three years later Tomás O’Derig, Minister for Education officially opened Athy’s new school. The new Athy Vocational School had 40 pupils on its roll, with T.C. Walsh of Stanhope Street as Headmaster. Tom O’Donnell who lived in McDonnell Drive was appointed Headmaster in 1950 and he was replaced in 1976 by John Doyle. John retired as Headmaster in 1993 to be replaced by Richard Daly who is currently in charge of the school.

Over the past 70 years the number of pupils has increased substantially from the 1940 level of 40, necessitating extensions to the school building in 1962, 1981 and again in 1989. Enrolment in 1989 reached an all time high of 435 pupils. Today there are approximately 300 pupils attending classes which since 1966 include courses for the Intermediate (now Junior Certificate) examinations and Leaving Certificate courses since 1968.

The opening of a new Vocational School on the educational campus on the Monasterevin Road, to be known as Athy Community College, represents a missed opportunity for the amalgamation of all the post primary schools in Athy. The former C.B.S. school and the Convent School have amalgamated and the inclusion of the V.E.C. School in that process would, I feel, have provided huge benefits for the future development of post primary education in Athy. The opportunity however has been missed but hopefully the fact that both post primary schools will be in close proximity to each other keeps open the possibility of future beneficial cooperation between both schools.

It has taken 110 years to progress from the temporary accommodation in a C.Y.M.S. room in Stanhope Place to the modern purpose built school building which will be opened shortly. The journey was one on which many teachers and perhaps thousands of pupils travelled for part of the time – some still with us, others not so, some not recalled or forgotten, while others are remembered. All of them made a contribution to vocational or technical education in South Kildare and for this we must express our gratitude.

Following my article last week on vocational education in Athy I was contacted by the parent of a young Athy student who recently finished his primary schooling in the town, but found himself unable to get a place in Árdscoil na Tríonóide. That school with the new Community College make up the town’s post primary educational facilities and Árdscoil na Tríonóide came into being on the amalgamation of Scoil Eoin, the former Christian Brothers school and Scoil Mhuire which was operated by the Sisters of Mercy.

I attended the local primary school and secondary school in Athy at a time when they were operating as part of the extensive network of Christian Brothers Schools in Ireland. In common with my classmates and many thousands who passed through the Christian Brothers School system I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my teachers who taught in the old schools in St. John’s Lane.

As someone living in Athy my parents in common with every other parents of school going children at that time assumed, and rightly so, that their children would be automatically accepted as pupils in the local secondary school. It is an expectation which I gather can no longer be made given a recent decision of the Board of Management of Árdscoil na Tríonóide which has resulted in secondary school places for some Athy youngsters being the subject of a lottery.

I find it quite extraordinary that youngsters graduating from the local primary schools cannot be guaranteed a place in the local secondary school. If not successful in gaining entry to Árdscoil na Tríonóide their options are Athy Community College or a secondary school outside the town.

It was on 8^thAugust 1861 that the first Christian Brothers arrived in Athy in response to a request from the Archbishop of Dublin, Ballitore-born Paul Cullen to set up a school in the town. Brother Stanislaus O’Flanagan, Luke Hyland and lay brother Patrick Sheely arrived by train at the local railway station which had been opened just a few years previously. The local townspeople had prepared Greenhills House in St. John’s Lane, the former residence of Judge Hellen, as the Christian Brothers Monastery and had built a two room school house nearby.

Eleven days after the arrival of the Christian Brothers the school opened and 120 local boys presented themselves as pupils. Before long the numbers on the roll had increased so much that a third teacher was required. A former pupil of those early years was later to write:- ‘Our school was divided into two sections, one being known as the Greeks and the other as the Romans. The boys who raised the greatest number of merit marks were awarded the keeping of the school banner at the end of the week.’

Educating the young men of Athy was the mission undertaken by the Christian Brothers in 1861 and they applied themselves unselfishly to that task for almost 150 years. In a tribute I wrote for my former teacher Brother Brett in 1993 I said, ‘For over 160 years the order founded by Edmund Rice has provided the bedrock upon which the future of young Irishmen has been secured. Their work commenced in times of poverty and ultimately famine but throughout good times and bad the Christian Brothers gave of themselves and their resources to help Irishmen to achieve their full potential..... their work is not yet done but it is to other men and women unburdened by clerical vows that their responsibility must now pass.’ I am disappointed and saddened that local parents may now find themselves troubled by the failure of their children to gain a place in Árdscoil na Tríonóide, a school whose history is grounded on the pioneering work in Athy of the Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy.

It is manifestly unfair. Why should young citizens of this town not have the right to enter on his or her secondary school education in a secondary school of their choice in their own town? A local school should give priority to young people from the town and parish of Athy and where there is difficulty in that regard due either to staff numbers or space restrictions, appropriate remedial action should be speedily taken to rectify the situation. If this problem is not tackled immediately it’s quite likely that education will become, like our Health Services, an embarrassing disservice.

Shortly before Christmas John Neavyn passed away in his 93^rd year. John during his time in Athy was intrinsically linked with the Order of St. Dominic and his proud boast was that at 92 years of age he was the oldest mass server in Ireland. A charming and courteous gentleman John came to Athy in 1951 to work in the offices of Minch Nortons from where he retired as office manager long before that once great family firm became part of the Greencore Group. His involvement with the Dominican Friary went back many decades and included such diverse rolls as Mass server, choir master, as well as Church organist. The Dominican Pennybank which was set up in the late 1970s on the suggestion of Donal Murphy was in its early years organized by Donal, the late Ivan Bergin and John Neavyn and John’s involvement with the Bank continued over several decades. His Christian outlook found further expression in his membership of the local St. Vincent de Paul Society and he was President of the local Conference for many years. As well as being organist in the local Dominican Church he fulfilled the same role in Moone Parish Church where he accompanied that fine singer Tony Prendergast of Grangecon, a brother of the late Charlie Prendergast of Prussellstown who was himself a singer of renown.

He was predeceased by his wife Martha who died in 1982 and both are buried in St. Michael’s cemetery. Ar dhéis Dé go raibh a anam.

Do you remember McHugh’s Foundry in Janeville Lane at the back of Offaly Street? Now long gone, as are the men who worked there, I came across a photograph this week which will bring back memories for many of you. It shows Tom McHugh, Robbie Lynch and Tommy McHugh posing outside the foundry sometime in the 1950s.

For the past two weeks, prompted by the illness of a close friend, I have been thinking more and more of times past and especially the halcyon times associated with Athy and my now long past teenage years. Those carefree days lived out, in otherwise harsh times, bring back wonderful memories of youthful friendships, football and girls. The order in which they appear is not indicative of our preferences, for at different stages of my youth, each played a more prominent part than the others. Youthful memories are refocused by photographs of the time and in the nature of things, it is almost inevitable that football leaves plenty of photographic evidence for future enjoyment.

The Christian Brothers were noted for promoting Gaelic games in their schools and here in Athy Gaelic football, rather than hurling, was the more favoured. There was no question in the 1950s of either soccer or rugby being part of the school sporting activity. Each Wednesday afternoon the boys of the Christian Brothers Secondary School took off what we enthusiastically referred to as a half day when in fact it was perhaps only an hour or so, to walk to Geraldine Park for a game of football. Football was the sport enthusiastically taken up by most youngsters in those days and nowhere was that enthusiasm more pronounced than in a provincial Ireland devoid of sporting facilities other than playing fields of varying sizes and quality.

My first involvement in a Gaelic football team was with the Under 14 school team when I played at left full back for three years. Recently I was given a copy photograph of the Athy Christian Brothers Under 14 team which I’m assured was taken in 1956. That photo which is reproduced here shows from left to right at back:-

Francis Webb, Paul Cunningham, Michael Rowan, Frank Taaffe, Brian Finn, Mick O’Neill, J. Murphy, Mick Cardiff, Donal Barr and Moses Doyle.

In the front row are:-

Pat Timpson, Eddie Hearns, Johnny Miller, Edmund Loughman, Peter Archibald, Oliver Moran, Hugh McDonnell, Niall Fingleton and Johnny Hoare.

Sadly Frank Webb, Mick Cardiff and Niall Fingleton have passed away. Several of that team are still in the Athy area but I wonder to where life has brought the other youngsters of 50 years ago?

I see from last week’s newspaper that the long awaited Outer Relief Road, now renamed the Southern Distributor Route, has been advanced with the preparation of the Compulsory Purchase Order and the Environmental Impact Study. There is nothing however to show that funding is available for the road and it would appear that construction work on the road may have to be attempted in three different phases. In the meantime the spur road from the N9 continues to be built and will be completed shortly. If the Southern Distributor Road had been incorporated into the N9 spur road at the planning and approval stages, we would be facing into the exciting prospect of having the local traffic problems solved during the course of this year.

Instead we are facing into more traffic studies, the latest of which appears to want to deal with the traffic situation by creating a number of strange new roadways and by imposing restrictions on current routes.

A new road is proposed to be built through the Peoples Park to facilitate access to houses at Park Crescent. I wonder is it also to provide an entrance to land locked pieces of property purchased some years ago in anticipation of the building of the Inner Relief Road

The realignment of Church Road to link it directly with Dublin Road at the Railway Bridge is another element of the plan which would seem to be somewhat strange.

I am puzzled at what is proposed in the new Traffic Management Plan for Athy and feel that the Council are yet again failing to grasp the importance of concentrating all their resources on getting the Outer Relief Road in place.

The nine volume Dictionary of Irish Biography was published just before Christmas. A collaborative project between Cambridge University Press and the Royal Irish Academy it has been many years in preparation and may well prove to be one of the most important publishing enterprises ever undertaken in this country. The dictionary gives the background on Irish men and women who are identified as having made a significant contribution in Ireland or abroad, as well as those born overseas who had noteworthy careers in Ireland.

Up to now anyone interested in the biographical details of Irishmen and women had to rely on a number of different publications, the first of which was James Wills six volumes, ‘Lives of Illustrious and Distinguished Irishmen’ published in 1847. Alfred Webb was the Author of ‘Compendium of Irish Biography’ published by Gills of Dublin in 1878 and half a century later John S. Crone was the author of ‘A Concise Dictionary of Irish Biography’. A more up to date work was Henry Boylan’s ‘A Dictionary of Irish Biography’ first published in 1978 and now in its third edition.

In the intervening years other specialised biographical dictionaries relating to the Irish have been produced, including Richard Hayes’ ‘Biographical Dictionary of Irishmen in France’ and Louis McRedmond’s ‘Modern Irish Lives’, not forgetting the nine volumes produced to date in Irish of ‘Beathaisnéis’under the editorship of Maíre Ní Mhurchú and Diarmuid Breathnach.

The newly published Dictionary of Irish Biography is truly the most comprehensive and authoritative biographical dictionary yet published in relation to Irish persons. Containing 9,014 biographical articles covering a time span from the beginning of written records to the end of 2002 it does not include biographies of any persons living after that latter date.

I spent the Christmas period going through the nine volumes with a view to noting those persons with Athy connections. I ended with a list of 58 names, some of which had slight enough links with the town such as Patrick Delaney, Clergyman and writer born in 1685 who was educated in Athy. He was a friend of Sheridan and Swift and his second wife was the artist Mary Graville who as Mrs. Delaney wrote her autobiography which remains a valuable source of information about the social history of her time. Delaney himself became Dean of Down and as a writer produced several publications. His bust is in the Long Room in Trinity College.

His namesake, Malachy Delaney, from Ballitore is also included in the Biographical Dictionary. Delaney was a prosperous farmer who left Ireland and enlisted in the Austrian Army to escape punishment for some crime or other but who later returned to join the United Irishmen. As leader of the Rebels in the Ballitore area he lead the ambush of the Tyrone Militia on the Narraghmore Road in 1798 and following the collapse of the Rebellion escaped capture by going into the Wicklow hills. He later took part in Emmet’s Rebellion and served time in Kilmainham Jail before being released in or about 1805. He died in March 1807 aged about 50 years.

Lettice Digby, the only child of Lord Offaly and grandchild of Gerald, 11^th Earl of Kildare, is also included in the dictionary and her relevance to Athy arises out of her possession of the manors of Woodstock and Athy.

Ownership of property in this or any other area did not concern Johnny Doran, uilleann piper and a member of the travelling community. Johnny was a celebrated musician who often passed through and in all probability played his uilleann pipes in the town of Athy. He was camped near Athy when his health broke down in the autumn of 1949 and had to be admitted to St. Vincent’s Hospital. There he remained under the care of Sr. Dominic and her staff until he died on 19^th January 1950 and it was in St. Vincent’s Hospital that the legendary Johnny Doran played the uilleann pipes for the last time.

One man whose links with South Kildare were previously unknown to me was George Downes, born 1790, died 1846. Described in the dictionary as a travel writer and topographer, he was educated in Ballitore school after being befriended by the Shackletons. He later entered Trinity College from where he graduated with an M.A. in 1823. Downes wrote a number of books on his travels throughout Europe and later worked with George Petrie on the Ordnance Survey and assisted him in his published work on ‘The Round Towers of Ireland’. As a poet he was noted in the ‘Poets of Ireland’by D.J. O’Donoghue. Downes, who was unmarried, died in Dublin in 1846 and is buried in the Quaker graveyard at Ballitore.

William Harvey Du Cros was another South Kildare man whose story is told in the Dictionary of Irish Biography. Born in Moone during the Great Famine Du Cros was a sportsman who won honours in fencing, boxing and captained Bective Rangers Rugby Club to win an Irish championship. As President of the Irish Cyclists Association he was approached in 1889 by associates of John Dunlop, the inventor of the pneumatic tyre, following which Du Cros established a company to produce the new tyres. This eventually led to the founding of the Dunlop Rubber Company in England which was headed up by Du Cros. He was in part responsible for the introduction of taxi cabs in London but failed due to the opposition of the Dublin jarveys to have similar cabs brought into the Irish capital. He died in Dublin just a month after the ending of World War 1.

One entry in the new dictionary has solved a mystery which has puzzled me for some time. William Grace, the first Catholic Mayor of New York, an office he held from 1880 to 1882 and again from 1884 to 1886, was noted in all previous accounts of his life as having been born in Cork. Sometime ago I came across a reference in one of the Athy Urban District Council Minute Books of a letter from an American woman seeking information on Mayor Grace whom she claimed was born just outside Athy in County Laois. My research tended to show that Grace was from Gracefield, yet the many references to his Cork background left me in some doubt. The dictionary confirms that he was born in 1832 in Riverstown, Co. Cork, while his parents James and Ellen Grace from County Laois were on holidays. William Grace died in New York in 1904 and the company he founded still operates in America as a leading player in the chemical industry.

I intend to return to the Dictionary of Irish Biography as time allows over the next few weeks to deal with more of the men and women from this area whose stories are included in this new publication.

FRANK TAAFFE

With the death of Frank English we have lost a good man and I have lost a good friend.

Ours was a friendship which had its origin in St. Joseph’s boys school which both of us first attended on the same day. It was the 12^thof May 1946, my 4^th birthday, when I was brought to infant school for the first time, the same day chosen by Frank’s parents to bring their 4½ year old eldest son to school. Sr. Benignus, faced with the need to differentiate between the two Franks, decided to call my future pal ‘Harry’, a name by which he was known by all his contemporaries until well into his teen years. He had been christened Henry Francis English after his grandfather, but his mother Peg preferred to call him Frank and so presented a dilemma for Sr. Benignus which lead to his temporary re-naming. We shared the same class for the next 12 or 13 years until Frank left school after his Inter Cert. to work in Minch Norton’s laboratory.

Soon after I went to work in Kildare County Council we joined up for holidays abroad, starting with a memorable trip to France in the summer of 1962. We thumbed our way from Cherbourg to Paris and up through Normandy, two inexperienced Irish lads whose time in the Parisian city was to provide an education in life, as well as a talking point for years to come. In those days hostelling was the only possible way of meeting our accommodation needs and meeting and greeting similar age groups from the Continent and from America was an education in itself. We spent another holiday in London enjoying the domestic delights of an Earls Court hostel, with the eye boggling delights of the early 1960s central London scene. We were ready for the world, or so we thought, but nothing prepared us for the charms of Berlin and Amsterdam which were our last holiday destinations while we both enjoyed the single life. The Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie were but a year or so in place when we arrived in the German capital via Brussels and Hanover. Crossing into east Berlin to see the contrast between the bleak soviet controlled part of the city and the western ‘Free’ was an unforgettable experience.

Married life put an end, temporarily at least, to our gallivanting but we did manage once children had stopped appearing to make acquaintenances with New York on two occasions. Sharing a room over the famous McSorley’s Ale House was an experience which we had hoped to recreate again. It is not to be.

Frank was an extraordinary likeable man whose consideration for others was unlimited. His family shared with many Athy families common experiences going back over the generations. His grandfather Henry Francis English, although born in Kilkea, lived in Athy and like so many others in the town served in the British Army. He later became a hackney driver and was tragically killed in a road traffic accident on the Dublin Road. Frank’s grandmother had earlier died during the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918. Frank’s father Tommy trained as a barber but the economic difficulties of post war Ireland forced him as it did so many others in Athy to emigrate in the late 1940s to seek work in England. Military service overseas during World War 1 and the emigrant trail were common features in the lives of many Athy families when Frank and I were going to school.

It was against that background of shared experiences that made Frank’s involvement in politics and community activities uniquely relevant. He was an Athy man – the town where he was born, reared, schooled and worked was for him the centre of his political and community life. He was a founder member of Athy Credit Union and of Aontas Ogra, as well as being a one time active member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Knights of Malta and the choir of St. Michaels Parish Church. In more recent years he was a member of Athy Community Council and a swimming coach who gave swimming lessons to hundreds of children from Athy and the surrounding area. It was as a public representative for 42 years that he is possibly best known. First elected to Athy Urban District Council in 1967 as a Fianna Fáil Councillor he successfully contested eight local elections until he stepped down as a Councillor last year. He served as the Chairman of the Council on four, if not five occasions and proved himself an able and conscientious member of that body.

I was his colleague on the Council for some years and came to see at first hand how he sought to get results by consultation and agreement rather than by headline seeking contributions in the Council Chamber. We did not always agree on how effective the Council was and I can remember one occasion when he took grave exception to my criticism of the Council which he as a Councillor felt was a personal reflection on himself. Frank tried as best he could within the limits of the inadequate Local Government system to improve the town of Athy and he never gave up on that objective.

The political passion which ruled Frank’s entire life was to see him champion the cause of the party founded by Eamon de Valera in 1926. Fianna Fáil was Frank’s second home. His mother Peg was a passionate Fianna Fáil supporter and no doubt she was largely responsible for his unquestioning and unquenchable allegiance to the party which when Frank was first elected as a councillor was still being lead by Eamon de Valera. He was proud of his party membership and the party was proud of him. The young lad who in 1967 joined the then doyens of the local Fianna Fáil party M.G. Nolan and Paddy Dooley on the local Council would 42 years later step down as a Councillor having in the interim become the father of the Council and indeed the father of the local Fianna Fáil Cumann.

His contribution to the community life of his hometown was enormous and over the decades he made a difference to the lives of many people. But most important of all was his good nature, exemplified in his courtesy and his consideration for others. His affability allowed him to meet and greet friends and strangers alike with a pleasant word and a smile. Frank never allowed political differences to intrude into his personal relationships with others and he never allowed differences of opinion to mar those same relationships.

In his role as a Peace Commissioner he called to my offices on a regular basis to sign documents and always partook of a cup of coffee and the opportunity to have a chat. His easy going manner made him a great favourite and nothing pleased him more than recounting the details of Kildare’s latest, if sometimes scarce, football successes. For Frank was an avid supporter of Gaelic football and followed the Lilywhites from venue to venue. It was I think one of his greatest disappointments that he had not played football in his young days, but made up for that by his wholehearted support for the County team and for the local G.A.A. Club in Geraldine Park.

His legacy of dedicated service for the people of Athy is second only to his most cherished legacy. He has left behind his wife Mary and his five children, Conor, Cathal, Gráinne, Tomás and Ciarán, all of whom have brought honour and respect to the family name. He was justifiably proud of Mary and their children and as I visited him in hospital during the last weeks of his life I came to understand and appreciate that he had passed on to his children some of those exceptional qualities which had endeared Frank to those who knew him.

Frank was a family man, a community activist and a Fianna Fáil politician who gave of his best for the town of his birth. He has left us a legacy of dedicated service for the people of Athy and the most cherished legacy of all, the family of whom he was justifiably proud.

Ar dhéis Dé go raibh a anam.

Several people have contacted me over the last few days looking for copies of the tribute paid to Frank English at his funeral mass last week. One individual asked that it be published as an Eye and I am taking the opportunity of doing so this week, despite the fact that some of the material may be duplicating what appeared in last week’s article.

‘With the death of Frank English Athy has lost a good man and I have lost a good friend. A family man, a Town Councillor, a community activist and a Fianna Fáil politician, Frank gave of his best for the town of his birth. For Frank was an Athy man, born, educated and worked all his life in the town which he grew to love so much and the people of Athy grew to love Frank for he was of a local family with a background similar to so many other families in the town. His grandfather served in the 1^stWorld War, while his father had to take the emigrant boat to England in 1948. These were common experiences for many families as we grew up in Athy and it was against this background of shared experiences that made Frank’s involvement in politics and community affairs so uniquely relevant. For 42 years he served the people of Athy as an Urban Councillor and tried all he could within the limits of the inadequate Local Government system to help improve the town of Athy and the lives of the people who lived here.

Outside of the Town Council he served on the Community Council and was a founder member of Athy Credit Union and of Aontas Ogra. A long time member of the Vocational Educational Committee he was at one time a member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, a member of the Parish Choir, served in the Knights of Malta and in recent years taught many hundreds of young children to swim. An avid G.A.A. supporter he followed his beloved Lilywhites with unchallenged enthusiasm and gave freely of his time for the local football club.

His contribution to the town of Athy is beyond measure and he has left us a legacy of community service which we will always treasure.

Frank participated in politics with a sense of purpose, reserving his political allegiance for the party founded by Eamon de Valera. However, he never allowed political differences to mar his relationships with others. He was a devoted and energetic member of the Fianna Fáil party and in that respect followed a path first set out by his mother Peg. She was his greater supporter, that is until the daughter of a onetime Labour Councillor from Westport, Mary O’Grady, came from the west and captured his heart. It was then that Frank English added another dimension to his energetic commitment as a politician and a community activist.

For it was as a family man that Frank achieved his greatest success. Nothing could compare to the satisfaction of bringing into the world five children, all of whom grew up to bring honour on themselves and on their parents. That above all is Franks and Marys greatest legacy, but for Frank who was justifiably proud of his children and his grandchildren, it brought him enormous satisfaction and contentment that Conor, Cathal, Gráinne, Tomás and Ciarán were able to have the educational and work opportunities which were not available to him in the Ireland of the 1950s.

I will remember Frank as a friend. We both attended school for the first time on 12^th May 1946. We shared a classroom for the next 12 years or so, Frank leaving school after his Inter Cert, while I continued on for a bit longer. We holidayed together for several years until the demands of married life put a temporary stay on our trips abroad. In 1962 we first went overseas together, thumbing our way around France, staying in hostels and experiencing the delights of Paris. Over the next few years we visited London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels and quite a few other places, some more exotic than others, but all offering a unique insight for two relatively inexperienced young men from provincial Ireland.

In more recent years we resumed our journeys and enjoyed together the sights and sounds of New York, indeed so much so that a return visit was necessary some time later. These visits abroad provided Frank and myself with great memories and forge bonds of friendship between us which have only now been broken with Frank’s passing.

His was a friendship I treasured, for Frank above all was a considerate and courteous man whose zest for life was fashioned from an appreciation of the difficulties we all face, week in week out. Indeed Frank was a friend to many, for his friendly outgoing nature combined with his innate courtesy, good humour and consideration for others, marked him as a man apart.

Frank and I went to the west of Ireland to find wives. He to Westport, myself to Connemara. As a result both of us have strong links with Connaught and last night, mindful of the great number of people who came to Church Road to pay tribute to Frank, I thought of Padraic Colum’s poem, ‘A Connachtman’. I re-read the poem this morning and felt that with some changes to the placenames mentioned to take account of Frank’s Kildare connections it was appropriate for the man we are honouring today.

It’s my fear that my wake won’t be quiet,

Nor my wake house a silent place;

For who would keep back the hundreds

Who would touch my breast and my face?

For the good men were always my friends,

From Kilcullen back into Kildare;

In strength, in sport, and in spending,

I was foremost at the fair;

In music, in song, and in friendship,

In contests by night and by day,

By all who knew it was given to me

That I bore the branch away.

The old men will have their stories

Of all the deeds in my days,

And the young men will stand by the coffin,

And be sure and clear in my praise.

The hundreds who turned up to attend Frank’s wake, the hundreds who turned up for the removal of his remains to St. Michael’s Church and the great crowd here this morning confirm, if confirmation was needed, that the people of Athy and those further afield who knew Frank, are in the words of Padraic Colum sure and clear in their praise of a great man.

I will miss him. We will all miss him.

Ar dhéis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.’

I am very loathe to pass judgment in public on the new Traffic Management Plan prepared for Athy Town Council which was recently on public display prior to being presented to meetings of Kildare County Council and Athy Town Council. However, my reluctance in that regard vanishes in the face of yet a further potential waste of public funds should the plan be implemented. I am advised that the Traffic Plan cost in excess of €100,000 to produce and its implementation cost can be measured in millions of euro. Given the rather poor state of Local Government finances at this time I am afraid it is money we can ill afford to waste.

The Traffic Management Plan proposes a number of radical changes to the existing road layout in the town, the first of which is at the Dublin Road end of Leinster Street. The existing wall between the two road levels is to be removed and replaced with a new wall to allow two way traffic on the Lidl side of the widened road. On the People’s Park side of the wall it is proposed to have a pedestrian access route to the railway station and inside that again a road leading from St. Michael’s Terrace to a new road to be built through the People’s Park giving access to the Park Crescent estate from Church Road. Church Road will be straightened and re-graded to allow access directly onto the Dublin Road via a new junction at the top of the Railway Bridge.

Another major change centres on Emily Square where further pedestrianisation of the rear Square will effectively reduce the parking facilities there. However, it is the proposed re-routing of traffic coming from the Carlow Road direction which now turns at the traffic lights onto Leinster Street to go towards Dublin which may create more traffic problems than it can help solve. Dublin Road bound traffic coming down Offaly Street will have to divert across the rear Square and turn right at Barrow Quay onto Leinster Street. The traffic planner who came up with this idea has an obvious liking for turning traffic at the bottom of humpbacked bridges as he also proposes a somewhat similar manoeuvre at the Canal Bridge on the Kilkenny Road. Traffic coming from Stradbally intending to turn onto the Kilkenny Road must go via Nelson Street and hopefully make a safe exit from there onto William Street. Vehicles will stop on Nelson Street just yards from the Canal Bridge where the sight distance is very limited and will then have to exit smartly and speedily if there is to be any hope of avoiding a collision with traffic coming over the bridge into the town. Similarly traffic from Kilkenny going towards Stradbally must turn into Nelson Street.

There are a number of other changes, all of which I cannot now recall having attended the information evening in the Carlton Abbey Hotel a few weeks ago. The overall impression I have of the Traffic Management Plan however is not helped by the use of a plan which has the Courthouse building described as the Town Library. There are I’m afraid compelling reasons why this latest Traffic Management Plan is unsuitable for Athy, not least being the price tag which accompanies the changes proposed. I only wish the planners and our Town Fathers would concentrate on the Outer Relief Road which I see is now being described as ‘the Southern Distribution Route’. It alone can help solve the traffic problems which beset Athy’s town centre and the sooner Council officials and public representatives alike accept this the sooner we can press ahead with this much needed road project.

Incidentally despite the Minister’s clear advice to Athy Town Council and officials of Kildare County Council to make up their minds as to whether they wanted an Inner Relief Road or an Outer Relief Road, the local Council still persists in retaining the Inner Relief Road as an objective in the Town Development Plan. Apparently the decisions of the Planning Appeal Board and the High Court have had little influence on either party and the Minister’s advice has been ignored. It’s no wonder then that the Minister has not to date made any funds available for the construction of the Outer Relief Road. As a consequence we find ourselves today in the unhappy position of attempting to apply what can only be described as ineffective measures to a chronic traffic situation which is crying out for the only viable solution – an Outer Relief Road.

As I came out into the foyer of the Carlton Abbey on Wednesday evening Liam Dunne of the Irish Farmers Association and his team were manning their alternative traffic plan for Athy. It proposes a much simpler solution to the town’s traffic problems. Roundabouts at Leinster Street/Stanhope Street junction, at Barrow Quay/Leinster Street junction, at Leinster Street/Woodstock Street junction and at the junction of the Bleach and Kilkenny Road are the mainstay of the I.F.A. proposals. In addition pedestrian crossings utilising zebra crossings rather than the existing pelican crossings have been suggested by the Farmers Group as a necessary measure to allow traffic to flow as easily as possible. However, I am aware that pelican crossings are more favoured by wheelchair users.

I have to say that the I.F.A. plan seemed reasonable and practical and certainly less costly than the Council Plan. Given the limited costs involved the general feeling of those who examined the two traffic plans at the Carlton Abbey Hotel is that the I.F.A. plan is worthy of further detailed consideration.

I learned recently of the death of Michael May whom I remember well as a pupil in the Christian Brothers School here in Athy in the 1950s. Michael was usually two classes ahead of me and the ginger haired well built young man was an extremely popular member of the school population of that time. Michael, a retired Garda Sergeant, was the son of Hester and Joe May who lived in the Gate Lodge at St. Vincent’s Hospital where Joe May was the hospital administrator. Michael’s parents were part of that great band of Irish men and women who during the War of Independence and later gave so much of themselves so that future generations could enjoy the fruits of a self governing democracy.

Ar dhéis Dé go raibh a anam.

Tom Bradbury and Bradbury's Bakery

Shackleton Autumn School 2009

Postcards of Athy - Photographs

Thomas Hardy and Other Dorset Connections

Dominicans in Athy and Fr. Ross McCauley

Glasnevin Cemetery

Athy's Parish Priests(1)

Athy's Parish Priests (2)

Ploughing Championship 1931

Kevin O'Toole / Aiden McHugh and Athy's Gymnastic Club

Photographs - Athy G.F.C. Senior Team Late 1950's / Kildare Seniors 1957

Athy's Marian Shrine Photographs / St. Michael's Church Interior

Technical Education in Athy

Secondary Education in Local Schools Denied to Local Children / John Neavyn

Photograph 1956 Athy CBS Under 14 Team / Athy's Traffic Plan

Dictionary of Irish Biography

Dictionary of Irish Biography

Frank English

Frank English

Athy's New Traffic Plan / Michael May