Athy's Hurling Club

August 11, 2015, 4:44 am

The first reference I have come across to the game of hurling in Athy was a newspaper report of a Monasterevin team defeating Athy hurlers in a match played in 1890. Three years earlier Daniel Whelan of Fontstown claimed to have made hurleys for the Athy branch of the GAA but I have yet to find any account of a hurling match involving Athy club players prior to the last decade of the 19^thcentury.

Athy’s Hurling Club’s first major success was in the 1928 County hurling final when the South Kildare team defeated Johnstown Bridge. Hurling in the south of the County was clearly in the ascendancy as the following year Athy again contested the County final. However, this time the Athy players had to give way to McDonagh Barracks of the Curragh who were crowned the 1929 champions.

The first hurler of note associated with the Athy Club was Joe Delaney who played on the Kildare County Senior team which reached the 1934 All Ireland hurling final after defeating Kilkenny in the Leinster final which was played in Athy. I don’t have any background information on Joe Delaney and wonder if any of my readers could help me in that regard. With the name Delaney it is likely he was a Kilkenny man working in Athy.

County Kildare’s involvement in senior hurling was short lived, even though the game remained very popular in and around Athy during the 1930s. An Athy team defeated Broadford to win the 1936 senior championship. The earlier mentioned Joe Delaney was not on that team but the names Sullivan, Taylor, Hurley, Thornton and two Feeney brothers were prominent in the list of players of 79 years ago. The same team reached the 1937 County final but lost out by 2 points to Maynooth. Earlier in the same year the Athy junior hurlers, having been outscored 6:4 to 1:1 by Kill in the junior final, were nevertheless crowned junior champions after lodging an objection with the County Board.

Athy junior hurlers were again crowned champions in 1950 but the club appears to have gone into decline for a few years until revived in 1957 by John Dooley of St. Patrick’s Avenue. As a Kilkenny man working in Athy John had a great love for the game of hurling and his efforts were marked with early success when Athy won the junior championship in 1958. A year later Athy, now playing as a senior team, were awarded the senior County championship on an objection following their earlier defeat by McDonagh Barracks.

Shortly before last Christmas the members of Athy Hurling Club held a reunion of players and mentors who achieved success on the playing fields in 1988 and 1989. The junior hurlers of 1989 won the Junior A championship of that year and crowned their success by also winning the Junior League. The Athy team, captained by Tony Foley, defeated old rivals Naas on the score of 1:11 to 1:9 in the Junior championship final. The team comprised Paddy Byrne, Richie Foley, Tony Foley, Finbarr Stynes, Christy Myles, Con Ronan, Sean Candy, Mick Doyle, Shane Purcell, Mick Donovan, John McCauley, Joe Kelly, Paddy Purcell, Christy Lawler and Eddie Lawler. A few weeks later the same teams met in the Senior Hurling League when the Athy players again came out on top and so secured the league title for 1989. Their victory had followed a year after the Athy minor hurling team had secured the double as county minor champions and league winners for 1988.

Both teams gathered for the reunion on 5^th December last to celebrate what was perhaps the greatest period of hurling success enjoyed by the club since its foundation. The minors of 27 years ago were Martin Germaine, Denis Doyle, Mark Wall, David Dobbyn, Pat Maher, Richard Maher, Richard Foley, Pierce Maher, Paul Whelan, Noel Cross, Aodhgan Kelleher, Barry Hughes, Declan Day, Aidan Corcoran and Mick Kelly. Incidentally I notice that the club crest records the hurling club’s foundation in 1904. Given the earlier references to hurling in Athy I wonder if there was an earlier foundation date.

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The Great Famine

August 18, 2015, 4:46 am

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In June 1849 even as the awful affects of the Great Famine had lessened, there were still 1,528 men, women and children living in the Workhouse in Athy. Opened on the 9^thof January 1844 the Workhouse was built to accommodate 360 adults and 240 children. In the intervening 5 years extra accommodation had been provided in fever sheds erected in the grounds of the Workhouse and in two auxiliary workhouses opened in Barrack Street and nearby Canal Side. Athy, like so many other Irish towns of the first half of the 19^th century, was a place where sickness and starvation visited alike the able bodied and the aged poor. It was a town which an unidentified letter writer to the Athy Literary Magazine of March 1838 described as ‘neglected’. He wrote:- ‘Visit us throughout our work days and ramble through our deserted streets and see the able bodied labourers at our corners, hoards of beggars at our doors, disease and famine in the hovels of the poor.’ Such was the description of Athy just seven years before the Great Famine began.

The building of the Great Southern and Western railway line to Carlow brought much needed jobs to South Kildare but those jobs finished as the first train arrived into the newly constructed Athy railway station on 4^thAugust 1846. The clamour for work was such that as the railway line progressed from Kildare to Athy the railway company had to seek additional policemen to police the Athy area. Clearly the impoverished locals were desperate and as the Great Famine took hold their conditions worsened.

In my research into the Great Famine in this area I was astonished to find no reference in the minute books of Athy Town Commissioners during the famine years to the obvious sufferings of the local people. Even when the soup kitchens were providing minimum sustenance for so many in the Athy Poor Law Union area the Town Commissioner records made no mention of the fact. In the local electoral area of Athy and its hinterland with a population of 13,828 over 3,000 persons were in receipt of help at the local soup kitchens. In the Athy Poor Law Union area which included parts of County Laois 16,365 persons or 34% of the population were at one time dependent on local soup kitchens. The Ballyadams area was apparently the worst affected as almost 100% of the local population relied on the local soup kitchen for daily nourishment.

In the first two years of the Famine deaths in the Athy Workhouse averaged two or three a week, but by 1847 the weekly death rate had risen to ten. By the end of the Great Famine 1,205 persons had died in the local Workhouse and in the adjoining Fever Hospital. Townspeople who died during the Famine are believed to have exceeded 1,000 leaving the post famine population of Athy at 3,873. Those who died in the Workhouse or the Fever Hospital were buried in the small cemetery across the bridge over the Grand Canal which we now know as St. Mary’s.

Local communities within Irish society generally display deeply embedded respect for the dead. A recent visit to St. Mary’s Cemetery showed however that the Famine dead of this area have not been respected as one might expect. St. Mary’s Cemetery, the last resting place of the poorhouse victims of the Great Famine, was on my visit overgrown and litter strewn. Sad to think that such sacred ground should be so neglected as we near the National Great Famine Commemoration Day which takes place on Saturday, 26^th September 2015.

Steps however are now being taken to clean up St. Mary’s Cemetery and thanks must go to Denis Ryan and the members of Gouleyduff Meggars Club who in the spirit of community volunteerism are undertaking the work.

Remembrance services for the famine dead of Athy and district will take place in St. Mary’s Cemetery on Sunday 27^th September at 3.00 p.m. It will be an opportunity for the present generation to pay respect to the memory of those men, women and children who succumbed to illness and/or starvation during one of the most trying periods in our country’s history.

The names of the famine dead are not retrievable after decades of neglect. There only remains for us an opportunity to honour a past generation whose lives shortened by deprivation, starvation and illness were ended within the grim bare walls of Athy’s workhouse.

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Luggacurran Evictions

August 25, 2015, 4:48 am

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The first evictions from the Luggacurran estates took place on Tuesday 15^th March 1887 when Denis Kilbride, a sub tenant of Lord Lansdowne with a holding of 868 acres, was evicted. Just before the Bailiffs and the R.I.C. men had completed their work under the supervision of the local sub sheriff, William O’Brien M.P. arrived at the scene accompanied by Patrick Meehan of Maryborough. As the policemen withdrew following the completion of the eviction process, some to Luggacurran village but the larger number to Athy, William O’Brien and Denis Kilbride addressed their supporters. O’Brien encouraged the Lansdowne tenants, most of whom were now under threat of eviction, to continue with the Plan of Campaign and to withhold their rents until rent reductions were granted by Lord Lansdowne.

Denis Kilbride who would be later elected Member of Parliament for Kerry and subsequently for Kildare, was a local leader of the Plan of Campaign. Lord Lansdowne who was then acting as Governor General of Canada wrote to his mother on 23^rdJuly 1887: ‘Trench [Lansdowne’s agent] cables that he has just evicted our ringleader at Luggacurran.’

John W. Dunne who leased 1305 acres from Lord Lansdowne was later evicted from Raheenahone, together with his sub tenants. Amongst those evicted during 1887 was Michael Kelly and his family. Kelly was the sub tenant of 22½ acres of Lansdowne’s land for which he paid a yearly rent of fifteen pounds five shillings. Michael Kelly’s family were distinguished from the other Kelly families on the estate by the name, ‘Kelly’s of the Hill’. Michael Kelly had married Ellen Kealy and they had six sons and one daughter. Sadly Ellen died in her forties when her daughter Margaret was just 8 years of age and the youngest son Tommy was only 5 or 6 years old.

The Kelly family following the eviction from Luggacurran went to live in Wolfhill and it was from there that at least one of the Kelly sons attended the Christian Brothers school in Athy. He was Patrick Kelly who was just one year old when the family were evicted. At 17 years of age he enlisted in the Royal Artillery British Army and four years later emigrated to Canada where he joined the Royal Canadian Artillery. Patrick Kelly would go on to have a distinguished career in the Canadian Army.

He transferred to the Canadian Army Pay Corps in Quebec in 1913 and a year later arrived in England with the first Canadian troops sent overseas to serve in the First World War. He was commissioned as a Lieutenant in 1915 and the following year he was sent to France where he was attached to the Canadian overseas base pay office. A year later he returned to England as assistant head of the officers pay branch. Promotion to the rank of Army Captain followed in April 1917 and following the ceasefire of 11^th November 1918 he returned to Canada. Appointed a member of the Pay and Allowance Board he subsequently received various promotions and appointments, culminating in his appointment as District Pay Master Military District No. 2 Toronto on the outbreak of World War II.

The young man from Luggacurran was once again sent overseas in October 1939 on promotion as Lieutenant Colonel and appointment as Senior Officer Pay Services Canadian Military Headquarters. Further promotion followed a year later when he was appointed Chief Pay Master of the Canadian Army overseas with the rank of Colonel. Two and a half years later the former Athy Christian Brothers school boy was promoted to the rank of Brigadier and a year later he was awarded the CBE by King George VI in recognition of his distinguished army service during both world wars. On his return to Canada in 1945 Patrick Kelly was appointed Pay Master General of the Canadian Army from which position he retired on 7^th January 1947.

Brigadier Kelly was a frequent visitor to Athy during the 1950s and 1960s, always taking the opportunity to visit both Wolfhill and Luggacurran. His Athy base was always the Leinster Arms Hotel and he took enormous pleasure in meeting the people of the area and especially the family members whose predecessors like the ‘Kellys of the Hill’ were evicted from their small farm holdings on the Luggacurran estate during the War of Campaign.

Patrick Kelly died in 1973 and is buried in Clopook cemetery. His only sister Margaret who had married Patrick Burke of Clogh, Castlecomer, came to live with her daughter Stasia and her son Eddie in McDonnell Driver after her husband died. Eddie Burke, grandson of the evicted sub tenant Michael Kelly, had bought Carolan’s shop in Emily Square following the sale of his father’s land holding in Clogh.

Athy and Luggacurran are interlinked by events and people connected with the Plan of Campaign on the Lansdowne estate of the 1880s. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the extended family of ‘Kelly’s of the Hill’ where Kellys, Burkes and Kealys have been found and are still to be found in the Anglo Norman town in the South of County Kildare.

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A statue for Ernest Shackleton

September 1, 2015, 4:49 am

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I was surprised and saddened to read the headline in the Sunday Times of 23^rd August ‘Councillor sees importance of booing Shackleton’ and the report which followed in which a local Councillor criticised the decision to erect a statue in Athy to Ernest Shackleton.

Arguments surrounding the erection of a statue to the Kilkea-born Antarctic explorer, whose life and career have been celebrated each October bank holiday weekend for the past 14 years during the Shackleton Autumn School in Athy, reminds me of the controversial debate which took place 80 years ago when a memorial was agreed to be erected in the GPO Dublin in memory of those who fought in the 1916 Rising.

The De Valera government commissioned a statue of Cú Chulainn, claiming that the representation of his death would provide a suitable symbol for the sacrifices of 1916. The Fine Gael opposition thought otherwise and the radical newspaper ‘United Ireland’ in its edition of 20^th April 1935 put forward Fionn Mac Cumhail as a more appropriate figure on the basis that ‘Cú Chulainn as champion of Ulster was not a true a Gael as Fionn Mac Cumhail’.

Public monuments are a means of expressing a distinctive national identity. In the past such monuments have represented cultural and political concepts which emerge from an identity which was firmly linked with Catholic heritage and an emerging, if not always consistent, nationalist attitude.

Conflicting attitudes to public monuments provide an indication of the strength of nationalist feeling or sometimes the fluid strength of such nationalism if one is to consider the case of the Parnell monument erected in Dublin’s O’Connell Street after Parnell’s death. The laying of the foundation stone for the Parnell monument was in 1899 the scene of extraordinary rowdy scenes involving anti-Parnellites and supporters of Parnell. This was a man who had united a country behind the Irish Parliamentary party and had given the Irish people a voice which it had not enjoyed since the days of Daniel O’Connell. The objectors to the Parnell monument eventually withdrew, perhaps realising that the monument represented a national aspiration which all shared.

We in Athy have in the recent past, in keeping with the public’s growing interest in Ireland’s fight for freedom, erected a monument to persons whose methods found favour with the more advanced nationalist traditions of their day. The monument in question, located in Emily Square, commemorates the United Irishmen and those local men and women who suffered during the 1798 Rebellion.

Similarly some few years previously we commemorated the men from Athy and district who fought in World War I. In doing so we were reconciling service in the Great War with the political reality of an independent Ireland - thereby helping to dispel the notion that the Athy men who fought in the war were not ‘true’ Irishmen.

For too long we Irish have firmly linked our national identity with Catholic heritage and militaristic traditions. I am critical of narrow minded concepts of Irishness, believing that being Irish requires us to accept outside influences and to discard the narrow minded concepts which have prevailed in the past. It is wrong to believe that the only ‘true’ Irishmen are those who fought for Irish independence or who profess the Catholic faith.

Public monuments articulate an emerging national identity and part of that identity is not just Catholic, Gaelic and the struggle for Irish freedom, but also includes the many different voices which may seldom if ever be raised in support of those traditional values which many of us hold dear.

A monument to Ernest Shackleton, world famous explorer, a man born within a few miles of Athy, whose exploits are the subject each year of the Shackleton Autumn School here in Athy, can be a worthy addition to the public sculpture of our ancient town. It will help to highlight the town’s museum which we plan to extend in the near future to become an accredited museum highlighting the story of the world’s most famous Antarctic explorer.

The planned regeneration of Athy which will be the subject of a redevelopment plan now in the final stages of preparation by Shannon International Development Consultants will impinge not just on the economic revival of the town but will also impact on the cultural and social life of the town. We should not adopt a negative attitude to the proposed statue or to any project, no matter how small, which will be part of the attempt to revive the fortunes of our town.

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Medieval Athy

September 8, 2015, 4:51 am

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When the Anglo Normans settled in the area now known as south County Kildare their early settlements were to be found near to the River Barrow at Ardree, Athy and Rheban with an inland settlement at Ardscull. These villages, populated by French speaking settlers, in time attracted Gaelic speaking Irish folk who occupied low class positions such as betaghs or villeins who served the manorial lords. Today three of those once thriving settlements are no more having been consigned to history which describes them as ‘deserted villages’.

The exception is Athy. Why did the medieval village of Athy prosper and develop into a town when the neighbouring villages died away? Was it because of its location on an important crossing on the River Barrow and the fact that it was garrisoned as the first line of defence for those living within the Pale? It was for that reason that the White Castle was built in 1417 to house a garrison to protect the bridge of Athy.

I have come to the conclusion that amongst the many reasons for the continued existence of Athy when other neighbouring villages died away was the part played by the granting of royal charters to Athy. A charter was a royal writ confirming rights and privileges and the first of several charters granted to Athy was that of King Henry VIII in 1515. It was granted to the village of Athy at the request of Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare ‘for the greatest safety of Athy which lies on the frontiers of the Marches of our Irish enemies’. Those same Irish usually referred to in medieval texts as ‘the wild Irish’attacked and burned the village of Athy on four occasions in the 14^thcentury.

The 1515 Charter allowed the inhabitants of Athy ‘to build and strengthen the town with fosses and walls of stone and lime’. The work was to be controlled by a Provost elected annually on the feast of St. Michael the Archangel (September 29^th) and financed by customs/tolls collected in the market allowed under the Charter to be held each Tuesday in the village. This was the first reference to the local market which is still held every Tuesday in Emily Square which in times past was known as ‘Market Square’. While the Charter of 1515 declared the Provost and the inhabitants of Athy to be a body incorporate there is no reference to the appointment or election of borough officials.

In a letter written in 1552 by Ossory to Cromwell reference is made to ‘the gates of the Earl’s town of Athy’. Further references in 1598 to Castledermot and Athy ‘as the only important towns of Kildare walled and now ruined’ confirm that the Charter of 1515 did result in the walling of Athy. The town walls were constructed on the east side of the River Barrow and ran in a semi circular formation from the river across Preston’s Gate (now Offaly Street) across High Street (now Leinster Street) to Chapel Lane and from there via Stanhope Place to the river. The last visible remains of the medieval walls were removed in 1860 when the gateway known as Preston’s Gate then leading into the street, also called Preston’s Gate, was pulled down.

In 1613 James I in an effort to further the plantation programme and to secure a Protestant Parliamentary majority created 46 new borough Councils in Ireland. Amongst them was Athy Borough Council. The 1613 Charter allowed for the appointment of a Sovereign and various borough officials. It also provided for the appointment of 12 Burgesses who held office for life and who constituted the Borough Council with the right to nominate two Members of Parliament. Interestingly the Charter also authorised Athy Borough to have a Guild of Merchants ‘to better serve for the success of the Borough’.

Catholics were excluded from membership of the borough, as were Presbyterians until 1780, and the first and only Catholics elected as a Burgess of Athy was Thomas Fitzgerald of Geraldine House who was elected in 1831. Nine years later Athy Borough Council with a number of other so called ‘rotten Boroughs’ was abolished.

Recently I came across another Athy Charter granted in 1689 by the Catholic King James II. Apparently it was never accepted by the borough masters of Athy following the defeat of James II two years later by William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne. In a report of 1833 by the Commissioners of Municipal Corporations it was claimed that the Charter of 1689 was ‘founded upon a supposed forfeiture by a judgment of the Exchequer and has not been acted upon at least within the memory of any living person and the Charter of 1613 is the governing charter’.

The charters granted to Athy helped to ensure the survival of the village while other neighbouring villages died. This despite the undemocratic nature of the Borough Council’s composition which was not addressed until the Borough Council was abolished in 1840 and subsequently replaced by Town Commissioners elected by popular mandate.

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Marian Shrine

September 15, 2015, 4:52 am

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A few Sunday’s ago I was brought back to a time when as a short trousered youngster I was one of a group of soutaned mass servers who attended the blessing of the Marian shrine at St. Joseph’s Terrace. The Parish Priest Fr. Steen was the chief celebrant on that day. The Marian year had passed by the time the shrine was finished and ready for the ceremonial opening. The delay however was not due to any fault on the part of the local committee of St. Joseph’s Terrace folk who had started the work on the project a year previously. The committee under the chairmanship of Paddy Doyle known locally as “Chevit” Doyle comprised Jim Fleming, Tony Byrne, Eddie Delahunt and Joe O’Neill. They were all members of the St. Joseph’s Welfare Club which had been in existence for many years previously.

A strike in the cement works at Drogheda curtailed work on the site which had commenced in 1953. The site chosen for the shrine was directly opposite the five terraced houses which once comprised Slatey Row. These houses were demolished in the early 1930’s prior to the building of St. Joseph’s Terrace.

The event which I recently attended at St. Joseph’s Terrace was the formal taking in charge by the local branch of the Organisation of National Ex-Service Men and Women of Ireland of the Marian shrine. The O.N.E. as it is known was founded in 1951 when a number of associations formed by demobbed service personnel following the end of WWII came together. Its initial purpose was to help maintain the comradeship and companionship fostered while in service but in recent years it has taken on the additional commendable object of providing accommodation for ex-service personnel of the Irish Defence Forces. Its official name is Oglaigh Naisiúnta na h’Éireann or in English, Organisation of National Ex-Service Men and hence the letters O.N.E. by which it is generally known. The former army and navy personnel all living in retirement in the Athy area have committed themselves and their organisation to maintaining the Marian shrine.

For the past 60 years this shrine which contains the work of many local craftsmen of 60 years ago has been cared for, initially by the original shrine committee and following their passing by residents of St. Joseph’s Terrace. The cut stone which adorns the shrine was assembled by John Murphy of St. Michael’s Terrace, a craftsman whose work can also be seen in the beautifully crafted stone wall entrance to the Dominican Church. McHugh’s Foundry of Meeting Lane made the small gates while the Fleming brothers, Tom and Jim with J. McEvoy were largely responsible for the wall erected around the Marian shrine.

On the same week as the handing over took place our Parish Priest, Fr. Gerard Tanham said his last Sunday morning mass in St. Michael’s Church before leaving Athy for Howth Parish. In the six years Fr. Tanham had been Parish Priest of St. Michael’s Parish he endeared himself to local parishioners and proved a popular pastor. As befitting a man related to the Irish patriot Thomas Kettle, Fr. Tanham displayed remarkable appreciation of our community’s responsibility to remember the hitherto forgotten folk from Athy and the surrounding countryside who died in the town’s workhouse during the Great Famine. When I first approached Fr. Tanham soon after his arrival in Athy to seek his help in holding a service in St. Mary’s Cemetery on National Famine Commemoration Day he readily agreed to participate. Not only did he do so but he also prepared and printed a service which he made available to those attending the commemoration ceremony. Incidentally this year’s famine commemorations service will take place on Sunday, 27^th of September but more on that next week. Our good wishes goes to Fr. Tanham and a welcome is extended to Fr. Frank McEvoy our new Parish Priest who some years ago served as a curate in St. Michael’s Parish.

In congratulating the members of the O.N.E., the residents of St. Joseph’s Terrace and our departing and incoming Parish Priests I must not forget to welcome a very important person who joined us just three weeks ago. Emmet Taaffe Harward, my very first grandson following four lovely granddaughters is the latest addition to the Taaffe extended family.

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Famine and Cholera Deaths

September 22, 2015, 4:54 am

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On 10^th January 1847 Athy resident Michael Carey wrote in his letter book: ‘The post teems with deaths and our Poorhouse is daily sending out its dead and the poor in the country are bringing their dead coffins through the streets on their little ass carts. It is equal to the time of the cholera when the deep wailing of the living for the dead woke us from our midnight slumbers. How awful are the wailings now.’ Michael Carey’s is the only contemporary reference I have found to the awful effects of the Great Famine on the local people of Athy and district. He was not to know when referring to the cholera outbreak of 1834 that cholera would again revisit the town of Athy in October 1849 just as the worst effects of the Famine were receding.

The first cholera case of the 1849 outbreak was recorded in Belfast on 2^nd December 1848 involving a man who had arrived from Edinburgh where there had been an outbreak the previous October. On 25^th June 1849 the first cholera case was noted in Athy and by 29^th December 27 cases were recorded and 11 local cholera victims had died. A temporary cholera hospital was opened in the town and funds intended for the relief of Famine had to be diverted to deal with the cholera epidemic which remained a threat to public health until the following year.

Cholera, which thrived in the unhealthy overcrowded conditions to be found in the narrow lanes and courts of the town, had previously arrived in Athy in 1834. At that time the Treasury had advanced the sum of £20 to the select vestry of the local Church of England which had responsibility under the Vestry Act of 1772 for public health in the town. The cholera break of 1849 was more serious than the previous occurrence adding fear to the distress of the local people already weakened by years of Famine.

In the 1851 census details of deaths in hospitals in the period June 1841 to March 1851 were detailed. For Athy the opening of the Workhouse in January 1844 marks the effective commencement date for the census figures giving a period which, apart from the initial one and a half years, largely coincided with the Famine years. During that time a total of 1205 men, women and children died in Athy Workhouse and in the adjoining Fever Hospital.

The town’s population, which in 1841 numbered 4,698, had fallen to 3,873 in 1851, which latter figure excludes the inmates of the local Workhouse. Between 1831 and 1841 the town’s population had increased by 4.5% and if one assumes even a similar increase for the ten years to 1851 the town population should have reached 4,909 at the end of that period. The Famine can therefore be seen to have caused a possible fall in the town’s population of upwards of 1,036 persons. Of course not all of this loss can be related to Famine deaths or disease as undoubtedly emigration to America or England or migration to Dublin city accounted for some of the population decrease.

The decline in the town’s population and the rise in the Workhouse numbers such as to necessitate the opening of two auxiliary workhouses in the town, coupled with the huge numbers fed at the local soup kitchen in Athy, all point to widespread distress in South Kildare during the Famine years. That there was a Workhouse in place in Athy before the potato blight struck undoubtedly enabled the authorities to respond to the emergency in a manner which helped reduce the number of deaths from disease and starvation in this area. Despite this we know that 1,205 persons died in the Workhouse and many hundreds of the townspeople died from disease and/or starvation.

Some weeks ago I referred to the sad sorry state of St. Mary’s Cemetery where the Famine dead from the Workhouse are buried. That sacred ground was then neglected, overgrown and littered with debris. Its condition reflected poorly on all of us living here in Athy as St. Mary’s Cemetery represents a bridge to our ancestors who suffered so much during the Great Famine. To overlook St. Mary’s Cemetery as we have done in the past is to cast aside the memory of those unnamed men, women and children who once walked the streets and laneways of our town.

Thanks to Denis Ryan and the members and friends of Gouleyduff Meggar Club, St. Mary’s has recently been reclaimed from the neglect of the past and today presents as a tranquil and respectable place of repose for our Famine dead.

On Sunday 27^th September at 3.00 p.m. St. Mary’s will be the focus of a Famine Commemoration Service as part of the National Famine Commemoration Day ceremonies. Do attend if you can to show that we have not forgotten those terrible years of the Great Famine or the men, women and children of our town and district who were consigned under terrible conditions to an early grave.

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Dominicans in Athy

September 29, 2015, 4:56 am

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In two months time the Dominican Order will leave Athy for the last time. Their departure, unlike previous such occurrences, is the result of a voluntary decision precipitated by a fall in vocations. There were times in the distant past when the local Dominican friars were banished from the town as a result of penal legislation. Their removal from the local area where their ministry commenced in 1257 was however never permanent as the Friars Preachers always sought to return to the South Kildare town.

Robert Woulff was Prior at the time of the Reformation and thereafter for almost 100 years the Dominican Friary on the East bank of the River Barrow in the area now known as The Abbeywas vacant and very likely in a state of ruin. The Protestant Church erected in the Market Square long before the Town Hall was built was believed by an earlier writer on the town’s history to have contained stone taken from the nearby Dominican Friary.

The Reformation may have condemned the 13^th century Dominican Friary to a future devoid of religious ceremonies, but the subsequent Penal Laws failed to deprive the local people in the long term of the Catholic ministry provided by the Friars Preachers. There was certainly a lull of 100 years before the Dominican Provincial, Ross MacGeoghegan restored the Dominicans to Athy and appointed Thomas Bermingham as the new Prior. His appointment coincided with the latter years of the Confederate Wars and accounts of sieges of Athy during those wars included a graphic account of an attack on the Dominican Friary. The exact location of the Dominican Friary from 1648 onwards is not clear, but the Dominicans may have reoccupied their original friary.

The list of Priors from 1648 to 1697 would appear to indicate a period untroubled by rigorous application of the Penal Laws. This obviously changed in the last few years of the 17^th century when the Dominicans were again forced to leave Athy. In 1698 all bishops and friars were sent into exile, with the result that Athy was for the next 40 years or so without a Dominican presence. It was not until the 1740s that the Dominican friars returned to Athy and it was Thomas Cummins who took on the role of Prior. On their return the Dominicans established a friary in what I believe was Convent Lane, now called Kirwan’s Lane. Even with the relaxation of the Penal Laws Catholic clergy did not seek to provoke a reaction from reformed Church members by building Catholic churches other than in laneways away from the main street. It’s for the same reasons that the local Parish Church destroyed by fire in 1800 was built in Church Lane between Leinster Street and Stanhope Place.

In 1744 Dublin Castle authorities, concerned about the growth of popery, sought reports from the Provinces on the practice of Catholicism. John Jackson, a local magistrate, reported that he could not find a priest or a friar in Athy. Clearly the Dominicans who were in the area and the Parish Priest, Fr. Fitzpatrick who lived in Barrowhouse, all kept low profiles. Ten years or so later the local Parish Church records were left without entries for a number of months due to what was described as the prosecution of the local curate. Clearly the Penal Laws were still applied even if at times they were ineffective insofar as church practices were concerned.

With the passing of Catholic Emancipation in 1829 a great surge in Catholic Church building took place and some years later the Athy Dominicans acquired property at the end of Tanners Lane (now Church Lane) which was redeveloped as a friary and church. It has been home to the local Dominican community for the past 175 years or so.

The first Athy Dominican Prior for which records exist was Philip Pereys who held the position in 1357. It was Philip Pereys who obtained a pardon from King Edward III for felonies and transgressions committed by him on paying a fine of half a mark and saying 100 masses for the King. The fine was afterwards remitted on the Prior saying another 100 masses for the same intention. One wonders what felonies and transgressions were committed by the Rev. Prior!

Dominican martyrs connected with the Athy Friary included Richard Ovington, a former sub Prior of Athy, who was captured and executed by Oliver Cromwell’s troops in Drogheda in 1649. Cromwell’s men also captured the Athy Prior Thomas Birmingham who after some time in prison was released and exiled to Italy on payment of a fine. Stories of the local Dominicans fleeing for safety to Derryvullagh Bog ahead of the Cromwellian troops, form a large part of the local folklore. Records however do note that the Dominican Redmond Moore sought safety in the bog before escaping to the continent. He later returned to Athy where he was Prior of the local Friary from 1661.

The story of the Dominicans in Athy will soon come to an end. There remains however more than 750 years of local Dominican history to be studied so that a community served so well for so long can appreciate the enormity of the contribution the Dominican Order made to the people of Athy and district.

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Shackleton's Cabin

October 6, 2015, 4:58 am

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On the way to work this morning I noticed a colourful sign advertising a concert to be given by the Garda Siochana band and school choirs in the Dominican Church on Tuesday 6^th October commencing at 8.00 p.m. My thoughts immediately turned to a generation of uniformed Gardai patrolling the streets of Athy at all hours of the day and night. My father was the local sergeant in the 1950s and he, like his Garda colleagues, was on duty 24 hours 7 days a week.

My father was also a ‘Dominican Catholic’ in the same sense that today I am a ‘Parish Catholic’, our Mass attendances confirming that particular status. In his later years he served weekday Mass in the Dominican Church, while in my young days I served Mass in the Parish Church. The distinction between the Dominican and Parish Catholic was one of geography for as the River Barrow divided the town, so too did it tend to determine local church allegiances. Those on the west bank of the river usually supported the Dominicans, while for those on the opposite bank church attendance generally was reserved for the Parish Church.

The concert on 6^th October brings together two important elements of our shared history. The Garda Siochana established soon after the foundation of the State has served us well. It’s life span to date is less than a century old and much less than that of the Dominican presence in Athy. When the Garda band performs in the Dominican Church it will be one of the last occasions that the church, opened in 1965, will be used in this way. The departure of the Dominican friars from Athy will I understand take place on 22^nd November.

The concert, organised by the local Lions Club to raise funds for local charities, affords us an opportunity to begin the process of saying goodbye to the Dominicans. There will be other events and ceremonies in the Dominican Church to mark the departure of the Friars Preachers in Athy but nevertheless the Garda concert can be viewed as perhaps the start of the goodbye process.

Let us all, whether ‘Dominican Catholics’, ‘Parish Catholics’, Church of Ireland, Methodist, Presbyterian or whatever church or chapel adherents, come to the Dominican Church on Tuesday night to enjoy the concert and join in what can be seen as the beginning of the celebration of the Dominican presence in Athy which stretches back over 750 years.

There has been much publicity both in the national newspapers and on radio concerning the acquisition by the Heritage Centre of the ship’s cabin in which Ernest Shackleton died in 1922. Shackleton was leading his last expedition to the Antarctic and his ship, ‘The Quest’ was moored in Grytviken, South Georgia on the 5th January 1922 when he died of a heart attack. ‘The Quest’ was subsequently sold and taken to Norway when the cabin was removed. It’s existence was first brought to my attention two years ago by Eugene Furlong, a Cork man who was attending the Shackleton Autumn School here in Athy. Subsequent contact was made with the Norwegian owner and we brought him as our guest to the Shackleton Autumn School in October 2014. He was impressed by the Shackleton exhibition in the Centre and earlier this year Joe O’Farrell and Seamus Taaffe, both members of the Shackleton Autumn School Committee, travelled to Norway at their own expense to view the Shackleton cabin. The Heritage Centre subsequently entered into negotiations to acquire the cabin and Kildare County Council was exceptionally supportive of our efforts in that regard. The Fram Museum in Oslo was also trying to acquire the cabin, but thankfully Athy Heritage Centre succeeded in closing the deal with it’s owner.

The cabin was transported from Norway to Dublin last week by DFDS Logistics, accompanied on the journey by the earlier mentioned Joe O’Farrell and Joe, as I am writing this piece, is accompanying the cabin on its onward journey to the Letterfrack Conservation Centre in Co. Galway. There it will undergo some conservation work and it is hoped to have the cabin brought to Athy and positioned in the revamped Heritage Centre in time for the Shackleton Autumn School in October 2016.

You may wonder why it will take so long to bring the cabin to Athy. There are a lot of ongoing negotiations regarding a possible new library for Athy which if successfully concluded will allow the Heritage Centre to occupy the entire historic Town Hall. This will allow us to redevelop the Shackleton exhibition to become one of national, if not, of international, importance. In the meantime we await developments.

Don’t forget the concert in the Dominican Church on Tuesday, 6^thOctober. Doors open at 7.30 p.m. and admission is €5.00, with all proceeds going to local charities.

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Michael O'Keeffe and Des Noonan Remembered

October 13, 2015, 6:08 am

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This week saw the passing of Michael O’Keeffe and Des Noonan, two local men whose funerals were attended by friends and neighbours on their final journey to St. Michael’s cemetery. Funerals, like weddings, bring old friends and family relations together from far and near. Those two occasions act as great gathering events, especially funerals when one’s attendance is decided by friendship, respect or family connection rather than by formal invitation. I was reminded of this early this week when attending the funeral of Des Noonan who for many years was proprietor of a public house in Leinster Street.

Des, who retired several years ago, was a former pupil of the Christian Brothers School in Athy and amongst the many individuals who attended the funeral were some of his former school mates. All of those former Christian Brothers boys are now in their 80s but the friendly solidarity engendered by years of shared school experiences was clear to be seen.

I got talking to those scholars of the past who included my own brothers Jack and Tony, both of whom had travelled some distance to pay respect to Des. Another who had made a journey of some distance was Mick McAuley who told me his family sold their pub in Leinster Street to Bobby Flood in 1947 before the McAuley family moved to Kilkenny city. Mick was a classmate of Des Noonan, but left Athy before what remained of his class went into Leaving Cert. There was only one student left by the time Des Noonan entered the Leaving Cert class in 1948. He was the only Leaving Cert pupil that year. His teachers were Brother Nelson, known as ‘Breezy’, Brother Brennan who went by the name of ‘Luther’, but never addressed as such within his hearing range and the two lay teachers Liam Ryan and Pat Spillane.

Joe May, Denis Smyth, Jimmy Kelly and Rickie Kelly were students in the Christian Brothers School around the same time and they also attended the funeral of their former school mate. Both Joe and Jimmy, together with Mick McAuley, featured on the 1946 Christian Brothers school team which played Mullingar in the final of the Leinster Schools competition of that year. Even with the passing of 69 years memories were still fresh of the final played in Geraldine Park and refereed by local man, ‘Chevit’ Doyle. The Athy Christian Brothers team lost that day and seven decades later the referee is still being blamed for not allowing a score by the local team which might have swung the match in favour of the youngsters from Athy.

The photograph which accompanies this Eye is that of the team of 1946 and shows the late Des Noonan as a young fellow of 16 years of age with his school mates. Those photographed have been identified as follows:

Back Row:

Br. V.S. Nelson (‘Breezy’), Charlie Kelly, Tommy Egan, Jimmy Kelly, Noel Bergin, Eddie Conway, Finbar Hayden.

Middle Row:

Tommy Keyes, Joe May, Paddy Whelan, Mick McAuley, Paddy Harrington, Peadar Dooley, Jackie Doyle.

Front Row:

George (Mossy) Reilly, Des Noonan, Fintan Gibbons, Pascal Myles, Liam O’Keeffe.

With the passing of Michael O’Keeffe and Des Noonan another chapter closes in the life of Athy but the memories live on. Sympathy is extended to the families of Michael and Des on the deaths of two fine men.

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Shackleton Autumn School 2015

October 20, 2015, 6:09 am

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Every October bank holiday weekend since 2001, Athy has welcomed overseas visitors attending the Ernest Shackleton Autumn School. It has become an important event in the town’s cultural calendar bringing business to our local hotel, B&B’s, restaurants and shops. At the same time it has given Athy an international profile it never previously enjoyed. The town now enjoys a confirmed association with the Polar explorer Ernest Shackleton, unacknowledged before the advent of the Ernest Shackleton Autumn School in 2001. Indeed prior to the setting up of the Heritage Centre media reporting on the Polar explorer invariably referred to Kilkee, Co. Clare as his place of birth.

The Athy Heritage Museum is the focus for the events for the weekend which will begin with the opening of the Autumn school at 7.30pm on Friday, 23^rdof October. The school will be officially launched by Alexandra Shackleton, the granddaughter of Ernest Shackleton. The exhibition to be launched that night is “Life on the Line”. The exhibition is the result of many years of work by the English photographer, Christina Barnet who journeyed to the Arctic Circle to record the rich diversity of peoples for whom the sun never sets in high summer nor rises in deepest winter. The exhibition will run in the Heritage Centre until early in the New Year and should not be missed. The opening night will also feature the launch of the Scottish author Anne Straithie's book 'From Ice Floes to battlefields'. This book examines the fates of the various Polar explorers who served with both Scott and Shackleton during the Great War. This is of particular relevance for Athy given the many thousands of men who served in the British army in the Great War, a war which touched every family in this town. A number of Irish men feature in the book such as Tom Crean, Ernest Shackleton and Tim McCarthy. It is particularly pleasing to have an opportunity to launch this book which has been published by the History Press.

An important feature of the event has always been the diverse experience of the invited lecturers and the lecture topics they have chosen. This year sees lecturers drawn from the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Norway, Canada and the U.S.A. Dr. Kevin McKenna, a Consultant in Belfast City Hospital will give a talk on the effects of scurvy and its impact on Polar exploration. Scurvy was a very invidious disease which affected many of the early Polar explorers. It was caused by the lack of vitamin C and Kevin’s lecture will be an intriguing mix of medicine and exploration. Another lecture which caught my attention is that by Erik Seedhouse. Erik is an Norwegian/Canadian suborbital astronaut who has published a book on the striking parallels between the pioneering Polar explorers of the 20^thcentury and those future space explorers of the 22^nd century who may or may not get to Mars. His lecture is one of the more unusual topics and it is clearly going to be an intriguing mix of fact and speculation.

The world of business over the last two decades in the United States has found many proponents of Shackleton’s leadership qualities and Dr. Jesus Alcoba the Dean of La Salle International Graduate School of Business in Madrid will be extrapolating from the world of Polar exploration some lessons for us about success in business. Other lecturers include Robert Burton, Dr. Phillip Sidney, Naomi Boneham, Samuel Blanc and Anne Strathie.

Sunday afternoon will see the showing of the film “Antarctica - A Year On Ice”, a documentary by the New Zealand film maker Anthony Powell which was ten years in the making. It is a wonderful record of the life and work of those hardy souls who over winter in the Antarctic.

The climax of the weekend will be the premier performance in Athy’s Dominican Church of 'Shackleton’s Endurance' on Sunday, 25^th of October. Commissioned by Athy Heritage Centre- Museum with financial support from Kildare County Council, this was first performed in Carlow’s George Bernard Shaw Theatre last year. Brian Hughes’s musical composition, John MacKenna’s narrative and Craig Blackwell's visuals combine to tell the story of Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 transantarctic expedition. They will be ably assisted on stage by Kildare County Orchestra, Monasterevin Gospel Choir and a number of local musicians. This event, with the participation of so many local musicians, it is very much deserving of your support. Tickets for the Autumn Schools lectures and for the musical performance on the 25^th of October can be obtained from the Heritage Centre. Copies of the full weekend programme are also available in the centre.

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Local GAA Clubs successes

October 27, 2015, 7:12 am

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I was proud to fly the Athy Gaelic Football Club flag in the days leading up to the recent County Final and equally proud, after the unwelcome defeat on Sunday, of the players and the Athy supporters. Both represented the club honourably during the match and in the aftermath of defeat. Seamus Malone, now long dead, but once the leading light in the resurgence of Gaelic games in Athy would be justifiably proud of the Club he revived following the devastation wrought by emigration in the 1920s.

To be a member of a club, whether sporting or otherwise, is to be an active member of the community. The local GAA Club is the heartbeat of every local community in Ireland and here in Athy the community although disappointed as a result of the County final defeat is nevertheless immensely proud of the Athy clubs senior team.

To have been involved in one of the best County Finals played in recent years in County Kildare, it’s a matter of some pride for the Athy club and its members. Despite Sunday’s defeat, the quality of Gaelic football in South Kildare is confirmed by the success of local clubs in a variety of Gaelic Football Championship finals in the last few weeks.

Castlemitchell Junior team under the captaincy of Ray Fitzgerald recently won the Junior A Football title. Interestingly, the team’s manager is Billy Delaney from Stradbally whose father and name sake played for Laois and was team manager of the Castlemitchell team which won the clubs first County title in 1953. Our near neighbours Castledermot won the Intermediate Football championship within the past few weeks under team captain Oisin Doherty and team manager Tony Gray.

Although situated next to the Kildare border and within the adjoining County of Laois, Barrowhouse is for me more Kildare than County Laois. Barrowhouse is part of the Parish of St. Michael’s and historically both Athy and Barrowhouse are intrinsically linked by events during the War of Independence. For those reasons, the success of the Barrowhouse Junior Team in winning the Junior Championship this year is another boost for Gaelic Football in this region. The team captain of the Barrowhouse Juniors is Mikey Langton while John Larkin is the teams manager. Barrowhouse last won the Intermediate title twenty three years ago when many of the current team members’ fathers were on that team. Four grandsons of Billy Malone played in this year’s final while Liam Langton had the honour of his son Mikey, captaining the team while two of his grandsons were on the team panel.

Both Athy and Rheban played in County Finals this year but neither came away with the hoped for victory. Rheban unfortunately lost the Minor B Football Final to Suncroft. The Rheban Captain Darren Lawler can however take some consolation from the Leinster Minor medal he won with the Kildare County team earlier this year. The Rheban Team Managers were Martin Germaine and Alan Shaw.

The heartbreak of Athy’s defeat in the Senior County Championship final was somewhat lessened in the knowledge that the final was one of the best displays of Gaelic Football witnessed in a Kildare County Final for many years. Much praise must go to the management team of Brian Cardiff, Joe Kinihan and Timmy Dunne whose commitment and dedication to the cause of Gaelic football in Athy is immense. Team Captain was Mick Foley, one of the finest footballers ever to have played football with Athy Gaelic Football Club and the only former All Star player from the south of the County.

Gaelic Football and hurling are part of our Irish sporting heritage and the performance of the five local clubs in this year’s football championships is one worthy of acknowledgement by the different local communities which they represent.

A few days after the Athy Club won the 1942 senior title the following report appeared in the Nationalist and Leinster Times.

‘Over a fortnight ago, while walking along the Carlow Road, Athy, the writer saw a number of shapes moving about in the dark in ghostly fashion in a field some 200 yards from the road. Overcoming a sudden impulse to return hastily to the brightly illumed town, the writer made for the field to find the Athy senior football team doing a strenuous bout of training. The benefit of the course of training which had been carried out regularly for a month was evident on Sunday when Athy wrested the county senior championship from Carbury. Youth played a big part in Sunday’s triumph. Seven members of the Athy team are under 22 years and one under 18. The team showed a number of changes compared with the side that went under to Carbery in last year’s final. Such youngsters as D. Shaughnessy, T. Fox and L. Murray are notable newcomers to this year’s team.’

The defeat by Carbury in the 1941 final was followed a year later with Athy’s victory over the same team. Hopefully history will be repeated next year.

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World War 1 and Fr. Crotty O.P.

November 3, 2015, 6:14 am

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On Sunday 8^th November at 3.00 p.m. St. Michael’s Cemetery will once again be the scene for a commemoration service for men from Athy and district who died in war. The service will centre on the graves of six World War 1 soldiers who died at home before the end of the Great War.

The Athy soldiers who are buried in St. Michael’s Cemetery include John Lawler, aged 37 years of Ardreigh, who enlisted in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in 1899 and served in South Africa during the Boer War. John was married and his brother Edward who survived the war later lived at No. 1 Dooley’s Terrace. Private Michael O’Brien of Meeting Lane, aged 27 years, was killed by a train at Carlow Railway Station. Martin Hayden of Offaly Street, aged 29 years, was wounded in France and subsequently died in Cambridge Hospital. His remains were returned to Athy for burial. He was survived by his widow and family. James Dwyer, a native of Rathangan, was living in Athy when he enlisted. He died on 31^st March 1918 aged 39 years. Thomas Flynn died at 28 years of age. He was son of James and Bridget Flynn of Whitebog and was one of four brothers who fought in World War I. Michael Byrne, uncle of Mrs. Eileen McKenna, died aged 27 years on 21^st November 1918. He entered France on 19^th December 1914 and survived the war only to die during the influenza epidemic ten days after the ceasefire.

In this decade of commemoration when we are remembering events which occurred on the island of Ireland 100 years ago it is equally important not to overlook an earlier generation whose lives were lost to family and friends. This year the Organisation of National Ex-Service Men will play a significant part in the St. Michael’s Cemetery commemoration. Their participation is a clear indication of the changing attitudes in public opinion insofar as it relates to World War I and Irishmen’s participation in that war.

With the departure of the Dominicans from Athy approaching fast I was delighted to hear of the arrangements concluded with Kildare County Council whereby the Council will acquire all of the Dominican holdings in Athy. The deconsecrated church, the Friary, the halls, the car park and the grounds will be available as public amenities for the people of Athy. Of particular interest is that the church, which opened in 1965, will be developed as the town’s library and as a concert hall. This is wonderful news for Athy and the community’s thanks must go to the Chief Executive Officer of Kildare County Council, Peter Carey, who supported by the elected members of the Council concluded the deal with the Dominican Order.

Fr. Gregory Carroll O.P., Prior Provincial of the Irish Dominicans, and incidentally a native of Naas, came to Athy on Tuesday morning to make the announcement regarding the arrangement with Kildare Co. Co. The Dominican Order, he said, was pleased that the lands and buildings in which the friars carried out their ministry, will be available as a public amenity for the people of Athy.

It is remarkable to think that the Dominican ministry started in 1257 and but for short periods during which they were exiled the Dominican friars have been a constant presence in our town for almost 750 years. One of those friars was Fr. James Crotty, born in New Ross in 1867 who following his ordination in Rome in 1891 returned to Ireland to join the staff of Newbridge College. Nine years later he was appointed Prior of the Dominican community in Athy.

In 1916 Fr. Crotty was appointed chaplain to the Irish prisoners in German Prisoner of War camps. It was in that capacity that the former Athy Prior met Athy men Michael Bowden and Michael Byrne who had been captured following the Battle of Mons and imprisoned in Limburg Prisoner of War Camp. Another Athy man, Martin Maher, died in Limburg on 5^th March 1915 from wounds received in the Battle of Mons some months previously.

Michael Bowden, an Athy post man, was a married man with one child when he enlisted at the start of the war. Soon after he departed for France his second child was born. Sadly Michael Bowden was never to see his wife or children following his capture as he died in Limburg on 27^thMay 1918. The third Athy man, Michael Byrne, who had worked as a gardener for local veterinary surgeon John Holland of Model Farm also died in Limburg on 27^th September 1918 just weeks before the end of the war.

The former Athy Prior, Fr. Crotty, who was described by Roger Casement as ‘a raging Fenian’, had a 10ft. high Celtic cross erected in Limburg to commemorate the Irish prisoners who died in the Prisoner of War camp.

The ministry of the Dominicans amongst Athy people was carried out not just in the town of Athy over 750 years but in Fr. Crotty’s case in far away Limburg during World War I. Sadly three of the local men whom we will commemorate next Sunday died there and today they lie in German soil.

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Athy's Regeneration Plan

November 10, 2015, 6:18 am

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Despite the country’s slow climb out of the recession, provincial towns such as Athy remain somewhat stagnated. A welcome indication that future prospects are brighter can be garned from the recent sale of a number of vacant shop premises on the town’s main street. While the prices achieved were low, nevertheless the very fact the purchases were made indicates a growing confidence in the local economy.

Some months ago a number of local business people concerned at the depressed state of business in Athy came together to consider what could be done to revive the town’s fortunes. We have in the past often heard the claim that Athy was one of the best market towns in Leinster. Indeed those of us old enough to remember the 1950s will recall the busy main streets and the late night shopping which was a feature of Saturday nights in Athy.

It was a desire to reclaim the halcyon days of a previous generation that drove these business people to act. A number of meetings were held with interested parties and finally it was decided to commission a regeneration plan for Athy. A number of consultancy firms tendered for the job and following interviews Shannon Development Consultants Ltd. were appointed to undertake a study of the town and to prepare a detailed strategy for the economic, social, cultural and environmental regeneration of the town of Athy. That plan has now been finalised and will be launched by the Minister for State, Ann Phelan, at the Clanard Court Hotel on 10^th November next at 7.30 p.m.

The plan addresses the economic, physical and social regeneration of the town and specifically seeks to:

Reverse the current decline of the town’s retail sector.
Promote commercial and industrial development.
Identify and utilise the area’s natural resources so as to maximise the tourism potential of the area.

The Regeneration Plan provides for the setting up of working groups comprising local people in business or working in the town. Each group will be charged with dealing with a different aspect of the Regeneration Plan.

The plan is but a starting point. The local people must take ownership of the plan and work together to help Athy regain its previous prominence as a centre of retailing excellence and a provider of varied industrial employment.

Looking back over the history of Athy as evidenced in press reports of previous generations I was struck at how often in the past Athy has gone from boom to bust and back again. In 1807 Thomas Rawson of Glassealy wrote:

‘The extensive town of Athy.....holds out much invitation to English capital and English industry, its vicinity abounds with mill sites, it is full of unemployed inhabitants.....yet despite all these advantages Athy is neglected, is in poverty and has not any one manufacture carried on.’

Thirty one years later the situation had not changed and a letter in the Athy Literary Magazine of March 1838 noted:

‘The leaden hand of indifference operates on our rural amusements – no races, no rowing matches in our fine river, no farming or flower shows – no nothing, which could charm the mind, or elevate the sentiments of a people ignorant because neglected.’

Five years later Alexander Duncan, a Town Commissioner and proprietor of Duncan’s store in Duke Street, in a speech at the inauguration dinner of the Town Commissioners’ new chairman, Michael Lawler, said:

‘Those gentleman who had but lately seen the town could well appreciate the progress it has made in recent years.’

The Leinster Express of 30^th July 1859 was moved to claim:

‘There is not in Ireland an inland town that can boast of more public spirit than Athy.’

If the 1850s were a period of growth and prosperity for Athy, the same decade witnessed the loss of the summer assizes and the closure of the town gaol. Both were transferred to Naas, thereby marking the beginning of Athy’s decline as the principal town in the county.

Athy recovered from those losses and throughout the 1930s and the 1940s developed an industrial base which was underpinned by such substantial employers as Minch Nortons, the I.V.I. Foundry, Asbestos, Irish Wallboard and Batchelors Peas.

We have endured a sharp fall off in business during the recent recession, but the time is now right for the South Kildare town to exploit every opportunity to lift the gloom and improve business on the main streets. The public meeting in the Clanard Court Hotel on 10^th November is our opportunity to play our part in revitalising our town.

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Timeline of Dominican Life in Athy

November 17, 2015, 6:19 am

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Post 1169 Norman settlement established at the ancient Ford of Ae (Ath Ae)

1215 The Black Friars, also called ‘Order of Preachers’ (O.P.), one of the four mendicant orders of the Catholic Church founded by St. Dominic. Dominic gave his followers a rule of life based on that of St. Augustine. The members of the Dominican Order did not belong to any one house and could be sent anywhere on preaching missions.

1224 The Dominicans first arrived in Ireland.

1253/1257 It was traditionally believed that the Dominicans came to the medieval settlement of Athy in 1253 but the seventh centenary of their arrival was celebrated in Athy in 1957. Those first Dominicans whose names have not been recorded were like the earliest settlers in this area French speaking Normans. The Dominicans were the second Catholic order to establish a monastery in the vicinity of the ford on the River Barrow. Some years earlier Richard de St. Michael, Baron of Rheban, had invited the Crouched Friars or Friars of the Holy Cross to establish a hospital and a monastery on the left bank of the River Barrow to the north of the laneway now known as St. Johns.

1288 Within 30 years of their arrival the Dominicans hosted the first of several provincial chapters in the Athy Priory. Further chapters were hosted in 1295 and 1305. Clearly the Athy Priory buildings were large enough to accommodate the Dominican delegates who travelled from all over Ireland for these chapters.

1290s Richard Le Porter donated an acre of land to the Dominicans in Athy.

1308 The village of Athy was attacked and burned by the Irish. There is no record of what happened to the Dominican Priory.

1309 Several members of the Crouched Friars including Thomas the Chaplain, William son of Thomas Baker, Laurence Cook, John the Prior of St. Thomas of Athy, Thomas Haywood, John Miller and Friar Maurice of Athy were indicted for coming by night to the fishing weirs belonging to the Dominicans and by force of arms taking away a net with fish, the property of the Friars, to the value of 100s.

1315 Edward Bruce, brother of Robert King of Scotland, landed at Larne on 25^th May with the intention of conquering Ireland. Proclaimed King of Ireland and assisted by some Irish he marched south burning Dundalk and defeating the Lord of Trim before arriving at Ardscull just outside Athy. The Anglo Normans fought Bruce at the Battle of Ardscull on 26^th January 1316. Although Bruce was undefeated heavy losses were incurred on both sides. The Anglo Norman leaders killed in battle were buried in St. Michael’s Cemetery while the Book of Howth records ‘of the Scot side were slain Lord Fergusse Andersane, Lord Walter More and many others whose bodies were buried in the Abbey of the Friars Preachers of Athy’.

1317 Irish Chieftains petitioned Pope John XXII complaining that the English Courts in Ireland were not available to the Irish natives except where the cause of action lay against them and that the killing of an Irish person, whether lay or religious, by an Englishman, was not punishable by the Courts. Even more offensive to the Irish Chieftains was the claim by the non Irish clerics that it was ‘no more sin to kill an Irishman than a dog or any other brute. And in maintaining this historical position some monks of theirs affirm boldly that if it should happen to them, as it does often happen, to kill an Irishman, they would not on that account refrain from saying Mass, not even for a day’.

1347 The Black Death erupted in Ireland with upwards of one quarter of the population dying. There were several more outbreaks of the disease in the succeeding 40 years. Records do not survive showing its impact on Athy but the medieval village folk and the Dominicans could not have escaped the plague.

1357 The name of the first recorded Dominican Prior in Athy is noted as Philip Pereys. There is no record of his Dominican colleagues.

1358 The Irish again attack Athy resulting in peace negotiations involving the settlers and the Irish represented by the O’Mores and the MacMurroughs. The resulting peace was shortlived as in the following year Lord Ormond led an expedition against the O’Tooles, MacMurroughs and the O’Mores ‘in the leys of Athy’.

1370 The O’Mores again attacked and burned the town and monastery of Athy.

1417 The White Castle, built by Sir John Talbot to house a garrison charged with protecting the Bridge of Athy.

1453 John O’Lalor, Dominican Friar Athy who studied theology at Oxford for several years and afterwards Lector at Athy was granted dispensation, on account of illegitimacy, to have rule of a monastery on 3^rd March 1453. He was appointed Abbot of Baltinglass by papal provision subject to the charges against the present Abbot being substantiated and his profession into the Cistercian Order.

1488 Friar Maurice Fierry of Athy was dispensed from the law of the Order so that he might ride a horse, wear linen, carry a knife and eat meat.

1513 The 8^th Earl of Kildare while watering his horse at the River Griese near Kilkea was wounded by one of the O’Mores of Leix. He was brought to Athy where he died. That same year Athy was again subjected to attack by the O’Mores.

1515 King Henry VIII grants a charter to the inhabitants of Athy enabling them ‘to erect, construct, build and strengthen the same town with fosses and walls of stone and lime.’ The Charter provides for the annual election of a Provost by all the inhabitants on the feast of St. Michael the Archangel. The erection of town walls was to be financed by customs collected on all goods sold within the town.

1535 On 9^thJune an Order suppressing the Augustinian Monastery at Graney, Co. Kildare was issued. Graney was the first religious house in Ireland to be suppressed.

1536 Publication of the ‘Ten Articles’, the confession of faith of the Anglican Church.

1539 The Dominican Monastery in Athy was suppressed on 19^th August 1539. That same year Donald Kavanagh had burnt the Dominican’s Monastery so that when a jury sat to determine the extent of the Dominican property it found all the buildings destroyed, there being no other buildings there except what ‘are convenient for the farmer’.

1540 Robert Woulff, Athy Dominican Prior, withdrew with his small community of Friars. They left the Dominican House in Athy to find employment either as curates in the neighbourhood or moved to Connaught to take refuge in friaries which were outside the control of King Henry VIII.

1543 In December a detailed inventory of the former Dominican property in Athy found that it consisted of a Church, bell-tower, chapterhouse, dormitory, a large hall, three chambers and a kitchen, cemetery, an orchard and a garden containing 1 acre. It had two fishing weirs in the town, six cottages and ten acres of arable land. On the banks of the river Barrow there were two acres of arable and six acres of waste land. In Tullaghgorey in Co. Kildare it possessed one mill, and in Mullingrange Co. Kildare seven acres of arable land. On 24 January 1544 Martin Pelles, the constable of Athy was granted the lands and property of the Dominicans, in capite forever, at the annual rent of 2/8 Irish money. The property was later to pass to Robert Lalor of Mountrath by grant of Gerald FitzGerald Earl of Kildare.

1549 The first Act of Uniformity prescribes the use of the Book of Common Prayer. The Act of Uniformity together with the Act of Supremacy constituted the key statutory provision for the establishment of Protestantism in Ireland.

1557 Acts passed for the plantation of Leix and Offaly.

1575 The Protestant Chancellor of Leighlin reported ‘a great pestilence laid waste Wexford, Dublin, Naas, Athy, Carlow and Leighlinbridge’.

1577 O’Moores and O’Connors massacred at Mullaghmast while meeting with the English under guarantee of safety.

1584 Dermot O’Leary, Archbishop of Cashel, was executed on 20^th June.

1594 Walter Reagh Fitzgerald, son in law of Fiach McHugh O’Byrne and his sons, attacked the home of the Sheriff of Kildare at Ardreigh Castle killing the Sheriff’s family and some servants.

1600 John Dynmor in his ‘Treatise of Ireland’states ‘Athie is divided into two partes by the Ryver of Barrow over which lyeth a stone bridge, and upon it on a castle occupied by James Fitz Pierce ..... the bridge of the Castle ..... being the onelye ways which leadeth into the Queen’s County’.

1613 The Catholic King James I in an attempt to strengthen the Catholic majority in the Irish House of Commons creates 46 new boroughs and grants Athy a new charter. It provides for the setting up of a Borough Council, the annual election of a Town Sovereign and the right to nominate two Members of Parliament.

1614 A proclamation was issued against toleration of popery. All priests, friars and other members of clergy must leave Ireland before 30^th September.

1617 On 16^th December a further proclamation for the expulsion of Catholic clergy was issued.

1623 Oath of Supremacy required to be administered to all officers in corporate towns.

1626 Archbishop Ussher and twelve protestant bishops condemn toleration for Catholics declaring that ‘to grant the papist a toleration or to consent that they freely exercise their religion and profess their faith and doctrines was a grievous sin.’

1627 By this year there were sizeable Dominican communities once more in Dublin, Kilkenny and Mullingar. Athy was re-established and records for this year also show a Dominican priory at Inchaquire, Ballytore. Records refer to twelve friars living in the Castle at Belan, who are believed to be members of the Athy community.

Circa 1638 A chalice of this period is inscribed ‘Thomas Ronayne’ and ‘Dom. Conv. Athy’.

1641-’49 During the Confederate Wars, Athy, because of its strategic importance was besieged, captured and recaptured by in turn Catholic Confederates, Royalists supporters of Charles I and Parliamentarian forces.

In 1646 the Papal Nuncio Pietro Scarampi went to Athy ‘to salute his proper General (Owen Roe O’Neill)’. In an attack on the Confederate held town of Athy Thomas Preston, directed canon fire against the White Castle and succeeded in breaking the walls of the castle. He then moved the cannon on the same side of the river and directed it against St. Dominicans Priory. The Catholic Confederates who had occupied the Friary left, leaving the prior Thomas Bermingham and his Dominican colleagues in occupation. Daphne Pouchin Mould in her 1957 booklet wrote ‘The prior was Father Thomas Bermingham, a man of great holiness, and who, when the attacks began, set up a wooden cross on the top of the tower. He called both friars and soldiers to prayer in the chapel, and told them: “Your cause is just. God is obliged to help and assist you, and I assure you as a religious man, your adversaries and will not win the place at this time.” Eye-witness accounts state that the cross remained undamaged in spite of the attackers’ shooting at it, and there is also an account of St. Dominic appearing over the tower. The date of this vision was 15 September, 1648, the feast of the wonder working image of St. Dominic in Soriano, and it is said that it was seen both by defenders and attackers.’

1649 Oliver Cromwell arrived in Ireland on 15^th August. At Drogheda, the scene of his first military success against the Catholic Condederates, Cromwell had the entire garrison, including six priests, slaughtered. Amongst them was Richard Ovington, sub prior of Athy who was beheaded.

Prior Thomas Bermingham was a prisoner in Dublin. He was sentenced to transportation to Barbados but on payment of a large fine was instead exiled to the continent where he died in 1655.

It is believed that the Athy Dominicans sought sanctuary in Derryvullagh bog, known locally as ‘the Derries’. The prior of Athy in 1651/’52 was Redmond Moore, a distinguished theologian who was ordained in Spain in 1638. Exiled to the Continent in 1652 he later returned and was prior in Athy from 1661 to 1662. Later arrested he was imprisoned in Proudfoot Prison in Dublin where he died in 1669.

Another Athy Dominican who suffered imprisonment was Joseph Carroll, Prior of Athy in 1664 who was imprisoned in Dublin between 1668 and 1669.

1654 Government order forbidding the observance of Christmas. The following year a further order banned the observance of Easter holidays.

1655 Government orders that all Quakers be arrested and that Quakers from Dublin and Waterford should be transported to England.

1666 The Act of Uniformity orders the use of the revised Book of Common Prayer. Schoolmasters are required to be licensed by a Bishop of the Established Church and all public office holders must take the Oath of Supremacy acknowledging that the King of England rather than the Pope was the Supreme head of the Church in England and Ireland.

1679 Oliver Plunkett, Archbishop of Armagh, arrested in connection with the Tiths Oates ‘Popish Plot’ He was executed in London on 1^stJuly 1681.

1685 Richard Cuddihy came to Athy where he was prior from 1685 to 1688 and again from 1691-1697.

1691 Battle of the Boyne

Despite the defeat of James II at the Boyne the Dominicans of Athy seem to have weathered the anti religious storm and while Fr. Cuddihy was the sole Dominican in Athy in 1691, three years later there were four Dominicans there. By 1697 only two Dominicans remained, the Prior, living for the most part in Athy, the other priest, Edmund Shiel, living in Killelan and acting as an assistant to the Parish Priest of Castledermot.

1694 Act passed prohibiting Catholics from educating their children abroad or opening schools at home. Under the same legislation Catholics were forbidden to own a horse worth more than £5.

1698 Commencement of the transportation from Ireland of the Catholic clergy. The Dominicans were out of Athy for the next three or four decades.

1704 Act passed imposing penalties on Catholic clergy entering the country. Earlier in the year an Act ‘to prevent the further growth of popery’was passed restricting Catholics from buying land. The Test Act also passed and required all priests holding public office to take communion in the Established church within three months of taking up office. This effectively excluded Catholics and Dissenters from public office.

1705 English Parliament declares illegal the saying or hearing mass by anyone who has not taken the Oath of Adjuration. This oath required the renunciation of the Popes’ spiritual and temporal authority, the renunciation of Catholic doctrine and the Stuarts claim to the English throne.

1719 The Penal Laws appear to have relaxed somewhat and the Toleration Act was passed recognising the educational and religious liberties of Protestant Dissenters exempting them from penalties which previously applied in common with Catholics

1720 Mass houses were permitted and one such Mass house was located in Chapel Lane. An official report of 1731 noted that there were two Diocesan priests but no Dominican friars in Athy.

1735 A prior of Athy was appointed, but there are no details of who he was.

1743 Two Dominicans, both from the neighbourhood of Athy, returned to Ireland from the College of San Clemente in Rome. Thomas Cummins and Dominic Dillon are thought to have lived in the vicinity of Nicholastown. Despite the fact that religious intolerance was on the wane John Jackson, a local magistrate, was required to report to the Dublin authorities. On 6^th March 1743 in response to concerns about the ‘growth of popery’. He stated: ‘I cannot find that there is or has been any popish priests or regular clergy in this corporation. The priest lives in the Queens County about 2 miles from the town’. The priest referred to was Daniel Fitzpatrick, Parish Priest of Athy for 46 years until his death in 1758 at the age of 80 years.

1754 The Dominicans returned to Athy. The prior Thomas Cummins had a chalice made for the convent to mark the occasion. It bears the inscription: ‘Fr. Thos. Cummins Ords. Praed. Me Pecit Pro Suo Conventu Athyensi A.D. 1754’. Thomas Hanlon from Roscommon joined Thomas Cummins and Dominic Dillon in their thatched priory in a lane off High Street [now Kirwan’s Lane off Leinster Street].

1756 The Dominican historian Thomas Burke visited Athy. Scarcely a trace of the original Dominican Priory was in existence. He reported that while priors of Athy had been regularly appointed they could not live in the town as the largely non Catholic inhabitants bore ‘a perverse ill will’ towards them.

The Dominicans in Athy did not have their own chapel but assisted the Parish clergy in the Parish Church located in Chapel Lane.

1758 Archbishop Richard Lincoln of Dublin accused the Dominicans of attempting to take over the Parish of St. Michaels following which the Dominican friars left Athy for a time. Thomas Cummins later returned and was Prior in 1767, with Friar Michael Cummins who arrived from Rome in 1759. Until 1794 the Irish Dominicans still had three foreign colleges for the training of recruits and of the three it was San Clemente in Rome which supplied most of the Dominicans for Athy Convent. James Dunne and James O’Brien both returned to Ireland from Italy about 1779. Fr. Dunne was to serve in Athy for eighteen years until his death in 1797. Fr. O’Brien came to Athy from time to time. By 1780 the Dominican House in Athy was the only friary of any order in the Archdiocese of Dublin, apart from those in the capital city itself.

Fr. Thomas Cummins who died in 1788 aged 88 years is buried in St. Michael’s Cemetery as is Fr. James Dunne who died in 1797 aged 45 years.

The Dominicans resumed their work as curates in the local Parish Church and were also helping out in nearby Castledermot when required.

1810 Archbishop Troy of Dublin, himself a Dominican and his assistant Bishop Murray, visited Athy and the Dominican Priory.

1812 John Kenneally appointed Prior in Athy. The earliest surviving account book of St. Dominic’s Priory revealed how much the Dominicans relied on the two annual collections in the Parish Church and on the Dominican Quest. The Quest was an important part of Dominican life placing reliance on the charity of the local people. The annual Quest extended to Monasterevin, Dunlavin, Kilcullen, Castledermot and as far away as ‘Glendalough’.

1835 The Dominicans moved from their laneway house to a larger single storey building at No. 82 Leinster Street where an adjoining building served as the Dominican Chapel.

1842 John Kenneally, whose nephews also served in Athy, died in 1842 aged 78 years. Buried in St. Michael’s Cemetery his tombstone relates how he reared a brother and four nephews, all of whom were ordained for the Church.

1844 Athy’s Workhouse opened 9^th January. Over 1200 inmates die in the Workhouse during the Great Famine.

1846 The Dominicans purchased Riversdale House, approached from Duke Street via Tanyard Lane. Built in 1780 by Lewis Mansergh the property included a walled garden, some stables and 4 acres of land.

1850 The Dominicans moved into Riversdale House and adapt some of the outhouses for use as a church.

1885 The Dominican visitator Fr. Towers reported on the Dominican Chapel: ‘Notwithstanding the absence of architectural beauty and proportions it is very devotional and worthy of its holy use.’

1886 Fr. John O’Sullivan ordained in 1881 came to Athy in 1886 where he remained until his death in 1932, apart from 7 years from 1910. For long periods he was the only Dominican in Athy. Fr. O’Sullivan was much loved by the people of Athy and his sudden death while saying Mass was a great shock to all. He was buried in St. Michael’s Cemetery close to the grave of Canon Mackey who was his life long friend. The following year a Lourdes Grotto designed by Fr. Michael Kinnane C.C. and Brother Dolan of the local Christian Brothers and dedicated to the memory of Fr. O’Sullivan, was unveiled.

1914-1918 John Crotty O.P., former Prior of Athy, appointed Chaplain to Irish soldiers imprisoned in German Prison of War camps. There he renewed acquaintances with Athy men Michael Bowden, Michael Byrne and Martin Maher. These men died in Limburg Prison of War Camp before the end of the war and were part of the 122 or so men from the town of Athy who died in the Great War.

1955 A statue of St. Dominic donated by Georgie Farrell of Spring Lodge was unveiled by the Dominican Provincial, Rev. J.E. Garde O.P. During the ceremony honours were tendered by a detachment of F.C.A. under Captain J.J. Stafford and Lt. P. Dooley. The occasion was unique, if not in the whole Dominican Order, certainly in the Irish province. Although every Dominican Church possessed a statue of St. Dominic, it rarely happened that there was a solemn dedication of a public monument to the saint.

1957 The seven centenaries of the Dominican Order in Athy was celebrated.

1962 Fr. Philip Pollock, Prior of Athy from 1961-1967 and again from 1972-1975, oversaw the building of a new church for the Dominicans in Athy. The grotto erected in 1933 was removed and a complex roofed church erected after the laying of the foundation stone on 8^thDecember 1963. Funds for the new church were collected locally, throughout Ireland and America, which latter country Fr. Pollock visited on a fundraising mission. The new church was blessed and opened by the Dominican Provincial, Fr. Louis Coffey on 17^th March 1965.

1973 The small T shaped Church building opened in 1850 was demolished in 1973. Neither the main aisle nor the transepts were more than 16 feet wide. There were two galleries, one close to the priory entrance, the other at the end of the South transept and near to the bell tower which was erected in 1898.

1983 A new Priory was built between 1983 and 1984 by local building contractors D&J Carbery. The old Priory was demolished to ground floor level in 1984 and the structure then re-roofed to give the Dominican Hall which was opened in May 1985.

2015 The Dominican community consists of Fr. John Walsh, Prior, Fr. John Heffernan, Fr. Gerard O’Keeffe and Fr. Jim Candon. On 22^nd November the Dominican Order will vacate their priory and church in Athy and the only Dominican presence in the town will be the Lay Dominican Chapter which will continue to meet each month for prayers and reflection.

PRIORS OF ATHY

1357 Philip Pereys

1374 Henry Mody

1539 Robert Woulff

1648-49 Thomas Bermingham

1651-52 Redmond Moore

1661-62 Redmond Moore

1664 Joseph Carroll

1683-85 Thomas Brennan

1685-88 Richard Cuddihy

1688-89 Patrick Marshall

1691-97 Richard Cuddihy

1754 Thomas Cummins

1756-59 Dominic Dillon

1767 Thomas Cummins

1793 James V. Dunne

1799 James T. O’Brien

1802-12 John Gogarty

1812-20 John Kenneally

1820-23 Walter Brennan

1824-42 John Kenneally

1843-49 Laurence Cremmin

1850-53 William D. Donnelly

1853-61 Laurence Cremmin

1861-62 William D. Donnelly

1863-77 Thomas J. McDonnell

1877-80 Dominic Matthew Fulham

1880-84 Thomas Nicholas Duffy

1884-87 George Thomas Hughes

1887-90 Francis Purcell

1890-96 Thomas Pius Boylan

1896-00 John C. O’Sullivan

1900-03 Thomas Crotty

1903-06 John C. O’Sullivan

1906-08 James P. Dowling

1908 Stephen A. O’Kelly

1908-11 Patrick McCormick

1911-17 Raymund Kieran

1917-20 John Kiely

1920-27 W. Benedict Costello

1927-33 Francis Ryan

1933-36 Raymund Kieran

1936-42 Paul McKenna

1942-48 Jordan M. Noonan

1948-51 Pius M. Cleary

1951-57 W. Marcolinus Colgan

1957-60 Sebastian Casey

1960-61 Dominic O’Neill

1961-67 Philip Pollock

1667-72 Henry Peale

1972-75 Philip Pollock

1975-81 Leo Clandillon

1981-86 James Harris

1986-89 Anthony Roche

1989-92 Stephen Hutchinson

1992-98 Ailbe Henry O’Connor

1998-00 James Donleavy

2000-07 John Heffernan

2007-15 Joe O’Brien

2015 John Walsh

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Celebrating the life and music of Rev. Thomas Kelly

November 24, 2015, 6:24 am

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Next Sunday in the Methodist Church on Woodstock Street Athy Lions Club will host a musical event, part tribute, part celebration, of the musical genius of Ballintubbert born Rev. Thomas Kelly. The son of an Irish Judge he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and was intended to follow his father and join the Irish Bar. Coming however under strong evangelical influences he decided to devote his life to religious work and was ordained a Minister of the Episcopal Church in 1792 at 23 years of age. Despite his youth and relative inexperience he proved a popular preacher. As an intimate of Rowland Hill and John Walker his sympathies were wholly with the Evangelical movement.

The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Robert Fowler, disapproved of the Evangelical movement and was particularly critical of the ‘Methodistical’ activities of Kelly and his colleagues. The Archbishop inhibited Thomas Kelly as well as Hill and Walker from preaching in the Dublin Diocese. Thomas Kelly embarked on an independent course and continued to preach in unlicensed buildings in the capital city. In time however he seceded from the Episcopal Church and founded a new sect which was known as the ‘Kellyites’. John Walker also seceded from the Church in which he had been ordained and founded the ‘Walkerites’which continued to have an existence in Dublin up to the 1940s.

Thomas Kelly, a man of independent means, opened places of worship in his home town of Athy as well as in Portarlington, Wexford and Blackrock, Co. Dublin. The Athy Kellyite Chapel was located in Duke Street at the rear of No. 5. It was approached via the archway between what is now the Gorta premises and the adjoining Solicitors practice.

Another acquaintance of Thomas Kelly was John Nelson Darby, a fellow priest of the Established Church who like Kelly and Walker was to turn away from the Church of England. The early 19^thcentury saw the emergence of numerous religious sects and the aforementioned clerics were responsible for establishing three breakaway religious groups. The Kellyites, the Walkerites and the Plymouth Brethren founded by John Nelson Darby with others were, and in the case of the Brethren, still remain important in the religious life of many people.

Thomas Kelly was a hymn writer of considerable merit and during his lifetime he published eight editions of his hymns entitled ‘Hymns on Various Passages of Sacred Scripture’. The first edition in 1804 contained 96 hymns and the final edition which appeared 49 years later had a grand total of 765, all written by Thomas Kelly. The compositions reflect the personal piety of the author and in so many of them the note of praise is a marked feature such as to warrant the description of Kelly’s hymns as hymns of praise.

Thomas Kelly’s best hymns are to be found on the 1820 edition of his published work. ‘The Head that once was Crowned with Thorns’ is one of the comparatively few hymns of the early 19^th century which are included in modern hymnals exactly as they were written. It is regarded as one of the finest hymns in the English language.

Another Kelly hymn, ‘We sing the Praise of Him who Died’ is another admirably written hymn and its second verse is a particular favourite:-

‘Inscribed upon the cross we see

In shining letters, “God is love”,

He bears our sins upon the tree’

He brings us mercy from above.’

Kelly was also the author of several pamphlets including ‘A letter addressed to the Roman Catholics of Athy occasioned by Mr. Hayes Seven Sermons’. Another pamphlet of special interest to Athy folk was published in 1809 with the title, ‘Some Account of James Byrne and Kilberry in the County of Kildare addressed principally to the Roman Catholics inhabitants of Athy and its neighbourhood’.

In 1843 the Kellyites in Athy numbered approximately 40 and they met every week in their Duke Street chapel. Thomas Kelly who married Elizabeth Tighe of Rosanna, Co. Wicklow, lived at Kellyville but generally went to Dublin every second week to take service there. He died on Monday, 14^thMay 1854 and is buried in Ballintubbert. With his passing the Kellyites disappeared as a separate church group as its members joined the ranks of the Established Church and in some cases the Methodist Church.

Next Sunday at 3.00 p.m. Athy Lions Club will celebrate in song the life and work of Rev. Thomas Kelly. Do come along and enjoy what promises to be an enjoyable occasion.

Within the past few weeks Mary O’Sullivan retired as receptionist to Dr. Giles O’Neill. Mary is a most thoughtful and caring individual who made a meaningful contribution to the local community during her time as a Town Councillor and has continued to make that contribution as a member of the Arts Centre management team and as secretary of Athy Lions Club. We wish Mary well in her retirement.

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The Dominican Order leaves Athy

December 1, 2015, 6:26 am

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Evening dusk was fast falling as the procession lead by a colour party of retired soldiers preceded by a local pipe band started out from Tanyard Lane. The dark cloaked members of the Order of Preachers followed behind their colleague bearing a crucifix and flanked by lantern bearers. In keeping with the Dominican tradition Christ’s image faced the members of the Order as they walked in procession. They were walking away from a history accumulated over 758 years, a history marked by persecution, expulsion, imprisonment, torture, death and in latter years by peaceful adherence to a ministry of fellowship.

The evening shadows darkened as the Friars, walking three abreast, turned into High Street and approached the bridge across the River Barrow. That same bridge in darker days witnessed six young local men escorted by militia men as they marched to their place of execution in the Canal docks. It was then a time of political turmoil, even as the religious restrictions imposed on the Dominican friars and their fellow Catholics had begun to relax. It would take another 31 years before the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Act. Only then would the Athy Friars consider it prudent to move from their small priory in Convent Lane on the Dublin side of the town to a larger building which could accommodate a modest chapel in which the local people worshipped.

Pipers’ music filled the air as the procession reached the Market Square, passing by the town’s Shambles where for centuries meat was exposed for sale. Turning into Kildare Street the Friars steady march brought them near to the Clonmullin marshlands. There in pre-emancipation days a large church was built with the benefit of State compensation paid for a maliciously burnt church of smaller proportions which had been hidden away in one of the town’s laneways.

The arrival at St. Michael’s Church was the beginning of the final act in the assimilation of the ‘Dominican Catholics’ of Athy as ‘Parish Catholics’. The difference was one of allegiance, one of custom and tradition perhaps and one evolved over the years as the Friars and the Diocesan clergy kept their separate places of worship.

Seven hundred and fifty eight years of history was about to be absorbed as we participated in a service of welcome and thanksgiving for the Dominicans of Athy. Earlier in the acoustically splendid St. Dominic’s Church we were encouraged while looking forward to remember those good friars who ministered to us and our predecessors. Their names were not always recorded and living memory extending back two or three generations at most brings to mind only some of those fine men whose ministry overseas and laterally in Athy brought comfort and peace to so many.

One part of the life of Athy died that Sunday afternoon as the Dominican friars took leave of their priory and for the last time closed the doors of the Dominican Church. Four hundred and seventy five years ago the friars left Athy for the first time as King Henry VIII suppressed the local priory. Then Prior Robert Woulff withdrew his small community of friars without ceremony. The Dominicans would later return to Athy, even if a second withdrawal was necessary before they could return in peace and without harassment in the mid 18^th century. For the next 265 years the Dominican Friars of Athy continued their ministry amongst the people of Athy which their predecessors had first started as French speaking friars amongst the Anglo Norman settlers of the 13^th century. Their Athy ministry is now finished and as the last prior of Athy, Fr. John Walsh, lead his fellow friars augmented by Dominican friars from other Dominican houses in Ireland in procession through the streets of our town the people of Athy came out in their hundreds to show their gratitude.

The entire occasion was full of emotion and the sight of the friars walking away from their church which was closed for the last time was a particularly telling moment. The hundreds who attended the ceremonies included members of our separated church brethren which was wonderful to see. Many Dominican Mass servers of old were to be seen in the congregation and I was particularly delighted to see that the three sons of my old teacher Bill Ryan had travelled from Cork, Limerick and Maynooth to participate in last Sunday’s farewell.

The Dominicans have left us a huge legacy of which they can be justifiably proud. They have also left us a history which we should never ever forget. They were part of our community life for centuries and indeed they were our most enduring link with a history stretching back to within a few decades of the foundation of Athy as a settlement.

The loss of the Dominicans to Athy will be measured as the years gather pace but even now we know that the departure of the Friars Preachers from the town founded on the Ford of Ae has left a void in all our lives.

PS: I have given the street names as they were when the Dominicans returned to Athy in the early part of the 18^th century.

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Athy's 19th century prison

December 8, 2015, 6:28 am

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An inspector attended the jail located in White’s Castle in 1825. He was highly critical of the condition he found writing ‘this is, without exception, the worst County Prison I have ever inspected, as there are no yards, pumps, hospital, chapel or proper day rooms’. The inspector went on to state that he had been assured that the Duke of Leinster was making available ground for the construction of a new jail.

The Poor Law Commissioners visited the new jail in 1840, primarily in preparing a report for the Houses of Parliament in London, to make comparisons between the diet available to workhouse inmates and those in local prisons. They noted that the prisoners in the Athy jail received eight ounces of oat meal and one pint of milk for breakfast while their dinner was four pounds of potatoes with a pint of sour milk. Prisoners did not receive any supper in the evening. The commissioners noted that meat was rarely ever tasted by the Irish peasant and that the diets provided in prisons and workhouses did not differ greatly from that enjoyed by people living in their own homes. This was an ominous indication of the extreme dependency of the Irish population on the potato, the loss of which would wreak havoc when blight hit the potato crop in the years following.

The new jail built in 1830 on the Carlow Road was well established by the time prison inspectors visited on the 29^th of September, 1848. On the date there were 34 male and 17 female inmates. They noted that this was 22 prisoners less than on a previous visit. Accommodation for the inmates consisted of 22 single cells and 3 solitary cells together with 2 rooms. They found that the solitary cells were well ventilated and dry but rather narrow. In the middle section of the jail there were 25 cells with 1 prisoner each and two rooms with 3 prisoners in each room. They noted the cells had no form of heating and they didn’t seem large enough for their occupants. The jail generally was very dry, clean and in good repair and the building was in what was described as a 'proper state'. There was only one bath in the jail which was located in the pump house and was used by the prisoners when they were first admitted or if ordered to be washed by the jail’s physician. The inspectors complained that the prison chapel was far too small and that prisoners were obliged to stand during the religious services as there were no benches. They also noted that there wasn’t sufficient accommodation for the prison staff all of whom had to sleep and live in the one room and the erection of a second staff room was recommended.

Prisoners spent their time tailoring, shoe making, painting, carpentry, oakum picking, mat and net making and stone breaking. One of the prison officers, who was also a tailor acted as an instructor to the prisoners and all the clothing for the prison was made by the prisoners themselves. Two of the prisoners worked in the kitchen and in return they received 2 hours schooling from one of the prison officers. This was not a facility available to other prisoners. The female prisoners were supervised by the Governor’s wife while the assistant Matron was her niece. The women inmates spent their time sewing, knitting and washing. There were two children in the women's side of the jail at the time of the inspection. The prison authorities devoted one hour and a half daily to what was described as ‘moral instruction’ for the female prisoners. It was noted that the female prisoners had made progress in respect of same. However the inspectors noted with some concern that there wasn’t sufficient separation between the male and female prisoners and that many prisoners in the adjoining cells could easily communicate with each other.

There had been changes in the dietary habits of the prisoners since the Great Famine. Breakfast consisted of four ounces of oatmeal and four ounces of Indian meal with one pint of milk, while dinner consisted of a pound of brown bread and a pint of new milk. Potatoes had disappeared from the menu. The inspectors though did note that there had been a brief return to supplying potatoes to prisoners for a period of time but this was discontinued as they were unable to obtain a good supply of potatoes.

Interestingly the Protestant Chaplain to the jail visited 85 times while the Roman Catholic chaplain did so only 36 times while the surgeon attended on the prisoners 88 times in the previous year.

The Carlow Road jail closed in 1860 when the prisoners transferred to the Naas jail. Around the same time Athy lost the Quarter Sessions which had previously alternated between Naas and Athy. Some of the cells in the White Castle jail are still to be seen, while only a small portion of the 1830 jail is still standing.

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Aidan Prendergast and Athy Scouts

December 15, 2015, 6:31 am

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Voluntary work within the community is one of the most valuable contributions one can make to society. Many of us make that contribution on an irregular basis, but to find someone with a lifelong commitment to volunteerism is understandably unique. One such person is St. Patrick’s Avenue resident Aidan Prendergast who 38 years ago founded Athy Boy Scouts and who recently received the Order of Cu Chulainn for profound and long service to scouting. It is, so far as I am aware, the first time this particular award has been made to an officer of the local scouting group.

In 1977 Aidan, then working with the local building firm of D&J Carbery of St. John’s Lane, was approached by the local curate, Fr. Prenderville. He was asked to help with the setting up of a Catholic Boy Scout troop in Athy at a time when a separate Bading Powell Scout group were operating out of the Church of Ireland Hall at Church Road. I am happy to relate that both scouting groups amalgamated in 1995 to form a Scouting Ireland troop.

The initial meetings of the 1977 scouting movement were held in the Leinster Arms Hotel where Aidan was joined by Breda O’Neill of St. Joseph’s Terrace, Mairead Walsh of Stanhope Street, Jackie Johnson of Dooley’s Terrace, Christine Condron of Ratharrig and Trish Robinson of Dooley’s Terrace. I hope that in recording these early pioneers of scouting in Athy I have not overlooked someone – but if so let me know as it is important in recording local history of this nature to ensure that the record is as accurate as possible.

The Leinster Arms Hotel meetings resulted in the setting up of a scout troop catering for boys of 12 years of age. Weekly scouting sessions were held in the vacant Christian Brother’s School in St. John’s Lane and as the movement grew a group of cub scouts was also established. The old school premises had in time to be abandoned and alternative premises were made available courtesy of the Athy Development Association. This association founded by Bill Fenelon, Trevor Shaw, Johnny Watchorn and others did wonderful work in its time to encourage industry to locate in Athy. It was responsible for the purchase of lands later developed as the Woodstock Industrial Estate and also assisted the local boy scouts in transferring its activities to the old Minch Norton stores at the Canal Harbour. There the scouts remained for 10 or 11 years.

The ongoing growth of the scouting movement prompted the setting up of a parents committee with the stated purpose of raising funds to acquire a permanent home for the scouts. Fundraising over a number of years proved sufficiently successful for an approach to be made to the then Parish Priest, Fr. Philip Dennehy, for a new scout headquarters. Part of the old British Legion Hall site at St. John’s Lane, which in later years housed the Social Club and subsequently the C.Y.M.S., was acquired for a new scouts den. Development work by Jim Lawler, Building Contractor, started in 1990 and shortly afterwards the 5^thKildare Athy Scouts moved into their new premises.

In 1995 the two separate scouting movements in Athy came together and today operate as one troop based in the St. John’s Premises under the name ‘Scouting Ireland’. Nowadays the movement caters for approximately 100 boys and girls under a variety of categories with interesting titles as Beavers, Cubs, Scouts, Venture Scouts and Rover Scouts. Scout meetings are held 6 days a week with Beavers catering for 6-9 year olds coming together on Thursdays. Cubs with members aged 9-12 years meet on Wednesdays, while scouts, catering for 12-15 year olds come together on Friday. The older groups, Venture Scouts, catering for up to 18 year olds and Rover Scouts for over 18 year olds, meet on Saturdays and Mondays.

Some weeks ago the founder and former group leader Aidan Prendergast was presented with one of Irish scouting highest awards in recognition of his ‘dedicated and steadfast commitment to scouting which impacted on the lives of many young people.’ Aidan, while still involved in scouting, is no longer the local group leader, a position occupied in the past by Cecilia Crowley and presently by Fergus Lennon.

Others involved today in Scouting Ireland in Athy include John Delaney, Jackie Eustace, Mary Fricker, Niall Davis, Dave Ward, Ray Whelan, Breda O’Connor, Johnny O’Connor, Stephen Horan and Sandra Lennon. Again I am conscious in giving a list such as this that there is always the possibility of omitting someone whose contribution deserves equal mention. Let me know if any such person has been omitted.

The scouting movement has gone from strength to strength encouraging young boys and girls to become involved in a wonderful range of outdoor activities including camping, mountaineering, hiking and kayaking. All of these under the guidance and leadership of a group of adults whose commitment to their community is perhaps best shown by the work of the founder of the 5^th Kildare Athy Scouts Aidan Prendergast over the last 38 years.

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Remembering the Dead of World War 1

March 3, 2017, 7:51 am

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The knock on the front door was unusual. After all, the half door was always open and the neighbours never knocked. As she went to the door the woman of the house caught a glimpse of the uniformed telegraph boy standing outside. Her heart sank for she knew that he brought bad news just as he had to some of her neighbours since the start of the war. Those same neighbours were now gathering at her door, even as the telegraph boy passed over the telegram. As she feared the telegram from the war office read: ‘Deeply regret to inform you that your husband died of wounds on June 28^th. Lord Kitchener expresses his sympathy.’

The scene is an imaginary one, but in reality it was a scene re-enacted more than 100 times in the laneways and courtyards of Athy during the years of the 1914-18 war. The dreaded telegram was delivered to so many local houses during the 52 months of the war that neighbours readily recognised the scene even as it evolved. Sometimes the telegraph boy retraced his steps to the same house, not just twice but sadly in at least one case, three times. The Kelly brothers of Chapel Lane were to die fighting another nation’s war. Encouraged by local Church and civic leaders brothers Denis, John and Owen Kelly enlisted in the British Expeditionary Force to fight overseas where they died.

In many instances local men starved of employment and weary of the unsanitary and claustrophobic conditions in which they lived gave their names to the local recruiting sergeant in Leinster Street. They would after all be home by Christmas, or so they were told. The excitement of travel to foreign lands, pride in wearing a smart uniform and of course, the army pay, no doubt played a part in prompting the large scale enlistment of men from Athy and district. Perhaps even the promise of Home Rule played its part in encouraging many to join the ranks.

Later, as those who survived the war returned to their home town, their late comrades, the majority of whom had no known burial places, would be forgotten and overlooked by the general public and also by local church and civic leaders. Those who had encouraged recruitment now kept silent in the face of Sinn Fein’s rise in popularity. The pre war politics of the Irish Parliamentary Party had been overtaken by the political dominance of Sinn Fein. The local men who fought in France and Flanders and further afield were no longer war heroes. Their return to Athy was not marked by parades led by local bands as was their departure from the local railway station a few short years before.

The returning ex-soldiers would of necessity keep a low profile, apart from honouring their dead comrades once a year on Remembrance Sunday. But even that limited homage to the dead was not deemed appropriate to continue far beyond the election of the first Fianna Fáil government in 1932. The families of ex British soldiers of the 1914-18 war may have grieved privately and commemorated loved ones within family circles. Nowhere however was there any public recognition for those local men who responded to the call to arms and in so many cases answered with their young lives.

I have in the past expressed the view that we can remember our neighbours of long ago without in any way feeling that we are doing a disservice to what we ourselves believe. Whether you are a republican, a socialist or simply a political party member, commemorating the war dead of your town is not only a tribute to the young men of a past generation but also a mark of your respect for your town’s history.

Sunday the 10^th of November is Remembrance Sunday, the one day in the year when the dead of World War I are commemorated. Here in Athy six soldiers who died in their home town and are buried in St. Michael’s Old Cemetery will be the focus of a Remembrance Sunday ecumenical commemoration service to take place at 3.00 p.m. The service, which will remember all the local men who died in World War 1, is not intended as a celebration of war but as a commemoration for a lost generation and an acknowledgement of the years of neglect of those men who died during the war as well as those who survived.

Local men’s participation in the 1914-18 war is a part of our local and national history and in remembering those men we are recognising their contribution to their communities and the losses sustained by their families. An open invitation is extended to everyone to join in the commemoration service at St. Michael’s Old Cemetery at 3.00 p.m. on Sunday next, 10^thNovember.

No doubt many of you were puzzled to read of Mrs. Anna Duthie of 30 Duke Street. I’m afraid Homer nodded yet again as of course Duthie’s jewellery shop has always been at 30 Leinster Street.

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