In April 2023 our little history group had a successful trip to the town of Wexford, where it was decided that our next outing would be Tullamore. So, on 28 September, we came together for lunch in the bar of the Bridge House, of which I have fond memories of getting warm and dry after a trek in driving rain from Daingean during my walk across Ireland in 2001, before checking in to our bed and breakfast accommodation at the Sea Dew guesthouse.
After lunch we took a walk up the town to have a look at the Offaly History Centre owned by the Offaly Historical and Archaeological Society. It is a very impressive facility indeed, an extensive premises just chock-a-block with books old and new, collections of records of all kinds, bound newspapers, photographs, family papers, school records – the list goes on and on. Michael Byrne had been introduced to me by Fergal McCabe: Fergal’s watercolour works are everywhere there.
We walked about the town after that, visiting the old harbour, which is, we were told, to be developed as a tourist venue, and we could see its great potential in this regard. At the moment it seems to be used for general canal works, such as fabricating canal locks: there were huge lengths, 400mm square, of a very dense timber, possibly greenheart but similar in colour to mahogany, being cut up to form the locks.
After this we visited the Church of the Assumption, a substantial but slightly confusing gathering of 1900 neo-gothic volumes and a graceful 1986 laminated timber structure due to a fire in 1983. A treasury of fine stained-glass windows, many by Harry Clarke (from the Jesuit seminary in Rathfarnham in Dublin) ensured we spent a while roaming about the interior. My companions were very impressed by the surviving Georgian architecture scattered about the town, from the modest domestic facades to the more elaborate larger buildings.
After checking into Sea Dew Guesthouse where we were staying, we had an excellent evening, with a good meal at the Captain’s House followed by a few drinks at Digan’s pub.
On Friday morning we started our out-of-Tullamore trip, beginning with Durrow Abbey, monastic site and high cross. The monastic site is said to have been one of the earliest founded by Colmcille, around AD 551, before his exile to Iona, and the most important of his monasteries. It was in the scriptorium here that the Book of Durrow was produced. Unfortunately, other than the odd earthen undulations, practically nothing left of the original buildings: some monastic and other remains are said to have been built over by the modern, probably First Fruits, Church of Ireland church. Unfortunately, the spectacular Ninth century high cross we were keen to see has been moved inside the church and could only be glimpsed through a glazed panel in the door. St Colmcille’s well was nearby, but was flooded so we couldn’t get to it.
We walked on a further kilometre to view the fine nineteenth century house, Durrow Abbey, which was built by Lord Norbury on the site of an older house in around 1831. It is unfortunately derelict, boarded up and in the care of the OPW, with numerous security cameras monitoring the approaches. Two stories over basement in cut limestone, the house is very substantial, although not entirely replaced after being burnt in 1922. Bought by the government in 2003, it is unfortunate to see it lying empty and idle.
Onwards we went, north to the town of Clara for a coffee. A man in Tullamore had told us of an American, who stopped looking directions for Clara, where he was trying to find some relatives. We found Clara a nice and interesting little town and we had a pleasant coffee and scones there in a main street café.
Our next stop was the hamlet of Boher, where I could remember being surprised to come across a fine twelfth century shrine to St Manchán in the early nineties. The shrine is a beautiful and marvellous survival, and it is amazing that it has been retained in the area for fourteen hundred years without being filched by the National Museum. Here again we found Harry Clarke represented in five of his windows, one of them portraying St Manchán.
Our next destination was Lemanaghan, site of a seventh-century monastic foundation. Again, little remains other than some ruined churches and the stump of a high cross, but off down a green road, clearly an ancient way or togher, from the signs of its paving, we found St Mella’s little cell. She was St Manchán’s mother, nearby is St Manchán’s Well, shaded by a tree festooned with devotional offerings and clearly still a pilgrimage place.
Our next stop was at the canal-side hamlet of Pollagh, where I was keen to show my companions the amazing bog-oak altar furniture in the modern church there, built by the people about 1901 from local yellow bricks that they made. It originally had a V-shaped plan with an outdoor space between the two arms of the V – with the men on one side and the women on the other, all could see the altar but the other sex was not in view. It was remodelled in 1959 by roofing over the outdoor space and absorbing it into the main plan. The bog yew altar furniture by Michael Casey is magnificent: the yew has been carbon-dated at 4,800 years.
There were also two Harry Clarke studio windows to see there. When we had arrived in Pollagh, we had hoped to get a sandwich at the pub there but it was closed. A woman we met in the church, however, rang the pub there and then and they said they’d open for us, so off we went. At the pub, Gallaghers, The Pull Inn, we met Josie, just going up the road to get bread for our sandwiches! Inside her daughter kept us entertained while we had pints, coffee, tea and freshly made ham, cheese and tomato sandwiches, and they were delicious. When we were leaving, we were amazed that they wouldn’t take any money for the sandwiches, and even strongly resisted a tip, although we left a tenner under an ashtray anyway. What an experience of Offaly hospitality.
Our next stop was Rahan, where my companions were very impressed by the little churches and their siting. This time, I took more interest in the carvings on the window linings, and the little head on the side of the hood moulding on the east window of church two, that Dick pointed out. The north window on the roofed church also had an elaborate carving, only discerned by careful examination, of a griffon and a dragon.
That evening we ate dinner in the Bridge House: it was excellent and reasonably priced, and followed that by a nightcap in Eugene’s bar, up at the canal bridge. Altogether, Tullamore was voted an excellent destination.
Text and pictures Michael Fewer. Captions Offaly History
Many thanks to Michael Fewer for this colourful report of his trip with his friends to Tullamore.
We located the following tributes to his work.
A modern Praeger – his knowledge of Ireland and its countryside is unrivalled’, Books Ireland.
‘Vivid and full of wonderful detail’, Colm Toibin, Cara Magazine.
‘I am greatly indebted to other authors. Most of all, perhaps, to Michael Fewer, who has shown me a path of excellence which I have tried, unsuccessfully, to follow’, Joss Lynam, Easy Walks Near Dublin.
‘One of Ireland’s best known walkers’, Lonely Planet Guide.
‘..a tapestry of colourful people, historical figures, successive waves of invaders with strange cultures and languages – all set against pleasant landscape and national wilderness areas.’ The Irish Mountain Log.
‘Michael Fewer, as always, has done his subject matter great service’, Hugh Oram, Books Ireland.
‘A unique social, historical and photographic survey…’ Waterford News and Star.
‘The historical detail is immense…although his knowledge is considerable he dishes out the information in small and easily digestible mouthfuls. The book has a modest tone – cultured but never lecturing.’ Dick Warner, The Irish Examiner.
‘He has a highly developed ability to read, or describe a landscape, its flora, fauna and history’, Albert Smith, Irish Independent.
‘Each page of Fewer’s fine book makes the history and geography…so accessible, poetic, warm and tapped into the cortex of the beauty that characterises the uplands and valleys today,’ Frank Hanover, The Sunday Tribune.
‘The author’s commentary on the annotated history of each location and his superb photographs are quite stunning. His architectural eye does not desert him in this beautifully designed book’, Ruairi Quinn, The Irish Times.
‘Michael Fewer…is one of Ireland’s leading outdoor writers’, Dick Hogan, The Irish Times.
‘…laced with the drama of frightening climbs and the joy and inspiration he derives from the natural world’, The Munster Express.
‘Fewer…sifts through a palimpsest of overlapping pasts – grand ruins, little churches, fishermen’s cottages and pubs – and his artless reporting has moments of surrealism’, Michael Viney, The Irish Times.
‘has a finely tuned sense of what people like’, The Limerick Leader.
‘A pleasure to read in so many ways’, Irish Mountain Log.
‘What comes across is a polite but inquisitive stranger learning truths about a place that would never be revealed to the average visitor. Travel writing should be like this, but often isn’t…’, Dick Warner, The Irish Examiner.
‘renowned Irish hillwalker and author’, Anna Coogan, Evening Herald.
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