A rare item for Offaly Archives: Hibernian Magazine for the year 1785

Offaly History have a vacancy for a qualified archivist at Offaly Archives (see our blog of 6 Jan. 2023 in regard to the post). Arriving for interview by air balloon would strike a chord. Speaking of which the balloon fire of 10 May 1785 is perhaps the best-known event in the history of Tullamore and yet there are few surviving accounts.

First there were almost no local newspapers serving the midlands at the time. Neither have diaries or letters survived of any of the townspeople of that period save one letter of 12 May 1785 published by way of reportage in the Hibernian Magazine of the fire that occurred on the fair day. This would have been on Tuesday 10 May 1785. The letter from the Tullamore correspondent is clearly the most useful and more informed than similar reports in Finn’s Leinster Journal and Faulkner’s Dublin Journal. Some of these reports put the loss at 130 houses and not 100 as advised to us by the letter writer. One other short note was penned by Molly Burgess (née Pennington) of the Methodist Community who lost their church (dated to 1760) in Swaddling Lane off Barrack/Patrick Street. This lane was also known as Ruddock’s Lane and post 1905 as Bride’s Lane. After the fire the Methodists build a new chapel or preaching house on the site of the present-day church. The current church was build 101 years after the first

on that site.

Cormac Street, Tullamore: a significant achievement for the planning process, 1786–2020. A contribution to Tullamore 400th and the Historic Towns Initiative to support town regeneration. By Michael Byrne

Cormac Street is somewhat unique in the story of Tullamore street development with its forty houses, two major institutional buildings and a town park. Rarely is a street preserved without blemish with so many elements over a two-hundred-year period. Cormac Street was also the home of the town’s major property developer and rentier Thomas Acres (d. 1836) who built his Acres Hall in 1786 (now the home of Tullamore Municipal Council). To the earl of Charleville and Thomas Acres is due most of the credit for the transformation of a green field site with Kilcruttin Hill and cemetery to the west and the Windmill Hill to the east. Acres could thank the war with France, 1793–1815, for the boost to the local economy that provided him with tenants for the terrace of houses on the east side. The expansion of Tullamore after 1798 due to the Grand Canal connection with Dublin and the Shannon provided the impetus to secure a new county jail (1826–30), county town status in 1832 and to take effect in 1835 with the completion of the county courthouse. War, politics and pride of place all contributed to the mix. The Bury contribution was rounded off when Alfred (later the fifth earl) secured a new railway station at Kilcruttin in place of that at Clonminch in about 1865.

Cormac Street has had the benefit of careful planning in its first hundred years and has managed to survive the excesses of the post 1960 and post 1997 periods of rapid development. The saving of Acres Hall in the 1980s was a significant achievement. What are these elements that contribute to the street and how did it all come about? Here are set out twenty points and probably more could be added.

The Tullamore Shilling, John Stocks Powell

The end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries witnessed in Ireland and Britain an acute shortage of physical currency from the royal mint.  Silver coin output was limited to the small coins of penny, twopence, threepence and fourpence. There were no shillings between 1787 and 1816.  Gold was issued, but copper coins had not been issued for Ireland since 1782.  There were two consequences to this: a large output of light weight counterfeit copper coins, known as ‘raps’ in Ireland; and a private enterprise output of token coins during the 1790s to the 1810s, which could be redeemed for official coin by the token issuer.

Tullamore – Places to visit to mark Tullamore’s 400th anniversary. Contributed by Offaly History with water colours courtesy of Fergal MacCabe

Township could be said to have begun in Tullamore in 1622. On 30 September the anniversary will be marked with an outdoor exhibition of drawings by Fergal MacCabe and a Timeline of Events showing the story of the town since the earliest times. We have covered many stories of Tullamore in over 420 blogs published in this series. All can be accessed on www.offalyhistory.com. For a quick link to all these resources see @offalyhistory

[Offaly Heritage Office writes on 24 9 2022]

Offaly Heritage identifies the wonderful engaging blogs by Offaly History outlining how the town of #Tullamore has developed.

Join us on Friday 30th in Millennium Square, Main Street, to see #OffalyHistory blogs presented in a picturesque timeline to celebrate #Tullamore400. We have entertainment from 2pm to 6pm in association with Up Close & Personal Promotions with thanks to the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media for their #LocalLivePerformance support.

Visit Offaly Tullamore Chamber

#Offaly #SpaceToExplore #SpaceToGrow ]

The growth of middle class-owner occupied housing in Tullamore, 1900-1960. By Fergal MacCabe. A contribution to the Decade of Centenaries

The growth of middle-class housing after 1900 may be said to have begun with the building of four ‘villas’ at Clonminch in 1909 by Charles P. Kingston, the then county secretary to King’s County Council. It was preceded earlier by the substantial house of Daniel E. Williams completed at Dew Park in 1900. Were it not for the war and the scarcity of materials we might have seen more housing in the 1916–23 period. However, there was a further scarcity of building materials and high prices in the early 1920s and it was not until about 1930 that middle-class housing began to grow again and almost entirely on Charleville Road and Clonminch the period prior to the Second World War. After a slow start in the late 1920s council housing was constructed in earnest from 1933–4 and up to 1940, resuming again in the late 1940s (see my earlier blog).

New light on Irish county map-making in the early 19th century – tracings from William Larkin’s map of King’s County/ Offaly, c. 1808

To conclude our Heritage Week series of talks online we want to tell you the illustrated talk New light on Irish county map-making in the early 19th century – tracings from William Larkin’s map of King’s County/ Offaly, c. 1808 has now been uploaded. You get a 30-minute introduction from the leading expert on the early maps of Offaly. This is followed by minute comparisons of the Larkin tracings for west Offaly with the published Larkin atlas of 1809. Dr Arnold Horner has prepared an in-depth lecture on map-making in King’s County in the early nineteenth century where he analyses the significance of the new map tracings attributed to William Larkin which were donated to Offaly Archives last year, and conserved by Liz D’arcy through Heritage Council funding. He particularly looks at features in the landscape around Birr, Banagher, and Ferbane.

With thanks to Offaly Archives last Tueday’s lecture (16 Aug. 2022) by Dr Arnold Horner is now online as are the maps which are recently conserved.

A presentation on Offaly Historical and Archaeological Society, 1969 – 2022 for Heritage Week.

This is a new 20-minute video recording on the history of the Society, now better known as Offaly History with lots of interesting photos especially recorded for Heritage Week. We want to thank all who have contributed to making it so successful so far with activities across the county, and continuing until Sunday. The lecture on Larkin’s maps and their predecessors we shall post next week, also a video on the Durrow Pattern. Our next lecture is on 5 September on Michael Collins and is important. More information next week.

Building Offaly’s courthouses and prisons in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Dr Richard Butler will showcase the building of Offaly’s courthouses and prisons in the years between roughly 1750 and 1850 in a lecture at Offaly History Centre, Bury Quay, Tullamore and via Zoom on Tuesday 12 July 2022. The presentation will place individual buildings in Tullamore, Birr, Daingean and elsewhere in the context of changing political and social events throughout Ireland in these years, highlighting local agendas alongside those of the British administration in Ireland. Illustrated with historic architectural drawings, old and new photographs, the lecture will also highlight schemes that were never built as it traces the ways in which the appearance of Offaly’s towns was transformed in these years by new public architecture. The lecture will incorporate new research on Offaly’s history undertaken in recent years by historians based in the county such as Michael Byrne alongside volumes such as Andrew Tierney’s new Buildings of Ireland guide for Central Leinster and the speaker’s recently published book, Building the Irish Courthouse and Prison: A Political History (Cork University Press, 2020).

Decorations and Dinners in Tullamore in 1873 for the coming of age of the fourth earl of Charleville and the marriage of his sister Katherine Bury. No 7 in the Tullamore 400th series. The oldest surviving wedding photograph of an Offaly family? By Michael Byrne

Charles William Francis Bury, the fourth Earl of Charleville, came of age on the 16^th of May 1873. Celebrations were delayed to the end of May so as to confine the party and the guests staying at the castle to one week and ending with the marriage of the earl’s sister to Captain Edmund Hutton on 5 June 1873. As stated in article no. 5 in this series the young earl died in New York on 3 November 1874 without marrying and was succeeded as fifth earl by his uncle Alfred. The latter died childless on 28 June 1875 and so the Charleville title died with him. The fourth earl’s sister, Lady Emily, succeeded to the estate while yet a minor. She married in 1881 but was a widow by 1885. Lady Emily died in 1931 having spent much of her widowed life abroad and was succeeded by her only surviving child Lt Col. Howard Bury (died 1963 aged 80). He inherited Belvedere, Mullingar from his cousin Brinsley Marlay in 1912 and sold the contents of Charleville Castle in 1948. As Lt Colonel Bury died childless the estate went back up the line to the children of Lady Katherine Hutton née Bury (died 1901). The celebrations of 1873 were poignant and the speeches full of irony. That the family had an excellent relationship with the Tullamore townspeople is clear from the speech of the parish priest Fr McAlroy who had succeeded O’Rafferty in 1857. Alas so little material has survived by way of letters or diaries of the speech makers of that exciting week in the history of Tullamore. As noted in the no. 5 blog the original address of Dr Moorhead on behalf of the town commissioners was donated by Professor Brian Walker to Offaly History. The late Brigadier Magan donated an important photograph of the 1873 wedding and pictures of the Hastings of Sharavogue in what we now call the Biddulph Collection in Offaly Archive.

The Hastings and Westenras of Sharavogue were among the guests at the Charleville wedding as also was Lord Rosse (the fourth earl) and the Bernards. Lords Digby and Downshire, the other big landowners in the county were absentees. This copy from Rathrobin and the two Irelands (Tullamore, 2021) available from Offaly History.

The Magnificent Mansions of Tullamore. By Fergal MacCabe. A contribution to the Tullamore 400th series, no. 6

Today, the most enduring reminders of the economic prosperity of Tullamore in the mid to late eighteenth century are the commodious stone town houses built by its prominent and successful citizens. Seven in particular are notable, all but one of which line High Street, the entry to the town from the south and also the approach road to the seat of the local landowner, Lord Tullamore.

Though one has been demolished and one significantly altered, the remaining  ‘palazzi’  today represent a unique architectural feature of the town and all are included on the Register of Protected Structures. Several display the distinguishing features of the finest Georgian townhouses of the period, being set back from the street behind railings and with central imposing door cases reached by a flight of steps. Though displaying differences in design, the plot widths of each mansion are remarkably similar, probably reflecting the leasing policy of Lord Tullamore.