Offaly and the Great War essays published in 2018 now on Open Access to all. Thanks to the Decade of Centenaries

The bumper volume of essays (list below) in Offaly and the Great War (Offaly History, 2018) can now be accessed free online at www.offalyhistory.com thanks to the Decade of Centenaries. The book of 28 essays is also available in hardcopy from Offaly History for just €20. In all over 50 articles free to download. Go to the Decade of Centenaries on the offalyhistory.com website.

When the great historian and first ‘telly don’ A.J.P. Taylor published his short history of the First World War just in time for the remembrance days of over fifty years ago he wrote that the war reshaped the political order in Europe. That its memorials stood in every town and village and that the real hero of the war was the Unknown Soldier.

45 The landscape of east Offaly: Croghan Hill and Clonsast. Frank Mitchell describes the landscape of east Offaly taking in Croghan Hill and Clonsast bog. No. 45 in the Grand Canal Offaly series

Frank Mitchell (1912–97) was a distinguished but unassuming academic, environmental historian, archaeologist and geologist. While he had many academic writings his best known book was The Irish Landscape (1976) about which he was typically modest. In 1990 Mitchell published ‘a semi-autobiography’ The way that I followed. The title was a play on Robert Lloyd Praeger’s, The way that I went (Dublin, 1937). Praeger in his peregrinations was less kind to Laois and Offaly than Mitchell with Praeger’s observation that neither county need detain us long (p. 235) and ‘there is not much of special interest’ (p. 237). Westmeath he found to be more hospitable than Offaly having less than half of the amount of bog in Offaly and more pasture. We may look at the Praeger account in another blog

Offaly and the Battle of Gettysburg. Michael Bennett, James Campbell and the Edenderry connection. By Kevin Guing

Was it chance and circumstances that led fourteen Offaly men to be present in early July 1863 on the fields, hills, and laneways of Gettysburg in what was, and still is to this day, the single most important battle in American history?

Chance:  the absence of any cause of events that can be predicted, understood, or controlled

Circumstances:  a condition, fact, or event accompanying, conditioning, or determining another

On reading any account of the single most pivotal battle in American History it quickly becomes obvious to even those with zero knowledge of battlefield tactics and military history that the main factors that decided the final outcome came about as a result of chance and circumstances, good and bad luck, decisions that only after the dust settled on the fields of Pennsylvania in early July 1863 were deemed correct and, fatally, one single decision made by a seemingly invincible General Robert E. Lee that doomed his Confederate Army to defeat and almost by accident won a victory for a Union Army commanded by a seemingly hesitant General George Meade. The margin of victory for the Union army, in the opinion of most military historians, was so tight that small and snap decisions were the deciding factor and not brilliant military tactics.  It seems that in the late evening of the 3^rd of July 1863 it was chance and circumstances that had played the most important role in the outcome of the battle.

30, Grand Canal Townlands Offaly, East to West: Toberdaly to Coole, No 30 in the Grand Canal Offaly Series. By Philomena Bracken, Offaly History

Today with the canal being a popular walking destination, you can see along the canals places associated with the townlands . Just outside Rhode, on the way to Edenderry, are the ruins of old windmills of the eighteenth century. These once had a wind shaft mounted in the cap (one is preserved at the Guinness brewery and was used by the Roe distillery). The wind turned the millstones in the tower below and were used to help ground grains for flour.

Seven windmills are known to have been constructed during this period in Offaly. By 1830, most of the windmills had gone out of service. The last windmill to be used was dated up to 1880, called the Fahy Windmill[1]. Tullamore had two in the eighteenth century on the hill behind O’Moore Street.

28-29, Grand Canal Townlands East to West: Rogerstown, Ballybrittan, Rathcobican. Nos 28-29 in the Grand Canal Offaly Series. By Philomena Bracken, Offaly History

Along our  Grand Canal Journey  from Edenderry to Shannon Harbour we come to Rogerstown, a small townland, in the Electoral Division of Monasteroris, in the Civil Parish of Monasteroris, in the Barony of Coolestown, in the County of Offaly.

The Irish name for Rogerstown is Baile Risteird meaning Richard’s/land.

(01.Monasteroris civil parish from the Index map Kings’ County 1838. Image source Offaly History Centre)

26-27 Vallancey’s account of the north Offaly towns in 1771 and the improvements that were expected to follow canal navigation. No 26-27 in the Grand Canal Offaly series featuring Edenderry, Daingean, Tullamore, Clara and Ferbane, County Offaly

This article looks at the north Offaly towns featured in Major (later general) Vallancey’s report carried out in 1771 and designed to support the construction of the new Grand Canal line to Tullamore and the Shannon.  Vallancey was then a young engineer, employed to report to the Commissioners of Inland Navigation and his findings were published in,  A Report on the Grand Canal or Southern Line (Dublin 1771).[1] This report is useful as a window on some of the north King’s County (hereafter generally referred to as Offaly) towns and villages.[2] 

25 The Canal breach at Edenderry, January 1916: no. 25 in the Grand Canal Offaly Series. By Ciarán Reilly

Nineteenth-century Edenderry experienced a prolonged building programme, spearheaded by successive members of the Hill family, marquess’ of Downshire. Chief amongst these was the building of a branch line of the Grand Canal to Edenderry in 1802, furthering the line which had passed within two kilometres of the town in 1796. This line brought extensive investment to the area and was the catalyst for the building of stone and slated houses which replaced cottages and cabins.

24 Some old photographs of the Grand Canal: the Shackleton photographs of Tullamore and West Offaly in the 1890s. No 24 in the Grand Canal Offaly Series. By Offaly History

Jane W. Shackleton’s Ireland compiled by Christiaan Corlett (Cork, 2012) is an attractive large format publication was issued by Collins Press and consists of 180 well produced photographs by Jane Shackleton. These pictures are important for the photographic record in County Offaly and mostly date to 1894.

Not surprisingly there are many pictures of mills in this book and there are about ten pictures of Offaly interest. Jane Shackleton started taking pictures in the 1880s and made several tours on the Shannon and along the Grand Canal and Barrow lines. These waterways photographs contribute greatly to the history of the canals and the great mills which were associated with river locations. Many of these were in fact owned by Quaker industrialists. Like other interested women of the period Jane Shackleton was a member of the Royal Society of Antiquaries (RSAI) and took photographs of some of their tours including that of June 1904 around Ireland. Midleton Biddulph, the amateur photographer and retired army officer of Rathrobin near Tullamore was also on this trip and some of his pictures survive and have been published as Rathrobin and the two Irelands; the photographs of  Middleton Westenra Biddulph, 1900–1920 (Tullamore, 2021). Corlett informs us that the Shackleton collection consists of 1,000 lantern slides and 44 albums containing several thousand prints, mostly of Irish subjects. This writer had the pleasure of seeing some of the Grand Canal and the turf works at Pollagh back in the early 1970s with Richard Shackleton and Jonathan Shackleton.

22-23 Grand Canal Townlands East to West: Rathmore to Ballycolgan, Edenderry. No 22-23 in the Offaly Grand Canal Series. By Philomena Bracken

Along our Grand Canal Journey from Edenderry to Shannon Harbour we come to Rathmore, a small townlands, on the south side of the canal. Rathmore is in the Electoral Division of Edenderry Rural, in Civil Parish of Monasteroris, in the Barony of Coolestown, in the County of Offaly.

The Irish name for Rathmore is An Ráth Mór meaning great, big ring-fort.

Here we can find the site of a possible Enclosure, it can be seen in outline from aerial photos. Enclosures are one of the most common sites found in Co. Offaly, with over hundred found all over the county. They are often similar to other types of enclosures defined either by a bank or a fosse, such as the Ringforts.

They are identified from other enclosures by being either very large or small and without an entrance. Many are only known as cropmarks, visible only from aerial view, they have no original dates but some may be from the Iron Age.

21 Edenderry, the Grand Canal and local development, 1786-1845. No. 21 in the Grand Canal Offaly series. By J.J. Reilly

At the opening of the nineteenth century Edenderry was said by one observer to soon ‘be a heap of ruins.’[i] The new Grand Canal was expected to bring relief to Edenderry and the surrounding hinterland. In the aftermath of the 1760s economic downturn in the woollen industry Edenderry suffered greatly having once employed 1,000 workers in the trade.[ii] The Downshire estate in the town and surrounding hinterland consisted of 14,000 statute acres of land.[iii]

The linking of Edenderry to the canal was of economic necessity in the last decade of the eighteenth century. As Ciarán Reilly explains:

‘Without the Grand Canal, Edenderry in the nineteenth century would have not as prospered as it did, the canal providing a much needed communication network and transportation for goods such as peat, corn and flour to Dublin.’[iv]

Charles Vallancey believed ‘the peasantry are starving and nothing will contribute so much to their relief as the Inland Navigation.’ John Hatch, as Edenderry agent for the Blundell estate was aware of the potential for economic progress of the Grand Canal for the town. (5 W. A. Maguire, ‘Missing persons: Edenderry under the Blundells and the Downshires, 1707-1922’ in William Nolan and Timothy P. O’Neill (eds), Offaly: History & Society (Dublin, 1998), pp 515-542 at p. 524.)

In June 1787 Hatch alerted the Blundells that it was confirmed the canal would pass near Edenderry:

‘… by this resolution of the company everything will rise again and higher than ever and I have not now the smallest doubt of our going on with the canal to or near Edenderry.’[vi]