The Sherlock family at home at Rahan Lodge, Tullamore in the delicious summers before the war with two of their handsome sons. All of whom foughte in the war. Gerard is second from right and Eddie extreme left.
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 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.
The launch on Sunday 11 November 2018 at Tullamore Central Library of Offaly and the Great War brings us one step closer to recalling those who fought in the war from this county and those who died. It is difficult to believe that a war that killed perhaps 40,000 Irishmen and upwards of 700 from or connected with this county should have received such little attention over the 100 years. Offaly and the Great War is the first such publication to provide more than listings of those who died.
As somebody from an old Tullamore family that lived in County Offaly for almost 150 years I feel I still have a place there in my old country, though I seldom visit now. I prefer the mild climate of Jo’burg and the Cape. My extended family had happy (and some sad) recollections of the old days in Tullamore. We were there from the 1760s as shopkeepers, hoteliers and, latterly, we were a medical family for two or three generations.
Our family owned what was later Hayes’ Hotel and is now, I am told, a Boots Pharmacy. Our old hotel in Tullamore was demolished nearly twenty-years ago. Some of our family lived in Moore Hall in Earl Street, Tullamore before emigrating to South Africa about the time of the Boer War. We left in a sad state as a great granduncle had cut his throat on the morning of the inquest into the death of a political prisoner in Tullamore jail – a man called Mandeville in the late 1880s.
Ireland is still a fine country and I owe much to it. Having sat at the feet of a kindly grandmother I know something of Tullamore and its old families. The story I have to tell is of a lovely young girl who was killed on the stairwell in Charleville Castle in the 1860s, over 150 years ago. Some say that she still haunts the place. Continue reading →
New discoveries of old views or photographs of Tullamore are always of interest. Street scenes of Tullamore are not known to survive any earlier than 1902 (views of the jail and Charleville Castle excepted). These 1902 views are from old postcards and show only the main streets. We have none of the lanes of the town until later, and then only a few.
This photograph of O’Connor Square was taken about 1900, or a little earlier (and preserved courtesy of the National Library) shows the fine corner building erected by the distiller Joseph Flanagan in 1787 with its original glazing bar/windows and Georgian doorcases. This is the large building from the former Willie and Mary Dunne’s shop to the William Hill bookmaker’s office, beside Gray Cuniffe Insurance. Like the Adams-Tullamore House at the junction of O’Moore Street and Cormac Street it is a substantial three-storey house closing off the square on the southern side with some ten bays to O’Connor Square and six to High Street. The building was carefully planned as can be seen from this lovely old photograph, courtesy of the National Library of Ireland. This is the earliest surviving view of the building.
Also of interest are the bollards fronting the square, the shopfronts and the name Tullamore Brewery on what is now the Brewery Tap. Deverell’s brewery was in this location from about 1830 and was taken over by Patrick and Henry Egan about 1866. It continued to produce Egan’s Ale until the early 1920s. The ironwork in front of G.N Walshe and the fine doorcase on this house and what is now Sambodino’s and Kilroy’s showrooms (currently Mr Price) shows the changes on the town’s fine buildings since the 1900s.
Now with shopping moving out to the suburbs there is a case for more restoration of what were residential properties in the town based on the new realities of greatly reduced turnover in town centre shopping.
The road surface was not yet steamrolled – that would have to wait until after 1914–15.
It will be interesting to see how any pub and club in the former Woodchester building will retain the façade of the existing building (the former Dixon residence erected in 1752) and what lighting and advertising will be permitted by the planning authority.
Now the old post office has been painted and a carpark provided to the rear for 100 cars. This is forty more than in the square and should mean that the entire square saving the road to the Tanyard should be considered for presentation to the public as most other squares are in fine European towns.
What has gone in the picture includes the bollards, the house where Galvin’s Ladieswear was located (formerly Gill’s drapery and now Anthony Kearn’s Guy Clothing). The former McMullen three-storey house opposite Guy Clothing was demolished in the 1940s to make way for the Ritz Cinema. The cinema, in turn, was demolished in 1982 and part of the site acquired for the access to the Roselawn town houses.
Views of the Flanagan building in the early 1900s and again in the 1980s
Good buildings have survived including the offices of Conway & Kearney and much of the square. The lovely old 1740s building where the library is now located was demolished in 1936 to make way for the new Tullamore Vocational School. The 2011 façade to the old school (later library) appears to have worked well. The Bank of Ireland restored the facades of its buildings in 1979 as did the Northern Bank the former town hall, now Eddie Rocket’s. Finally, a few gas lamps can be seen in the picture. These may date back to 1860 when gas lighting was first introduced. It was the era before the telegraph and later telephone poles and, of course, the motor car.
The county council’s works for O’Connor Square are likely to commence soon. After many requests the war memorial will stay where it is. It was erected in 1926 on the site of the old town fountain of the 1890s and before that a solitary gas lamp stood there from the 1860s. It was the first public memorial erected in Tullamore and was centrally placed for obvious reasons.
Tullamore in the early 1960s with the original doorcase still to be seen at G. N. Walshe. Also Ritz Cinema and the original facade and exterior ironwork at what is now Sambodino etc. The Egan hardware can be seen beyond Conway & Kearney at what is now Anthony Kearn’s shop.
Picture: O’Connor Square and High Street about 1900 and changes thereafter.
To be invited to participate in the Biennale is one of the highest accolades for an architect – to be asked to curate it, set the theme and organise the gigantic assemblage into a coherent whole, is simply stratospheric and lifts the reputation of the organisers into the top most rank.
This year’s show is entitled ‘FREE SPACE’ and runs from May to November. It is curated by Grafton Architects who have established their international reputation with new university buildings in Milan and Lima. Grafton is the creation of two remarkable women, Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell who are recognised as among the most important female architects of our time. Critics have marvelled at the bravura, confidence and muscularity of the architecture of the quietly spoken, almost excessively modest pair
. Views of the Boconi building in Milan (Universita Luigi Bocconi, Milan, Italy).
Yvonne Farrell is, of course, from Tullamore (Clara Road and St. Philomena’s Convent School) and acknowledges the formative experiences of growing up in the town on her subsequent career. She sees architecture as an essentially collaborative process produced by the entire team at Grafton, which includes her fellow director Ger Carty from Walsh Island. The Offaly tinged firm is now engaged in work in London, Toulouse and Paris but in particular have two important projects in Dublin, the redevelopment of the former ESB offices and the new City Library in Parnell Square. Early sketches suggest that these will be exciting additions to the capital city.
The exhibition hall in Venice
The Biennale exhibition which is spread over three different locations around Venice has fifty five national pavilions and individual projects/presentations by one hundred architects. All are stimulating and I wish I had the space to discuss them in detail, but would single out just one entry that appealed to me. For the first time ever, the Holy See was invited to participate and responded by commissioning seven well known architects to create seven chapels (or contemplative spaces, as the more secular might call them) on the island of St. Giorgio and each is delightful yet profound in its own way.
The scale of the whole exhibition can be overwhelming and I would not be the first to observe that while architects can be fluent in their visual presentations, the impenetrability of the language used to describe their projects can often be daunting. The Irish Pavilion is devoted to an exhibition entitled ‘FREE MARKET’ which is a study of the market square as a place of social, cultural and commercial exchange in smaller Irish towns. Fifty examples are cited including those in Edenderry, Portarlington and Mountmellick. This entry has attracted a lot of attention and has featured in reviews in the international media, attesting to the universality of this seemingly Irish typology. Regrettably, while offering comprehensive surveys and a degree of analysis, no case studies are supplied of successful transformations. Indeed, the only example given is that of Dungarvan in which the sole change would appear to be that of providing a better quality of paving under an otherwise unaltered carpark.
Boconi building, Milan
As the controversial pedestrianisation of both Emmet Square in Birr and O’Connor Square in Tullamore has shown, the role of market squares and the approach necessary to converting them in whole or part to public spaces is a lot more complex than the Irish entry suggests. I believe that such initiatives can only be realised in the context of well laid overall plans which consider, traffic, parking, land uses, retail needs, urban design, architectural conservation and a myriad list of other issues which can justify their future scale and nature. Standalone building projects just don’t work.
These minor quibbles should not diminish our pride in the prestige which Yvonne and Shelley have brought to Irish architecture and to their own roots. In a commentary on the Biennale, the distinguished architectural critic Shane O’Toole has written of how Irish architects of the past ‘would have been amazed to learn that less than half a century after we ‘joined’ Europe, Irish architects have resolutely clambered to the top of the international architecture mountain range, and that Shelley and Yvonne have planted our flag of values at its very summit’.
Department of Finance, 7-9 Merrion Row, Dublin 2: top left.
Right: University of Engineering and Technology in Lima, Peru, won the RIBA’s inaugural International Prize last December
How marvellous it would be if they were commissioned to design an important building here in Offaly! The imminent redevelopment of the Harbour in Tullamore would present an excellent opportunity here in Offaly!
Offaly History blog had a huge response to Terry’s memories of Tullamore town and the pool. When he was in Tullamore in June 2018 to launch his Verdun to the Somme book of poems we asked him to send us more material for our readers. Here we publish one of his poems ‘My town’. We added the pics. Enjoy. We have big news next week with our 100th blog.Continue reading →
The 1540s and the 1550s was a turning point in what we now know as the county of Offaly. It was a time of colonising wars when the administrative county, then known as King’s County, was established by force and expropriation of the lands of the native families. It was in the time of Henry VIII of the Tudors and Wolf Hall television series fame that serious inroads began to be made into the area we now call County Offaly. The actual shiring into an administrative county of the territory of the O’Connors, O’Molloys and the other native families went on over sixty years from the 1550s to the 1610s. The O’Connors had been allies of the Kildare family of FitzGeralds, whose leaders were all killed in the 1530s, after the revolt of Lord Offaly, Silken Thomas. From then on the conquest of the midlands was the firm policy of a reinvigorated English administration under Henry V111 and the administrative expertise of Thomas Cromwell. Continue reading →
Terry Adams was born in Cormac Street, Tullamore, to parents Terry and Kathleen Adams. He has spent all but two of the last 34 years living abroad. Living four years, 1984 to 1987, in the United States and, since 1990 in Luxembourg. He began writing after the death of his father in 1976 and has penned novels, collections of short stories and books of poetry. His true passion is poetry, a passion passed on to him by his father. In this essay he recalls the town of Tullamore in the 1960s – a town that has now greatly changed. The conviviality of the old pool and the leisure to spend the entire day at the pool side has vanished. Terry’s uncle, P.F.(Paddy) Adams, it was who proposed in the mid-1930s that the town council build an outdoor pool. It was completed in 1938 and opened on the same day as the new houses in O’Molloy Street. Continue reading →
Our thanks to our contributor Cosney Molloy for this piece. He is the perfect gentleman and sometime we will get him to accept Honorary Membership. He says he is not old enough yet. Like the whiskey he gets better as he gets older. If Galways wins tomorrow he will have a few.
I see my friends in the Offaly History Centre have organised a tour of the old industries of Tullamore to start at 2 pm from O’Connor Square on Sunday the 19th. It all part of this new idea Heritage Week. I am down for Clonminch Cemetery but I might skip the end of that and head up the Tanyard. I might skip a bit of Michael Byrne’s tour too as I want to head to one of the pubs to see the hurling. It should be great. I believe some of the Egan family will be there too. I remember when Frank and the family lived in Acres Hall and the bell at Christmas time down at Bridge House. Paddy Egan was up in Charleville Road with the minerals and Harry was down in Egan-Tarleton. That’s called the Granary now and must have forty apartments where the heaps of grain used to be.
During the late years of the Second War the town was a hive of industry. Egan’s had their Bridge House shop in full swing and at one time had coach building, saw mills and, of course, the famous brewery and they bottled whiskey too and like Williams had salesmen on the road six days a week. Joe Kenny used to tell me about it when I left the town. Himself and Pat Carty and all the teachers in town were great buddies and used to stay in lodgings with plenty of free time.
The Tullamore Distillery was going strong most of time and my namesake started it in 1829. That will be 190 years ago next year. Over in the Tanyard was the old tanning business. In fact I read somewhere that Marrons shoe shop in town could trace its history right back to the time when a certain Mulready man had a tannery business where Rattigan’s/ Wrafter’s Copper Urn was later. Then we had the bacon factory from about 1929 until 1989. The later Mr Quill told me that it gave work to nearly 100 people and that you could hear the roars of the pigs and sometimes the river turned red. OMG as my daughter would say. I think Lidl are going in to some of that old place soon. It will 30 years next year since they locked the gates.
Up the town my sister had work in Salts in the early days. I remember a John Carroll worked there and my old friend the late Michael Dowling. Sure it had nearly 1,000 people at one time. I think it closed about 1982. It’s hard to believe it now. Bill Proctor I knew and I remember to see Arthur Greene when he ran the place in the sixties.
Its great to see all the old pubs in town, Wrafter’s Harbour Bar, Hugh Lynch’s (my son tells me he is having a burlesque tonight. Sounds interesting but I will go down early maybe and have one of his nice rare whiskies. I met Paul Bell a few times. He always has the hand out to welcome everybody and has a fine place. I remember Kevin Adams in it and getting coffee in with my mother in Egan’s time. Behind it was the brewery and Seed and Manure and what not. Lumleys went in there after and I think they packed sugar over in the Tanyard where that funny man Oisin Sullivan is now. He is a character. Years ago that is where a man from Waterford, Aylward, I think, had bacon curing and later there was tea packing.
Come to think of it does anyone have the old tins with the Williamses Red Cup tea. And you remember the PAK orange and Egan’s great lemonade and orange. I am told that is still going on with a man called Harney, somewhere up in Spollanstown near the hotel where I often stay when I come down to Tullamore. Years ago Paul and Vincent were up there with a farm business. I think the Co-op moved there after. Come to think of it my old friend Martin Bracken tells me the Co-op will be 100 years old this year. I suppose they will have a dance. I remember all the great dancing in Tullamore and Christy May in his younger days. I hear he was one of the big men behind the show that I came down for a few times.
You know Tullamore has a lot going for it
Coming back to the whiskey it’s wonderful to see the new place out on the by-pass and I hear there are nearly 100 people working there. What would all the salesmen say who used to be in Williamses head office. I remember Paddy Hennessy worked there and Mick Casey and a Bill Igoe was in the Pak. Great Times. O’Donovan I think was the taster of the tea and the whiskey. Of course he was a Cork man – free tea and whiskey what more could you want.
Bill Jaffray was up the yard in Williamses where they made the Irish Mist, a lovely drink. It was like the Winter’s Tale sherry only stronger. You could open it and maybe not finish the bottle for a year.
The old Tullamore distillery with Seamus Flanagan looking into the mash tun. Not sure who is feeding the furnace unde one of the pot stills.
MAKING TULLAMORE WHISKEY
The late Desmond Williams (the man with the green Bentley) use to say that the harvesting and collecting of the grain in Tullamore, was like vintage time in French villages. For the manufacture of the Dew was, and is again, one of the town’s largest industries. Many extra hands were taken on during the working season in the war years, and all were involved in the magic transformation of the ears of the barley sheaf into the finished whiskey in the cask. And once the season started the Distillery worked day and night. The best whiskey, it is said, runs in the dim darkness of the night! The late Jack Clune told me that. He used to play cards with the Excise men (Redmond I think) well into the night. They were down in Water Lane where the Seed and Manure was after.
THE DISTILLERY
It’s hard to believe that the old Distillery covered an area of about twelve acres. Its where Maye built the shopping centre after. And then he built the hotel at the back of Egan’s old shop. The granaries of the distillery Seamus Flanagan told me could hold forty thousand barrels of grain—all purchased from the local farmers. There were special malting floors, a feature of the Distillery being the old style pagoda like kiln for the drying of the malt. The grinding of the grain into meal was done as of old, by means of a water wheel and grinding stones—this is said to make the best “mash.” People live now in apartments in one of the old mills. They used to say the place was haunted by man called Cooke. And what about all the chickens they reared after in those old warehouses.
A lovely whiskey. Maybe Cosney might win one at the Burlesque in Lynch’s if he is allowed go
To produce the perfect whiskey, the late Jack Wrafter (his father worked for Williams at the time of the pipe business – Sin Scéal eile) told me that four things were essential —sound barley, mountain air, pure water and distilling craft. Here in the centre of Ireland, he used to say in his gentlemanly way that nature had provided ‘all the requisites’ for Whiskey making. Well/ripened golden grain from the fertile fields of Offaly, fresh air from the Slieve Bloom hills, water laden with essences from local peat mosses, and a distilling tradition going back to the days of the illicit stills (we still have a few)—all these combine to make “Tullamore” a classic whiskey. It is, indeed, fit usquebaugh for connoisseurs. And you know they have an 18-year old now but its big money. They have a fancy one called Phoenix after the burst up with the balloonitics in Tullamore when Grattan was still in College Green. They say now it was the first air disaster in history, but I am sure someone will top it.
Patent Still
Now the old Tullamore was only Pot Still for a long time. Then Williamses got in the Coffey Still—invented by an Irishman, needless to say. Under one roof—so to speak—they can now produce all the ingredients for blends of pot, malt, and patent still ‘Whiskey. Very soon they will be in a position to sell at home and abroad, “vintage” Tullamore-made whiskey to compete on equal terms with anything produced on either side of the Atlantic and that includes Midleton, the Scotch boys and the Americans. Very soon because they started making the new Tullamore whiskey in 2014 and last year put in a massive Coffey still. I heard it cost €25 million. Old Mr DEW himself would be pleased that his name is now on 12 million bottles of whiskey every year.
I read somewhere that Sam Beckett used to drink only Tullamore. I was always interested in him because he wrote a book called Molloy years ago. I got a present of it but could make neither head nor tail of it.
Our Molloy distillery gates (1829) beside the credit union and the late Bob Smyth’s
I suppose you know that Tullamore distillery had three copper pot stills. John Teeling got them after for Kilbeggan about thirty years ago and they are still over in Locke’s place. A grand place to bring visitors and sure you can call into Durrow on the way to see the old high cross. Of course it was the monks who started it all and now there are three distillers buried in Durrow. Three Stills you could say.
I used to dread some of the priests calling to my mother’s house years ago because they just would not go home until the bottle was finished. My mother got clever though and started to keep a special bottle that would be three-quarters empty. Now you can’t beat the Molloys. Sure how could you when we started it all in Tullamore nearly 200 years ago and that was before Egans came or any other crowd, even Danny Williams who got a hold on the distillery because Daly was too fond of the good life with his horses and gentry friends.
That’s life, easy come easy go. The third generation nearly always breaks it.
Sure may be I will go tomorrow on this and have the ball of malt and a half-one if Galway wins. If Charlie Finlay is there on the tour tomorrow I might splash out on account of the old days when Guinness used to send the porter by train when the canal was finished. Charlie was always there to see everything went smoothly.
Patrick Egan senior, was born in 1805, at Moate, County Westmeath. He was an alumnus of the King’s Inns, Dublin and a lifelong friend of fellow alumni, The Emancipator, Daniel O’Connell. During a heated discussion in the House of Commons, in February 1835, O’Connell proposed Patrick Egan as candidate for the position of Sessional Crown Solicitor, County Westmeath. This position Egan subsequently held for forty years. Additionally, Patrick Egan was a successful merchant and trader, with extensive buildings and stores on Main Street, Moate.
Trading under the name P. Egan and Sons, the business thrived. Patrick married Eliza Barton of Clara and they had six sons and two daughters. In 1852 he decided to expand and to set up his sons, Patrick and Henry, in business, and called the business, P. & H. Egan. He bought the Bridge House premises and extensive yards, on Bridge Street, Tullamore. Continue reading →
The late John Sweeney, founder member of Offaly History, distinguished book and coin collector, died 1993.
A good friend and great coin collector, the late John Sweeney (founder member of Offaly History who died 25 years ago), told me that the Charleville token or thirteen-penny shilling was one of the finest coins issued in the nineteenth century Continue reading →
