History of transport – a County Offaly, Ireland perspective: bogs, canals, rail, steam and petrol fuelled motors. By Sylvia Turner. A contribution to the Decade of Centenaries

As evidence of the climate crisis increases across the world, the need to find alternative forms of energy to fossil fuels has intensified. According to the Sustainable Energy Authority, Ireland imports a little over 70% of the energy used with the EU average, being 58%. Ireland’s. Transport accounts for the most demand, with over 95% of transport energy coming from fossil fuels. Other than environmental factors, being dependent on importation of fossil fuels has led to concern about energy security due to the geo-political climate, specifically today, the Russian Ukraine War.

As a country without its own oil and a limited supply of gas and coal, peat has historically been an important fossil fuel for Ireland, providing it with some energy self-sufficiency.(Geological Survey Ireland) In recent decades,  however, there is growing recognition that burning peat for fuel is not sustainable as not only is it a highly carbon inefficient fuel, intact peatlands are an efficient carbon sink, whereas damaged peatlands are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. “. . . Ireland has more than half the European Union’s remaining area of a type of peatland known as raised bog, one of the world’s rarest habitats and, scientists say, the most effective land form on earth for sequestering carbon . . (New York Times 4 October 2022)

James Perry Goodbody, Offaly’s leading industrialist and county council member for 21 years (1853–1923). By Michael Byrne. A contribution to the Decade of Centenaries

April 16th 2023 was the 100^th anniversary of the death of James Perry Goodbody, a significant figure in business and political life in County Offaly. His family were connected with the commercial life of Clara from 1825 and were by the 1900s the largest employers in the county. He was a contributor to local government and pushed forward the provision of facilities for TB patients when nobody wanted such a hospital in their neighborhood.

James Perry Goodbody. Courtesy of Michael Goodbody

James Perry Goodbody was the second son of Marcus Goodbody and Hannah Woodcock Perry (a daughter of James Perry) and a grandson of Robert Goodbody who came to Clara in 1825. He was born in 1853 and married in 1875 Sophia Richardson, a daughter of Joseph Richardson, a prominent linen merchant of Springfield, Lisburn at the Lisburn Quaker meeting house.[1] She predeceased him in 1917. He graduated with a B.A. from Trinity College, Dublin. James Perry Goodbody was the principal partner in the Clara mills, M. J. & L. Goodbody, and also in Goodbody businesses in Tullamore and Limerick.[2] The three main family businesses of M., J. & L. Goodbody, J. & L.F. Goodbody and T.P. & R. Goodbody (besides the peripheral businesses) probably employed about 1,500 people in the 1920s.[3] Of this number about 700 jobs were in Clara, down from perhaps 1,000 in 1890, in the businesses, the houses and the farms.[4] This employment figure may be conservative. He served on the King’s County Grand Jury and was high-sheriff in 1893–4.[5] He was said to have been the only member of the old grand jury to be returned in the 1899 county council election and served as a member of the council up to 1920.[6] He was elected by the members to the vice chair of the county council in 1912. The Midland Tribune commented at the time that his dissent from a grand jury motion in 1895 against Home Rule was noted in his favour.[7] He was valued by the council members for his business acumen and chaired the Finance and Proposals Committee from 1899.[8] In 1916 he was instrumental in securing a dispensary for tubercular patients in Tullamore built at no cost to the council.[9] He served for many years as chairman of Clara Petty Sessions where his motto was ‘fair play’ to rich and poor alike and, it was noted, always disposed to temper justice with mercy.[10]

Eat, heat and drink: piped water for Tullamore 125 years ago. A contribution to Tullamore 400th from Offaly History

Piped water for Tullamore town was first provided in 1895. In these blogs we have already looked at listings of shops since 1824, the provision of piped gas lighting in 1860 and electricity in 1921. The provision of piped water to a home is a wonderful facility and yet many homes were without it even as recently as fifty years ago. It took a while for the Irish country towns to procure the service largely because the local ratepayers were directly concerned in footing the bill. Tullamore had town commissioners from 1860 and an urban council with more sanitary powers from 1900. The waterworks was undertaken by the board of guardians with the help of loans from the Local Government Board.

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.

A ready supply of water and of turf for the people of Puttaghan and Clontarf Road. All that was needed was the tea. Pic about 1910.

Exploring Castle Street, Birr from the 1620s: marketplace, buildings, families and business history.

A PowerPoint presentation narrated by Michael Byrne explores the identities of Castle Street in Birr as part of a project to know and appreciate our distinctive town centres. This Streetscape project is in partnership with Offaly County Council and part funded by the Heritage Council.

An initiative promoted by the Heritage Council as part of its Streetscapes Project

Castle Street about 1857. Courtesy of Birr Castle Archives

The focus of this study is Castle Street in the town of Birr. The street comprises a mix of about thirty commercial and residential properties close to the Camcor river to the south, Main Street and the old parish church to the north, and to the west Birr Castle. On the east at the Market Place or Market Square it opened into Main Street, Bridge Street and from the 1880s into the new Brendan Street.

Castle Street about 1920.

The market house stood from the 1620s where the memorial to the Manchester Martyrs was placed in 1894. Surprisingly, when the market house was taken down in the late 1700s it was not replaced with a new building. Castle Street varied greatly in character from the strong residential houses of two and three-storeys to the robust commercial warehouses close to the boundary of the castle, attracted by the availability of water-power and facilitating in the 1800s the development of distilling, brewing and malting houses. Castle Street was also the principal marketplace in Birr with markets held each week and large fairs three or four times per year. There was a strong base in agri-business in the street and this in turn created businesses such as draperies and boots and shoemaking to cater for the farming clients from the prosperous hinterland. That Castle Street was intimately bound up with the rural economy is clear from the surviving early photographs of the 1900s and one of 1856–7. The early photograph is by Mary Rosse and is of a market day in Castle Street.^[1] This would make it the earliest surviving photograph of a busy street in Offaly, as most others are not before 1890 or 1900.

Castle Street about 1970, courtesy Birr Castle Archives

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[1] David Davison, Impressions of an Irish Countess: the photographs of Mary countess of Rosse, 1813-1888 (Birr, 1989).

Crotty’s Church, Castle Street

Click on the blue Offaly History Blog to open the video from an email

Exploring Castle Street, Birr: the buildings, business and people.

Launch of Westmeath, History and Society. The address by Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Dermot Farrell, Mullingar, 24 March 2022

As a native son of the county, it gives me great pleasure to be invited to launch Westmeath: History and Society. Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County, the 29^th volume in the Irish County series; this volume of thirty-five essays covering themes from the prehistoric to the present era utilises a multidisciplinary approach to explore at the county level broader regional and national themes.  It contains contributions from historians, geographers and cartographers, archaeologists and Irish scholars (Cathal O Háinle –Westmeath Bardic Poetry).  It charts the economic, social, religious and political life of the county.  The aim is to achieve an understanding, rather than to produce desiccated informatio

Offaly County Administration in 1920 and 1921 during the Military Regime. Specially Contributed

In the first issue of the Athlone-based Offaly Independent on 4 February 1922 (about fifteen months after the destruction of the newspaper by Crown forces) an article appeared setting out the changes in public health administration in County Offaly, settled in 1921. This involved the closure of the workhouses in Edenderry and Birr and the adaptation of that in Tullamore as ‘the County Home’ and Offaly County Hospital. The workhouse infirmary in Tullamore was re-named the County Hospital and the Tuberculosis dispensary and beds in the new (1915) building at the back of the old county infirmary in Church Street was to continue to operate there at least for a time. The closing of the county infirmary in Church Street, Tullamore in 1921 (first opened on that site in 1788) and having about thirty beds in use at any time, and a dispensary, did not even get a mention in the 1922 review. The change over in the administration involving the switch from Local Government Board to Dail funded management based on local rate collection was a remarkable achievement.

The Public Role of Personal Commemoration. Remarks on the Decade of Centenaries, the Great Flu and the scourge of TB. By Sylvia Turner

On January 7^th this year, we raised a glass to commemorate what would have been my mother’s 100^th birthday. Born in Kilcoursey Lodge,  Clara, she had always said that she was born on a special day, being the day, the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed in the Dáil. Her explanation to me as a child was that ‘it split Ireland in two and caused a lot of trouble’.

This example of  family commemoration running  parallel to the national one, relates to one of the aims on The Decade of Centenaries Programme  to ‘focus on the everyday experience of ordinary people living in extraordinary times, as well as on the leaders and key actors in these events’

The Decade of Centenaries Programme has led to a great variety of commemorative events and   literature, both at a national and local level. The Decade has been commemorated by Offaly History through a  variety of media, no longer limited to monuments and the written word,  as technology has enabled visual and auditory means to be retained through the use of videos and podcasts.

King’s County Infirmary – its closure in 1921 in an era of change. By Aisling Irwin

King’s County Infirmary was established under the reign of King George III with the passing of the Irish County Infirmaries Act of 1765. This act enabled the creation of infirmaries in thirty Irish counties. During the redevelopment of Tullamore town by the Earl of Charleville, a new infirmary building was erected in 1788 on Church Street and was further extended in 1812.

The County Infirmaries Act was enacted to provide healthcare to the poor which fulfilled the eighteenth century philanthropic ideals of the landed gentry who supported these institutions through donations and subscriptions. King’s County Infirmary was supported by an income consisting of parliamentary funds, grand jury presentments, governor subscriptions, donations, and patient fees. The infirmary was managed by a Board of Governors who paid subscriptions for their position on the board which gave them absolute control over the infirmary including staff appointments and patient admissions. Governors were made up of local gentry and landowners such as the Earl of Rosse, Lord Digby, and prominent business owners such as the Goodbody family.   

While surviving records are limited, the Board meeting minute books provide a colourful insight into the running of an infirmary in late 19th and early 20th century Ireland.  The Infirmary’s Surgeon, Dr James Ridley, was linked to a scandal that pervaded the county in 1887 and 1888. Ridley, who also acted as one of the Tullamore jail physicians was reported to have died by suicide on the morning he was due to give evidence at the inquest into the death of John Mandeville, a national league activist. Mandeville who was imprisoned under the Irish Crimes Act of 1887 was subject to harsh and cruel punishment at the hands of his jailors and died shortly after his release from prison. 

Teresa Wyer (1868–1959): the first woman chairperson of a public board in County Offaly and prominent in Sinn Féin in the revolutionary years. By Owen Wyer and Michael Byrne

Teresa Wyer was born in Ballykeenaghan, Rahan, Tullamore, County Offaly on 29 November 1868. She was the third youngest of eleven children of Michael and Anne Mary Wyer. Teresa Wyer went to Rahan National School and thereafter to Killina Secondary School. She joined the Convent of Mercy Athy, County Kildare on 22 February 1890 where she was called Sr Mary Baptist. She left the convent in 1900 and ran a shop and public house at No 6 Church Street bought by the first author’s grandfather, Owen Wyer, brother of Teresa Wyer, from Abraham Colton, the Tullamore auctioneer and hotelier in early 1901. Owen Wyer was also a Sinn Féin activist and chaired a great Sinn Féin meeting in Rahan in September 1917.

Drama in Tullamore from the Gaelic League, c. 1906 with a backdrop of a painted view of William/Columcille Street. Owen Wyer is second from the right in the back row.

Church Street was a busy commercial street at that time with at least five public houses, a hotel and a number of private residences. Wyer’s neighbours included the long-established Warren family drapery stores with two shops. In 1901 Teresa Wyer (then describing herself as 30) was living with her brother over the public house and they had a shop assistant and servant living with them. Owen Wyer was a maltster with the Egans of Tullamore and she a publican. By 1911 she described herself as a grocer and aged only 36, single and with four assistants living over the shop. Teresa Wyer married James Wyer from Ard, Geashill on 24 February 1914.

The golden era of housing in Tullamore from the 1930s to the 1950s: Clontarf Road, Pearse Park and Marian Place, but Dr Moran, P.P. has reservations. By Fergal MacCabe

An Architect Revealed

On Monday 16 February 1953, a Banquet was held in Hayes Hotel Tullamore to celebrate two very significant achievements; the completion of the 74-house Pearse Park and the cutting of the sod for a further 106 houses later to be named Marian Place. These two estates, whose very names evoke the atmosphere of the period, would be joined in 1965 by Kearney Park dedicated to the well-known local politician Joe Kearney.The three schemes together represent a high point in local authority housing not just in Offaly, but in Ireland.

The large attendance that day included the Minister for Local Government Paddy Smith, the cream of Tullamore society; the clergy, politicians, administrators, police and solicitors, as well as those involved in the delivery of the estates. Buried at the bottom of the extensive list which appears in an entertaining frontpage account of the event in the Offaly Independent of the following Monday, but unidentified as such, was the designer of the schemes, the architect Donald Arthur ‘Bob’ Tyndall M.R.I.A.I. (d.1975). Tyndall who had spent his early career in Shanghai was also engaged to deliver the Tullamore County Clinic and is credited with several housing schemes in the Offaly area. In 1971 his practice became Tyndall Hogan Hurley and went on to become one of the most successful in Dublin, specialising in office and residential developments.

Tyndall was the latest in the line of designers used by Tullamore Urban District Council to implement an admirable housing programme over the previous fifty years.