Remembering John Flanagan, the Tullamore builder and developer, who died on 9 May 2024. An obituary from Offaly History

John Flanagan the well-known builder and advocate for Tullamore and County Offaly died on 9 May 2024. He was the modest man from the Meelaghans, Puttaghan and Bachelors Walk, Tullamore who invested his whole life in making Tullamore a better place for people to live, work, bank and even pray in. In 2018 he was awarded the Offaly Person of the Year Award. John Flanagan was a realist in the Lemass mode. His focus was on getting things done. At the time Lemass came to be Taoiseach in 1959 John Flanagan was just 28 years old. It was ten more years, in 1968-9, before he got his first major break with the purchase of the Tanyard Lane property in Tullamore from the P.&H. Egan liquidator. The Bridge House, also owned by the Egan firm, was bought soon after by Christy Maye, and thirty years on Tullamore had two fine hotels, developed by the new entrepreneurs of the 1960s and 1970s, on lands that had been part of Egan’s extensive portfolio.

1 The making of O’Connor Square, Tullamore, Ireland, 1713–2023: the first market place or Market Square. By Michael Byrne. A contribution to the Living in Towns series promoted by the Heritage Council.

Over a series of articles, it is intended to examine the evolution of the ‘market place’, Tullamore to the fine square it is today. It is intended to look first at the evolution of the square over the period from 1713 to 1820 with additional comments on the building history in the last 300 years in the second article. This will be followed with analysis of the return for the 1901 and 1911 censuses and thereafter case studies of two of the houses in the square. Both are public houses, the Brewery Tap and The Phoenix, and business is conducted in the original houses albeit that both have been extended. Both are well known with the Brewery Tap one of the oldest pubs in Tullamore and The Phoenix the newest. The Brewery Tap house can be dated to 1713 and The Phoenix as a house to 1752.

Banking in Tullamore: The Hibernian Bank now part of Bank of Ireland. One of Tullamore’s finest buildings at the junction of Bridge Street and O’Connor Square. By Michael Byrne

A contribution to Tullamore 400 and the Heritage Council’s Historic Towns Initiative.

The Hibernian Bank opened in Tullamore’s Bridge Street in 1864. The footprint of the original site was the  Ridley leasehold of 1786. In 1948 the bank was extended by the inclusion of the Berrill shop on Bridge Street. About 1970 the Wakefield shop was added to the property portfolio and soon after the second Ridley leasehold in O’Connor Square being the ‘Brick Building’ erected by T.P. & R. Goodbody in 1871. We had a blog article on 12 O’Connor Square in June 2022 under the title The ‘flamboyant three-storey Ruskinian Gothic warehouse’ in Tullamore. Today we are looking at no. 10, 11, and 12 Bridge Street

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The Griffith Valuation numbers of 1854

The ‘flamboyant three-storey Ruskinian Gothic warehouse’ in Tullamore. Tullamore 400th series, no. 6. By Michael Byrne

As part of the Tullamore 400^th series and also in the context of research as part of a survey of Tullamore’s heritage in O’Connor Square and High Street, Tullamore we are pleased to present this article on one of the most attractive of the buildings of O’Connor Square. This is the building described by Andrew Tierney in Central Leinster in the Buildings of Ireland series (Yale 2019, p. 628) as ‘a ‘flamboyant three-storey Ruskinian Gothic warehouse’. The number 12 is from that in Griffith’s printed valuation of 1854 (GV 12). The number 71 (noted below) was part of the running series for the entire town of Tullamore in the manuscript valuation of 1843. the brick building was the first in Tullamore to be restored as to the facade (but not the interior) and incorporated in the Bank of Ireland Tullamore branch in 1979. It set a high standard for such work and wile not residential at least is well used and contributes to the streetscape, and very much so since one-third of O’Connor Square has now been pedestrianised.

O’Connor Square in 2020

To cite the Heritage Council’s own words on the Historic Towns Initiative:

Many of our city, town and village centres are historic places with their own distinct identities. Sustaining these is a complex process that in many cases involves the conservation and re-use of existing buildings, the care of public spaces and the provision of community facilities. The conservation and interpretation of this heritage makes our towns interesting, unique and attractive to residents and visitors. In support of the Town Centres First policy set out in the Programme for Government: Our Shared Future (2020), the Historic Towns Initiative (HTI) is a joint undertaking by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and the Heritage Council which aims to promote the heritage-led regeneration of Ireland’s historic towns.

Old friends in Bank of Ireland, Tullamore: forty years on, 1979–2019 by Cosney Molloy

I once again visited my old friends in Tullamore in the last few weeks. I was down from D4 to sort out a charity account with Bank of Ireland in O’Connor Square. I had to make my way through the bollards with the footpath widening. I came on the train of course (thanks Charlie, nice one). I was reminded by a customer that the Bank of Ireland opened in Bridge Street in the summer of 1979. At the time of my visit I was too busy to pay attention because between money laundering forms and this new GDPR stuff I was fit to be tied. And the account is 60 years old. What is all the fuss about small money. Now the new bank of 1979 is so different to the one I remember in High Street where Hoey & Dennings are now.