In the first half of the nineteenth century all of the original buildings in O’Connor Square were three-storey with the exception of the market house and the house where PTSB is now located (GV 8). The finest house was that of Pim/Wilson (GV 7) of c. 1740–48 (demolished 1936) and not unlike the fine houses in the square of the Quaker settlement of Mountmellick where the Pims and Wilsons would have had connections.
Early in the summer of the year 697, probably in May, a great assembly of kings, bishops and abbots, along with their followers and servants, took place in Birr. It was a joint meeting of kings (rígdál) and of church leaders (synod). They came together to proclaim a law for the protection of women, children, clerics and other people who did not bear arms, in times of conflict. The law was called Cáin Adomnáin or the ‘Law of the Innocents’ (Lex Innocentium) and later referred to in a poem as the ‘Great Law of Bir
Laois Offaly is again to be divided into two three-seat constituencies according to the just announced electoral commission report. ‘This would be the first time that the Offaly constituency would fully align with its county boundary.’ For the 2016 General Election Laois and Offaly were divided and to the Offaly constituency was added 24 electoral divisions from North Tipperary. Laois-Offaly was adopted again for the 2020 general election. Now what was it like in the first Free State election in 1923 just 100 years ago? It was remarkable that the 1923 general election held on Monday 27 August 1923 was in general peaceful. It was only in early July 1923 that Ministers Milroy and Blythe spoke at a Cumann na nGaedheal (CnG) meeting in Tullamore in what was described by the Chronicle as scenes of an unprecedented character in the history of public meetings in Tullamore. The ‘supporters of Mr de Valera’ had posted anti-government posters about the town recalling the executions of Byrne and Geraghty, and also the three young men shot in Birr on a charge of armed robbery. On the office of the state solicitor, James Rogers, in High Street, Tullamore was pasted the words ‘Come inside and see the executioners’. Rogers would have been known both sides in the civil war as someone who defended Sinn Féin prisoners in the 1917–21 period. The newly appointed civic guards kept the peace between Cumann na Gaedheal supporters and supporters of the Republican IRA.[1]
If walls could talk and archives survived, what would we learn about GV no. 48 High Street, Tullamore. A lot over its 275-year history so far. The number in the first printed valuation map of 1854 was no. 48. It is convenient to use this as the street was built by 1820, except for the Presbyterian church of 1865.
O’Connor Square and High Street were the principal streets in Tullamore from the 1740s to the 1960s. Charles Moore, the second Lord Tullamore, and from 1757 to his death in 1764 earl of Charleville, gave leases for substantial houses in High Street and these included the former Motor Works, the Round House, Mr Price building and Colonel Crow’s (no GV 48).
Most of the surviving houses in High Street date from the 1740s to the first fifteen years of the 1800s. Yet there is evidence of the commencement of a street here from 1713 with the building of houses GV 1, 2 and 3, followed in the 1740s and 1750s by GV 4, (O’Connor Square west for our purposes, from Bridge Centre entrance to the G.N. Walshe shop) and GV 5 and 6 High Street (Conway and Kearney and Guy Clothing). Both the northern and southern ends of High Street face important open spaces: the northern end forms the west side of O’Connor Square, and the southern end broadens out to form a triangular open space at the junction of O’Moore Street and Cormac Street.
High Street has been known by its present name since the early 1700s. However, until the early-nineteenth century High Street also included what is now Bridge Street. The street is uniformly wide throughout even allowing for the fact that some of the houses had railed-in areas to the front. Most of these, but not all, were destroyed by the 1970s.
This photograph of O’Connor Square and High Street was taken about 1900, or a little earlier (and preserved courtesy of the National Library) and 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 (GV 49) to the William Hill bookmaker’s office, beside Gray Cunniffe 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. South of it is no. 48 (with carriage outside).
Col. Crow’s is a fine three-storey, seven-bay house with a Gibbsian door-case and open-bed pediment. The building, for many years known as Colton’s Hotel, has now two shopfronts and the original railings and low wall fronting the basement were removed in the mid-1970s.The building has lost its original glazing bars. From the early Lawrence photograph of c. 1900 we can see that a third storey was added soon after the existing hotel was purchased by Abraham Colton. It was then that a pediment to the roofline was removed and the third floor added. It was not so unusual to add a floor and there are examples of it in Columcille Street with Galvin’s and Dolan’s.
This house was built in 1750 for Colonel Thomas Crowe and survived intact until about 1974. Part of the large garden was used in the building of the Rose Lawn housing scheme in the late 1980s. The house to the south was demolished in 1940 to make way for the new Ritz Cinema, opened in 1946 and demolished in 1980. Roselawn of 21 houses was completed about 1990.
The name of Kathleen Cowan is virtually synonymous with accounts of the suffrage movement in Co Offaly during its most vital phase. As secretary of the Birr Suffrage Society, she reported on its activities in the local and suffrage press, organized and spoke at meetings in the town and throughout the county, and represented it at suffrage gatherings in Dublin. Beyond the fact of her involvement, however, little is known of her background. I was, therefore, particularly pleased to come on her name in the context of some unrelated research, and to realise that *my* Kathleen Cowan was the person described by historian Margaret Hogan as ‘tireless in the cause of women’s issues’ and one of the moving spirits in the campaign locally.[1] This short account of Cowan’s life is intended to fill in some of the blanks in her story.
April 16th 2023 was the 100th 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]
My story starts as a small boy growing up in Dillon Street, Tullamore in the 1940s. I remember seeing a cutting from a newspaper which I presumed was from a Tipperary weekly paper. The article covered a report of a feis and sports held in a field at the Golden Vale Hotel in Dundrum Co. Tipperary. It mentioned about the Misses Crummy from Ballydine taking part in the Irish dancing. A small report on the opposite side of the cutting was headed
Shooting near Birr. Charged at Birr with conspiring in 1923 to kill and killing John Finlay, Tullamore. Chas and Peter Molloy and Michael Coyne were sent for trial.
What is so unusual about this paper cutting from 1923?
My mother, one of the Misses Crummy mentioned in the article, was now working in Tullamore for T. English & Co. She met and married my father Thomas, brother of John Finlay some ten years later.
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 commencement of the new District Court in Offaly in January 1923 was an inauspicious time to start. The county was caught up in the civil war that it seemed neither side could win. The Free State (National Army) had taken all the cities by August 1922, but the fight was still going on in the hills, especially in the south. Neither Tullamore nor Birr was free of anxiety with shots fired on New Year’s Eve to remind people that the Republicans had not gone away. How could they forget? In January 1923 two men from Kilkenny were executed for possession of arms and robbery. Soon after five National soldiers captured with a body of anti-Government forces were executed – a courtmartial having found them guilty of treachery. Five from County Offaly were executed in January and early February. In the same month there had been an attack at Raheen in north Offaly – an ambush while soldiers were going to mass with at least one dead. Some of the neutral IRA were talking about ending the conflict and the press reported that Peadar Bracken ex Brigade officer, Thomas Ua Quinn ex Vice Commdt, and Martin Fleming, ex Brigade staff officer, had called a meeting of pre-truce ex officers of nos 1 and 2 Offaly Brigades IRA at the old Sinn Féin hall regarding the peace movement. Peadar Bracken would know the place well as he was involved in the ‘affray’ in 1916 where ‘the first shot was fired’ in that very hall in William/Columcille street, Tullamore.
When Richard B. Sanders, the county surveyor (today a county engineer) for King’s County, died in Cumberland Square, Birr in 1900 he left an estate of the value of £30,000. This would have been enough to build 300 council ‘cottages’ in those days when smaller houses such as those of in Cappaneale, Birr and Davitt Street, Tullamore could be built for £100 each. Sanders was an Antrim man and was born in 1845. He had involved another Birr resident, also from Antrim, the solicitor Archibald Christie, in the making of his will. Albeit in the worst possible way by asking him to be a witness but without having given him any instructions. Both were neighbours in Cumberland Square (as it then was, now Emmet Square). Both of them would have been under the watchful eye of John Wright, the editor of the King’s County Chronicle and resident of Cumberland House. Nearby was the Ormond Club of which we can assume both Christie and Sanders were members and perhaps also of the Birr Masons, then going strong.
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