The problem for the student of nineteenth century Irish local history is not that of finding material but rather that of making a good selection from the vast amount of material available. Some of the most important sources for the local historian are the Reports of the Royal Commissions that enquired into the state of Ireland. This article looks at one such source, The Reports of the Commissioners for Inquiring into the Condition of the Poorer classes in Ireland, 1835 - 36.

Recession and falling prices after the Napoleonic wars, together with an expanding population and increasing unemployment led to increasing poverty in Ireland. It was the labouring classes and small landholders who suffered most.

Increasing concern was voiced, both in England and Ireland, about the state of the County but there was no agreement on the kind of remedial measures which ought to be applied. In general it could be said the British favoured the adoption by Ireland of a Poor Law system (the system of workhouse relief) with the Irish landowners and others, including Dan O'Connell, opposing this with the argument that it would result in heavy taxes on the landowners and would do nothing to alleviate the problem. What was needed they argued were more jobs and better wages.

In 1833 the house of Commons ordered that a Royal Commission be appointed to investigate the problem of poverty in Ireland.

First report
The Commission, with Archbishop Whately as Chairman, undertook "the most thorough survey of the conditions of the Irish poor yet attempted". Its first report became available in 1835 and the final report in 1836. The Commissioners reported in favour of public works and "assisted emigration". They argued against the introduction of indoor or outdoor relief on the grounds that it would be impracticable except for the poor and infirm. The Commissioners were in fact proposing a scheme for economic development and not simply poor relief, but this went far beyond what the Government had envisaged or public opinion, especially in England, would tolerate and so, the report was shelved. Instead the government introduced the workhouse system to Ireland in 1838.

The Commission in gathering evidence on social conditions sent out questionnaires to respectable gentlemen in almost every part of Ireland. The returns from these gentlemen were published as appendices to the reports of the Commission. Most of the respondents, if you can judge from the Offaly returns were clergymen.

Social Conditions
The questionnaires dealt with social conditions in the parish: employment, wages, diet, housing, conditions of landholding, emigration and so forth. Naturally the thoroughness with which the respondents completed the questionnaires varied. As to reliability one would need to compare the returns with other sources before conclusions could be drawn.

In this article I want to look at the replies to the Poor Inquiry relative to "earnings of Labourers, cottier tenants, employment of women and children" etc. Twelve questions were put to respondents ranging from the number of labourers in the parish to the employment of women and children.

Employment of Labourers
For Ballyboy the respondents, Andrew Stoney and Rev. Charles Burtin suggested from 180 to 400 labourers in employment with some living in the houses of small farmers and others employed on a casual basis when suitable weather prevailed. In Durrow the Rev. Peter Toler reckoned on 800 while Dr. William Wallace felt that in Tullamore parish some 1100 labourers had employment in Summer and 300 in Winter. In Lynally parish Mr. Alexander Andrews reported

"I cannot inform you the number. The generality of farmers employ their own children to cultivate their land; several labourers are employed in summer, in brick-yards, in the next parish: the Earl of Charleville employs constantly above 50 labourers, and the resident gentry about the same number; during the harvest, I conceive, there is employment for every man: I beg to observe that this parish abounds in lime-stone, and there are several lime-kilns, which give employment to many people: there is great facility in procuring turf: many in Tullamore, weaving linen and frieze, gave employment to many families, but it has much declined within the last few years; there are, at present, about six looms at word."

The question was posed to how labourers were maintained when out of employment and the answer in many cases was by begging. Evidence of this was already seen on the articles on Daingean in this series where Jonathan Bins reported on Daingean in he mid-1830s. Others in Offaly relied on their small holdings and potatoes grown on mostly rented ground. Joseph White of Edenderry parish said of the labourers: "Their mode of maintenance puzzles every one expending a thought on he subject" while George Atkinson of Shinrone was of the view that "The labourers of this country, having in almost every instance a spot of ground attached to their house, are not so destitute when unemployed for hire as is generally supposed; it is thought that a little time spent now and then in their own gardens would turn to more advantage than the wages earned in the same period; but it is found that the times when they are occasionally thrown out of work, instead of being taken advantage of for this purpose, are spent partly in total idleness, and partly in the unlicensed whisky house, a nuisance to a great extent in every part of this country."

Diet was generally potatoes and milk with very little meat (Ballyboy) with occasionally oatmeal (Edenderry). In Lemonaghan Andrew Macken wrote: The ordinary diet of the labourer consists of potatoes and salt during winter and spring; in summer they may produce some buttermilk: they ate meat of a coarse kind at one or two of the yearly festivals: their clothing is made up of rags, and many cannot attend divine service unless accommodated with clothes by their neighbours." Messrs. Mooney and Mullock of the same parish that labourers could be more comfortable were it not for their love of whisky, politics and cordplaying

Employment Precarious
Solow in his assessment of the barony of Ballybritt in Offaly in 1821 (based on the 1821 surviving manuscript returns) reckoned that 74 farmers held as much land as the remaining 1,008. The labourers depended in part on being hired out, on seasonal migration to Britain and in fishing and textile production. Conacre was well established at the time and was based on tillage with the labourer "a commercial speculator in potatoes" mortgaging his labour against manure and seed and paying the debt to the farmer by working for a certain number of days at an agreed rate. In the days when dole and welfare were not available (except through the workhouse) and employment was precarious conditions were ripe - if not anticipated - for the disaster following the failure of the potato crop.

Employment of Women and Children
In Ballyboy women and children were employed only in harvest time, hay time and potato picking. The children were paid from 2d to 3d per day and women 5d per day. (Men were paid from 10d in Summer to 8d in Winter.) The picture was the same in Killoughy and in Birr children of from 10 to 12 years were paid 3d and at 16 years 6d. Tullamore and Lynally were much the same. In Clonsast the Revd. George Newcome said that it was to be lamented that women and children of the parish were not more industrious "as might render their circumstances more comfortable".

£10 per Year
The family budget for the labourer was tight. He was paid mainly in money and could earn up to £10 per year with additional revenue from the working wife and children. But the system encouraged exploitation for greed on the side of the rich and of necessity on the side of the poor. For Ballyburly, Francis L. Dames wrote of the dense population that it was in a state of pauperism for the want of employment, the minute division of the ground they hold and the extravagant rent they pay for it.

"The Irish peasant will promise any rent, however exorbitant, to get possession of a house and garden and will live in the most abject poverty to try and pay for it; they are thus greatly preyed on by the small farmers on these estates where a most careful attention is not exercised to prevent division of land".

Housing Conditions
Many labourers lived and built cabins on marginal lands next to the bogs. This happened in Tullamore at Puttaughan, north of he canal and it happened in the Geashill estate of Lord Digby and led to evictions there in the 1850s. The rent of a cabin in Ballyboy with an acre of ground was about £2 per year or 40% of the income of a labourer in employment for half of the year. The further the cabin from the town the cheaper. In the towns, such as Kilcormac, a cabin with a small garden was £3 per year. For example, in Tullamore the houses in Tea Lane (near Quinnsworth) were let at 6d per week with "the lease determinable every Friday".

The cabins in the country were generally mud-walled. In Ballyboy Rev. Charles Burton noted the "Cabins are most commonly constructed with mud, that is, the upper part of them; the foundation of them, to perhaps the height of three feet, is most commonly built with stone, though not always; as to their furniture, very indifferent and bad; latterly, during the prevalence of epidemic disease, lime was pretty generally furnished to them by charitable associations, which has a good effect in making their cabins look clean, and continuing health to their inmates: they have commonly a dresser, a table, and a few stools; sometimes a couple of chairs. Their beds and bedding, I think, in many instances, uncomfortable in the extreme; not often bedsteads; and straw to lie on, with no very adequate supply of blankets."

In Tullamore the picture was the same. Most of the cabins had straw bedding and many without bedsteads". The better class of labourer in Edenderry could boast a bed of chaff and rushes. While in Leamonaghan the rags worn during the day were used as bed clothes at night.

Who were the Landlords
The landlords of cabins (as with flats today) are often provident but relatively poor people. In the lanes of Tullamore in the 1900s the landlords were often publicans, auctioneers and grocers. Andrew Stoney, himself a landlord, wrote of Ballyboy c. 1834 "In the towns the immediate landlords of small houses or cabins are, comparatively speaking, provident but poor people, who take plots from the proprietor, and build cabins to enhance the value, and, by setting one or more, live free of rent themselves, and sometimes have profit. In the county the immediate landlords and small farmers, who set patches of land from one to three acres for the purpose of lightening their rent, and having labourers near them."

Likewise in Leamonaghan the landlords of cottages were of every description from humble and industrious farmers to landlords in fee. Seldom did the principal landlord involve himself at this level. He usually let to middlemen or building speculators who in turn let to undertenants. These undertenant sub-let or took in lodgers. Duty labour was not common and the rent of cabins was generally paid in cash.

Population Jump
The population of Ireland probably reached 8.5 m. by 1845. It had risen by four fifths in the previous fifty years and over 100 years had quadrupled. The population increase in Ireland before 1845 was virtually unique in the whole of Europe. Why did population increase? There are no easy answers. Some historians emphasis the role of food supply both in preventing and reducing crises in subsistence and the avoidance of any disastrous famine (up to 1845) and in facilitating earlier marriages and high martial fertility. The work currently being done by centres at Tullamore and elsewhere on the indexing of the parish registers (events of baptism and marriage) may in due course help to flesh out the answers.

Unlike the European pattern population growth in Ireland was not accompanied by massive urbanisation. Based on the 1821 and 1841 census only about one-eight of the population lived in towns or cities of 1,500 or more - Ireland remained one of the least urbanised countries in Western Europe. Contrary perhaps to popular belief the emigration exodus had started well before the Famine. Cormac O Grada states (A new history of Ireland,v, p.120) that between 1815 and 1845 alone Ireland may have provided over one tenth of all those who had voluntarily crossed the Atlantic since Columbus. Well over half a million left Ireland between 1801 and 1845. The U.S. and Canada took about 0.9 million and Britain the remainder. After Waterloo and the ending of the French wars in 1815 the rate of emigration rose. By the 1840s emigration was removing one-half or more of the natural increase in population (i.e. the excess of births over deaths and before emigration).

In the Poor Law Inquiry respondents were asked to consider if the general condition of the poorer classes in your parish improved, deteriorated or remained stationary since the Peace of the year 1815. Is the population of the parish increasing or diminishing? The Offaly replies were as follows:

Ballyboy - Revd. Charles Burton
"The general condition of the poorer classes not improved; some years before the period mentioned in this query they had a manufacture in this town in wool, making stuffs, &c., combing the wool, and going through the whole process of its manufacture; but now nothing of the kind; industry a blank, and not much agricultural employment. I think the population of the parish the most thriving manufacture, and the consequence is poverty in equal ratio. The town of Frankford [Kilcormac] is in some measure improving, in consequence of a distillery being established there, which stirs up the resources of the country, and causes a vast deal of corn, turf, &c., to be brought in, and in other respects serves the labourer and the poor person."

Birr - Revd. Marcus McCausland
"As far as I can collect, the condition of the poorer classes is stationary since 1815: the population has certainly increased since that time."

Lynally - Alexander Andrews
"I have resided in this parish since the year 1824, and I consider the general condition of the poorer classes has improved, which I ascribe to a greater attention paid to them by the gentry: but I am of the opinion that the class above the poor is much deteriorated. The population is increasing to an alarming degree."

Lemonaghan - Andrew Mackeon
"The condition of the poor has become wretched in the extreme these years back: the linen trade flourished in the parish, and the poor were then employed and comfortable; the decay of the trade has entailed consequent misery on its followers. The population is increasing."

Banagher_parish - Rev. P. O'Farrell
"The state of the labouring poor, as well as of the farming classes, has lamentably fallen into wretchedness; the farmers, burdened with high rents and bad prices, &c., are unable to employ or pay the labourer, who is consequently dragging a weary existence, deprived of not merely the comforts, but sometimes suffering under the want of nourishing sustenance.

Ferbane_parish - Rev. John Kenny
"Their condition is deteriorated considerably, the linen trade, by which many were employed in these parishes, having failed; agriculture is their sole employment; this caused a competition for land, and raised it beyond value, and thus the farmers were unable to employ labourers, or reward sufficiently those employed. The population is increasing rapidly.

Most respondents took the view that conditions were deteriorating with population on the increase and employment opportunities especially in the linen trade (in West Offaly) greatly reduced.

Disturbance and Crime
The 1798 rebellion did not impinge tp any significant extent on Offaly. Outbreaks of violence or rebellion occurred at Kilbeggan, Clonbullogue and Ballycumber but for the most part the county remained quiet. The Bishop of Meath, Dr. Plunkett, had preached against Defenderism and other agrarian secret societies in the mid-1790s, but such secret societies continued to exist and find support from time to time. In reply to a query on disturbances some of the Offaly replies are of interest.

Kilcormac - peaceable.

Killoughy - peaceable.

Seirkieran - Party business prevailed, but was stopped.

Tullamore - It has become very much disturbed of late, have partaken of the general effects of agitation.

Lynally - The generality of Roman Catholics of the parish have refused to pay tithes and church cess the last three years, also threatening notices have been frequently posted; in other respects the parish has been peaceable.

Shinrone - Very peaceable.

and another correspondent wrote:

- Peaceable, as between rich and poor, but party fueds, and outrages arising therefrom, among the lowest class; an increasing spirit of dislike to seek legal redress, preferring to take their own revenge.

Clonsast - These parishes were always remarkable peaceable, until the last two years or so, when the agitation of the Reform question, and the many violent speeches and publications uttered at that time, give rise to certain wild notions as to the right of interfering with vested rights, meddling with the setting of land, wages of labourers, and even domestic arrangements: crimes of the darker dye were not only unknown to the oldest inhabitant, but there was even no record of their having been perpetrated in this neighbourhood until last year, when one savage murder, besides some unsuccessful attempts at assassination, took place.

Lemonaghan - The minds of farmers and lower orders of the people of Lemonaghan parish have been frequently disturbed, yet they had the good sense not to be led into material crime from the year 1798 to the 7th of Febuary 1834: it is now our painful duty, and matter of regret, that we must make it known, that on the night of 7th Febuary 1834, the house of George Holmes, of Moorock, Esq., in our itherto peaceable parish, was broken open, when the family were at rest, about 4 o'clock in the morning, and plundered of money, jewels and firearms: this worthy, peaceable, charitable, and useful man to the poor people had been indisposed for some time; we sincerely hope and trust that such horrible act was not committed by any parishioner; and also the church was broken open, and robbed of £7, previous to the robbing of Mr. Holmes.

Tissaran - Up to the year 1831 this parish was very peaceable; since that period it has been, and is, much disturbed.

Compiled by Michael Byrne

In The Kellys and the Kellys (1848), departing from a powerful account of Daniel O'Connell's state trial in Dublin, 1844, he sets an upper-class love-story in Dunmore, Co. Galway, among the landed families of ascendancy Ireland, depicting with remarkable precision the social gradations of contemporary Irish society. Neither of these novels was successful, and he did not take up an Irish subject again until his permanent return to England. Castle Richmond (1860), the next, concerns a rivalry between a widow and her daughter over Owen Fitzgerald, an Irish aristocrat who (innocently enough) goes off finally the son and brother. Set in Cork during the Famine, it illustrates that catastrophe with searing details, while assigning the cause to the ignorance and rapacity of the Irish middle class. Phineas Finn (1869) and Phineas Redux (1874), though the title-character is Irish and supposedly modelled on John Sadleir, focus on political life at Westminster.

An Eye for an Eye (1879), set at the Cliffs of Moher, is another tale of seduction, in which the mother of the injured girl revenges herself upon the young officer who, on becoming an earl, has jilted her. The Landleaguers (1883) was the last of nearly fifty novels. Written on a visit to Ireland when he was already very ill, and published uncompleted, it deals with the persecution of an English family who buy an estate in Co. Galway. As an independent and non-sectarian observer, Trollope showed considerable insight into the thoughts and feelings of the Catholic majority, particularly with regard to the influence for good of priests such as Fr. McGrath in The Macdermots and Fr. Marty in An Eye for an Eye.

Later, his conservatism reasserted itself under pressure of events surrounding the Land War of the 1870s and 1880s, and his final novel demonizes the Land League and immoderately disparages the clergy. Probably influenced by the Young Ireland Rising of 1848, he wrote a series of articles in The Times during 1849-50 supporting strict measures in Ireland and vindicating the policy of Lord John Russell. See among others John N. Hall (ed), Trollope (1992); and the full-length study by Victoria Glendenning, Trollope (1992). Welch (ed), Oxford Companion.

The Towns

This tightly regulated system of local government was in sharp contrast to the loose system of government that prevailed in the countries and towns. Birr elected its first body of town commissioners in 1852, albeit on a narrow franchise. Tullamore followed in 1860 while Roscrea failed to agree on the need for such a local authority, and has been discussing its merits for almost 100 years. Neither Birr nor Tullamore would have adopted local government institutions so quickly (and with it increased rates) were it not that the permission of a local authority was necessary for the laying of gas pipes for town lighting.

Birr provided itself with gas pipes in 1852 and Tullamore in 1860, as soon as the new commissioners were elected and granted the necessary permission in accordance with statutory requirements. Some years prior to the establishment of town commissioners at Birr and Tullamore both towns had been loosely administered by landlord-dominated manor courts. The boroughs of Philipstown (Daingean) and Banagher had vague oligarchic style government until the abolition of these boroughs with the passing of the

Act of Union in 1800.

Such was the extent of local government in the towns. Vague, uncertain and definitely oligarchic prior to the 1840's, thereafter it was reformed to fit the Victorian conception of a property owning democracy prepared to interfere on an increasing scale in what was hitherto the private domain, in the interest of public hygiene.

The Grand Jury

The system of government at County level was based on the archaic Grand Jury until the passing of the Local Government (Ireland) Act in 1898. The history of the King's County Grand Jury is difficult to document before the 1820's, but probably some kind of grand jury existed right back to the setting up of King's County as an administrative unit in the latter half of the sixteenth century. The Grand Jury was comprised of the County's leading landowners. Every year some two dozen gentlemen were selected by the high sheriff who was in turn appointed by the lord lieutenant.

The grand jury met twice a year at the assizes (now the High Court on circuit) for the purpose of passing presentments (voting money) for local government functions. The Grand Jury records in the form of presentment or 'Jobs' books survive in the County Library for the 1830s to the 1860s and in private collections. Offaly 100 Years Ago first published in 1890 has extracts from earlier minute books. It had responsibility for roads, the court-house and jail. The road-works described provide much local and family detail and deserve study.

The County Councils

The time for obituary writing for the Grand Jury came in 1898, when the new local government act established county councils and swept away the last 'stranglehold of landlordism'. Following the 1898 Act counties such as Offaly and Tipperary had no less than four organs of local government. The county councils were responsible for administrative and financial affairs, rural and urban district councils for housing and public health, and boards of guardians for poor relief and medical charities. The act was an important modernising measure that laid the basis for a structure of local government that has survived more or less intact down to the present day. More importantly, it provided administrative experience for nationalists and helped prepare them for the responsibilities of self government. The 1898 act has rightly been described as the 'legislative father of the Irish Free State'. It gave the vote to all male householders or occupiers. The democratic net had been considerably widened, but women were still excluded from the supposed benefits of the franchise. By 1935 all restrictions on adult voting had been removed.

First Meeting

The Offaly County Council first met in April 1899 under the chairmanship of Henry Egan, a prominent Tullamore business man and moderate nationalist. The vice-chairman was John Powell of the Midland Tribune. The council was predominantly nationalist in tone, but the unionist and Protestant minority were well represented. In 1900 the council elected its first secretary, Charles P. Kingston, a Birr man, and formerly editor of the short-lived Sligo Star. Kingston was appointed after a tight vote and with a salary of £250 per year. He later showed his skill as a property developer, building 4 houses at Clonminch and in 1911 published The book of the administration of King's County - a handbook for members of the council. Kingston worked well under the moneyed parliamentary nationalist council which survived until the Sinn Fein victory after 1917. When the first 'republican' County Council was elected in June 1920 Kingston was, apparently, unable to work with the new radical members and resigned a year later.

Eamon Bulfin

The original members of the county council, though nationalists, were basically conservative. Many did not move with public opinion and the swing to Sinn Fein, and as a result lost their seats to poorer, but more republican elements. When the first republican council met in mid-1920 it elected Eamon Bulfin of Derrinlough as Chairman. Bulfin was elected in his absence as he had been deported to Argentina. The Tricolour draped the Chairman's seat and the members answered the roll call in Irish. Resolutions were passed acknowledging Dail Eireann and changing the name of King's County to Offaly and Philipstown to Daingean. The council went on to repudiate the authority of the Local Government Board, thus helping to undermine British Rule in Ireland. To protect the Council's funds the Hibernian Bank (now Bank of Ireland) was dismissed as the council's bankers and trustees appointed. This highly irregular move combined with the departure of the secretary in 1921 created difficulties for the council in the management of county affairs and led to the dissolution of the council in 1924 (under a Free State Government) and its replacement by a commissioner.

The Management Act 1940

In the conflict between democracy and efficiency the new Free State Government found itself obliged to opt for efficiency. It has been said that the workings of Irish Local government after the 1898 act was almost as corrupt as the old system. Not until 1926 was a Local Appointments Commission established and prior to that appointments were very much a question of wire pulling. The failure of the Free State government to clean up the mess and the obvious dissatisfaction of the rate payers with cost and inefficiencies led to the passing of the County Management Act in 1940. This replaced rule by committee in favour of the conduct of services under an appointed official.

The first taste of this style of local government in County Offaly came with the appointment of Commissioner David O'Keefe in September 1924 and the dissolution of the Offaly County Council. O'Keefe was appointed to sort out administrative problems that had their origins in the troubled years of 1919-1923.

An abnormal state of affairs had existed since June 1920 when the Council voted to recognise Dail Eireann and repudiate the authority of the Local Government Board. The dismissal of the Hibernian Bank as council treasurer and the appointment of trustees completely upset the collection of the rates.

In November 1920 official books and accounts were seized both by the IRA and the RIC and retained for over fourteen months. The situation was further exacerbated in January 1921 when the British Army decided to occupy the Courthouse and evicted the officials.

Courthouse Burned

The officials returned in March 1922 following the Treaty, but the courthouse was burned in July 1922 during the Civil War. Many of the Council's documents were in fact saved, to and now, seventy years later, many have been catalogued by Offaly County Library and are housed in the Local History Section. After the burning of the courthouse the council offices were housed in Cormac Street and later at Kenny's in High Street. In 1925 the offices were again moved this time to the old Workhouse at Arden Road and back to the new Courthouse in 1927.

Such movement was possible in the early 1920's as the staff consisted of only the secretary/accountant, County surveyor, clerks and a typist. The accountant, Mr. Sean Mahon, had taken over the secretary's functions in addition to his own on the departure of C.P. Kingston in 1921. This was certainly a mistake as it was too heavy a work load for one man. Mahon resigned on the grounds of ill health in 1925. However, the principal difficulty of the council was the failure to collect the rates. In 1923 rates had not been collected for a time to restore solvency to the county finances and see that public funds were used more efficiently.

Offaly Roads Improvement Association

Considerable pressure for the removal of the council and the appointment of a commissioner had come from a group of Offaly business and professional people - the Offaly Roads Improvement Association. In 1925 its Chairman, J. A. Lumley of Tullamore, claimed that the association had done something towards bringing about an inquiry which led to the dissolution of the council "a body that ignored every representation made to it". The association criticised the Council's direct labour scheme stating that it was costing Offaly £10,000 to £15,000 more than the contract system. At about the same time the association changed its name to the Offaly Civic Reform Association, presumably with the intention of broadening its base. In February 1926 it congratulated the Commissioner on reducing the rates and turning debit balances into credit balances, but the association was still critical of the was on which the money on the roads was spent.

A County Manager

Offaly's experiment with a commissioner lasted almost four years until a new county council was elected in mid-1928. He had been popular in Offaly with the farming and business community. On his departure the press praised his ability as an administrator, remarking that a high standard was expected of the new council. His success was a harbinger of things to come. When a County Manager was appointed in the early 1940's his appointment was naturally unpopular with the elected members, but when his role came up for review with the amendment of the County Management Act in 1954 his position was secure. At the time North Tipperary County Council did not consider that the act needed much amendment. It was an honest endeavour to strike a balance between two conflicting tendencies, democracy on the one side and efficiency on the other.

The power and duties of the County Council have been considerably expanded since the passing of the 1898 Act. Acting in accordance with Dail Eireann policy Offaly was one of the first counties in Ireland to abolish the poor law system. The three boards of guardians in the county were dissolved in 1921 and their functions taken over by a committee of the County Council. The Council continued to have health functions until the establishment of regional health boards in 1970. One of the four tiers of local government, the rural district council, was abolished in 1925 and its functions transferred to the County Council. It is interesting to see that the current discussions on local government reform will again embrace the rural areas and may lead to the abolition of Urban Councils as we know them.

Rising Expenditure

The cost of local government and the sourcing of funds has altered dramatically since the 1900's. In the early 1920's the County Council was spending just over £100,000 on all its services, including health. Two-thirds of this amount was raised in the county and the balance came in government grants. Expenditure was about £150,000 by 1930 and £280,000 after Second World War. The rate struck in 1946 was 17s. in the £. In 1977 expenditure was almost £4m. and by 1981 had doubled to almost £8m. The county rate in 1981 was £12 in the £, but this now provided less than 25 per cent of the council's funds. The balance being obtained through receipts and government grants.

West Offaly was prominent in the linen and brick manufacturing industries in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Communities at the time were poor and continued so until early this century. In this article I want to look at the Coote survey of the 1800s, the Lewis survey of the mid-1830s and later the Parliamentary Gazetteer of the mid-1840s. The latter is particularly good because it incorporates the census returns of 1841 and parochial returns of the mid-1830s.

West Offaly is largely comprised in what was known as the barony of Garrycastle, more correctly North West Offaly an area of some 103,000 acres or a little over a fifth of the total area of the county of Offaly. The Shannon river provides the boundary on the western side while the Brosna and Grand Canal provide waterways through the barony. The Little Brosna flowing from Riverstown outside Birr provides the boundary on the Lusmagh side. Much of the land is bog. The barony takes its name from the once magnificent tower house on the Birr-Banagher road, a mile outside Banagher. The parishes are Clonmacnoise, Gallen, Leamanaghan, Lusmagh, Rynagh, Wheery and Tessauran and the towns Banagher, Ferbane, Shannonbridge, Cloghan, Shannon-Harbour and Clonony. The baronial divisions were decided upon in the mid-sixteeenth century and largely reflected the tribal divisions - The MacCoghalans were the ruling gaelic family and continued to influence local development into the eighteenth century.

Scene in 1800

Turning to Sir Charles Coote's survey of Offaly in 1801 (a report the Offaly Historical and Archaeological Society would like to reprint, finances permitting, as the original is exceedingly scarce) he recorded as follows:
"The barony is by far the most extensive in the county, but yet in value the most inconsiderable: a great proportion is but a barren rock, with scarcely a stratum of earth. Their wretched mode of tillage is with a two horse plough, and this district more generally in possession of small farmers; indeed, agriculture is not the favourite pursuit. The country abounds with linen manufacturers, in which they are almost individually somehow concerned, though few amongst them extensively so. The number of horses are but few, and the demand for them is considerable; the hire of a two horse plough is 8s 1½d. per day, or 3s. 3d. for a man and horse. In parts where the soil is deeper, on the eastern boundary, they cultivate much wheat, for which they always fallow, and have a good produce. They generally sow the lay with potatoes, but have no drills yet; next succeeds bere, then fallow for wheat, and afterwards they sow oats; much flax is cultivated, and oats is always the last crop. They never yoke with oxen, and have none but the most common implements of husbandry. Clara, Moate, and Banagher are their market towns, for all their commodities. They cultivate no green food in winter; their wheat acre averages five barrels; oats, ten; bere and barley, twelve; potato ground rates at five to seven guineas per acre; meadowland three to six pounds; and their acre of potatoes yields thirty barrels, at forty stone to the barrel [almost certainly he is referring to Irish acres, ratio 1.6 to 1 approx]. Independent of the great tract of bog in this county, a very considerable part may be termed waste ground, which could only be reclaimed by covering rock with soil."

Coote's description confirms the importance of the linen manufacture and the weakness of the farming infrastructure. As to crop rotation Coote recommended it should be first and second crop potatoes well manured with third flax and fourth oats. Commenting on pasture he noted that it "Is but light, and in general shews much limestone gravel, which, if burnt with turf, makes an excellent manure, the Rev. Dr. Mullock, of Bellair near Ballycumber, has used this compost several years with great success. The breed of sheep, or black cattle, is scarcely attended to, and there is but a small proportion of flock, this country being still engaged more under pasture than tillage; it affords no shelter for cattle, and is quite unqualified for them. Natural grass is light and spiry, small quantities of white clover are interspersed, which is certainly a native to the soil, as no artificial grasses have yet been introduced; meadows are very light and easily saved, without any luxuriant herbage; tramp cocks lie on the ground till the harvest is got up. They have no trade in hides and tallow, and any little wool they have to spare is sent to Banagher and Ballinasloe.

Flax Soils and the Linen Manufacture

It should not be despaired to see the wilds of this extensive barony, yet reclaimed, and divided into small farms; every thing here favours the linen manufacture; indeed, to reap a profit from husbandry, is almost out of the question; the inhabitants are sensible that their country is better adapted for manufacture, and are wisely pursuing it, however, it is but yet in its infancy, and ought to meet every encouragement.

Though the land here is light, in the high grounds, yet they have a soil towards the moors, of a deep and cold clay, very favourable to the rearing of flax; there is a kind of peculiar moisture, without any thing of inundation, which every crop so weighty as flax, and sown so late in the spring, would require. Their clays, though they are favourable to the growth of flax, yet require to be brought into a tilth, before they become very productive, for which reason, by incorporating sand, gravel, or bog-stuff, and taking a vegetable crop previously, it will be found to answer best; potatoes or cabbage will only be expected to be raised here, and after either of these, flax will thrive very well.

Clay soils are natural to the rearing of all plants, but they must first be separated and mad friable, by a mechanical or a chemical process; mixing sand or gravel will have the same effect as lime, each will separtate the clay, and break up that stubborn cohesion, with which it is bound together.

Sand in itself is good for nothing as a soil, for rearing plants, but of the greatest utility in mixing with clays; with what care and expense must it be carried to some clay soils, before any advantage can be reaped? but here, are layers of it through the clays, placed by nature, and only require to be well tilled to be fitted for their proper use.

Their clayey soils being so naturally inclined to grass, it is very necessary to weed the crop frequently, or it becomes so luxuriant and strong, as to deprive the flax of much of its nutriment, and will quickly overtop and smother it.

Bog stuff, mixed with clay, makes an excellent compost for potatoes, and this land, after two such crops, is made capable of yielding as good flax as can be desired, and has the weighiest return. [Coote would have been pleased with the development of the peat moss business by Bord na Mona and Erin Peat].

Farms

Are in size from twenty to forty acres; two cows and two horses are proportioned to a farm of forty acres, farm houses very poor, which the tenants must repair. Leases generally twenty-one and some are thirty-one years, no particular clauses, but burning is rigorously opposed; indeed they have no soil to spare. Tenants pay all taxes and cesses. The fields are of small size, from four to six or eight acres, divided by bald ditches, or loose stone walls, few, very few thorn fences; I have seen little improvements, or reclaimed moor; however, Thomas Lowe, Esq. near Bellair, has within these four years, reclaimed above thirty acres of bog, and intends to bring in a considerable tract. This gentleman has also built a bleach mill, and established a bleach yard in the midst of the moor; he is extending his manufacture very considerably, and has planted a great deal of young timber. The moors, when well drained and gravelled, give good meadow, but burning does not answer, as the ashes are but light and white, the turf being soft and fuzzy. The bog stuff is very good manure for the uplands, when mixed with lime, but the bogs in this country lie very low, and the draught to the uplands is severe, consequently this is not much practiced. [The taxes were county cess (later rates) and tithes with rent also to the landlord, but no income tax at that time].

Hemp

The culture of this plant we are little acquainted with, and not having experience, that, which is collected from books of husbandry, which relate where its propagation is pursued, can only be recommended.

We are told the mode of culture differs very little from that of flax, but that in the nature of these plants and in the soil proper for it, there is a material difference, as from the same seed of hemp are raised two kinds, the male and the female stalk, the latter only feeds, and the former flowers.

The uplands of this country ought to be very favourable to its cultivation, as it thrives on a high, dry, sandy loam, and ever fails in a cold wet clay.

The ground must previously be very well ploughed, and brought to a fine tilth; the seed may be sowed in April, with about four bushels to our Irish acre. It must be carefully and frequently weeded, but the principal care is in the pulling , as half the crop only ripens at one time, which is about the beginning of August, at which time the male plant must be pulled, and the female left to stand, to ripen, which must not be trampled; great care must be taken to keep off the birds, when the seed is sown.

The female stalk is the most valuable, as containing the seed, and pains must be taken to dry it well in the sun, stacking, turning and rowing it occasionally; if the seed gets wet, it injures it materially, which must be avoided.

The seed being saved, the stalk is steeped, dried, scutched, hackled, &c. in like manner as flax, and is a much more valuable crop. One great advantage from hemp, that no other crop can be sowed, which leaves the land so perfectly clean.

Hemp differs from flax, in as much as the distinction of its sex is in different plants, in flax they are both in the one flower.

The female plant will not ripen till several weeks after the male, it comes in about the middle of September. The value of this plant may be judged, from the very liberal premiums offered by the Linen Board for its culture, which will, doubtless, be continued the succeeding year. I hope to prepare a short series of articles on the linen industry in Offaly for the Autumn.

Bellair

This country is thickly inhabited on the eastern side, but towards the Shannon it is wild and barren, and not populous. Very few gentry reside here, and their numbers have been diminished since the rebellion [1798]. The Rev. Doctor Mullock has improved a large tract at Bellair, where he resides; he has, literally speaking, planted with his own hands every tree in his demense, which consists of forest-trees of all kinds. They had long to combat with a very bleak and exposed situation, but they are now naturalized, and in good vigour, lying very high; they give a great appearance of wood to this part of the country [and still serve that purpose today]. Thomas Mullock, Esq. son to this gentleman, is now building a very neat village adjoining Bellair: this word is only a modern modification of Ballyard, its true name, which signifies the high town; it consists of about fifty houses, built with stone and mortar, and all slated roofs, which will be only inhabited by linen manufacturers, to whom this gentleman gives employment. The plan of this little village is very correct, and, in its intended police, neatness, and cleanliness must be strictly observed. The whole model is not inferior to the small manufacturing English villages. The linen manufacture is rapidly and steadily encreasing, and this village is likely to be of consequence, from the industrious exertions of its proprietor. In this neighbourhood are mill-sites, and every advantage for any branch of manufacture; but that of the linen is most eagerly pursued; the people seem better disposed to engage in this than agriculture, which accounts for the number of small farms, as each family tills little more than supplies their provisions. If the Linen Board should be pleased to furnish wheels to this little colony, 'tis presumed it would have the happiest effect, as the poor would be better employed and idleness is not their characteristic. Since discontinuance of wheels, many have wanted employment; and here is a considerable quantity of flax spun, which they rear at home, and manufacture into dowlass and coarse linen. The few demenses of the gentry are highly planted and improved, but the remainder of this country is almost in a state of nature. Mr. Holmes has a very extensive bleach-yard, and a large capital in the trade, which was very spiritedly carried on till the late rebellion, but it is intended to be again pursued.

Ferbane is a town in this barony, situate on the river Brosna, fifty-four miles from Dublin, near to which are the ruins of Kilcolgan and Coole Castles, Kilcolgan is gone, but Coole is still standing: it has a patent for a weekly market, but no market is held; it is on the estate of John Henry, Esq. The country immediately around it abounds with the richest landscapes and finest prospects, and near to it is the beautiful demense of Galen (Gallen), the seat of J. Armstrong, Esq.; the Brosna winds under this demense, through the most charming and fertile banks, and, with the fine plantations here, presents a fence of picturesque and splendid beauty. The old castle of Garrycastle still standing, from whence the barony is named, has very rich feeding-ground in its neighbourhood, and at Cuba, a seat of Denis Bowes Daly, Esq., the parks are rich and luxuriant later the Royal School and demolished in recent times. But this engaging scene is soon lost; when you pass Banagher, all is a wild, barren, and uncultivated waste; under this description, Kor Hill is very conspicuous.

Banagher is a good town, and well inhabited; it is situate on the banks of the Shannon, and is the western extremity of this country, and also of the province of Leinster; as here, beyond the river, is that of Connaught. At this side of the bridge are the barracks for two companies of foot, and, at the other side, is a castle, which commands the town, with the adjacent country towards Connaught, and was well situated to defend this important pass: it is distant sixty-six miles from Dublin, and formerly sent two members to parliament; the Holmes family had a patronage of the borough. The banks of the Shannon, just adjoining, are richly clothed with meadow, but all insulated, and of a wet season, in a very precarious state. In Banagher are a distillery, brewery, malt-house, and tan-yards. The country shops are well supplied, and an inconsiderable branch of the linen manufactory is carried out here. There is also a school, with an excellent endowment; some hundred acres are annexed to it, said to be well worth £200 annually, and those lands are now become a sinecure set, during the interest of the proprietor; but no school business at all attended to, as I am informed. Cloghan is a village of midling appearance, four miles to the east of Banagher, and sixty-two miles from Dublin; it is on the estate of Denis Bowes Daly, Esq. [Bowes Daly inherited the MacCloghlan estate] and is remarkable for an excellent inn. At some distance are the ruins of a church, and near Moystown, the seat of Colonel Lestrange, are those of Streamstown Castle. This country abounds with ruins of castles, which were in possession of the O'Coghlan clan, almost all of which have Latin inscriptions over the entrance, which shew they were erected in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

Living Standards

All the fuel of this district is turf, which is very cheap and plenty: the country is interesected with very extensive bogs. The constant food is potatoes, and oatmeal used generally in spring. Coarse friezes rate at about 2s.6d. per yard, and stuffs at 8d. Price of wages, from 7d. to 10d. per day through the year. Cottier's house, garden, and cow's grass at no regular price, but generally regulated by the benevolence of their employers. Doctor Mullock's cottiers pay but 20s. for a cow's grass; the like for house and garden, and have turbary free. Beer increasing in demand, as spirits are declining, and is had tolerably good from Moat, in the county of Westmeath. Roads but in very midling repair. Soil every where light, and of limestone gravel. There have been no mines yet discovered, but they have many chalybeate springs, nor is there any marle found, or clays or calcareous quality.

Fish

There are some valuable eel weirs on the river Brosna, and some near Banagher, which are the property of the inhabitants of this side of the river. These weirs are evidently very injurious to the bottom meadows, and throw up considerable quantity of back water. No other fishery here of individual property, but all kinds of the finest fresh-water fish are in this part of the Shannon, in the greatest abundance. This river is here navigable, and boats of burthen pass from Killaloe to the county of Leitrim, generally laden with slates, from the quarries in the district; and sometimes they are also freighted with corn. Farmers complain of want of encouragement; their leases being generally set but for twenty-one years. All Dublin bankers paper, and little specie, are in circulation. At Ferbane are the bolting-mills of Wm. Hone, Esq. [probably a misprint for Horne whose descendents I met some years ago]; at Lumpcloon, now called Mill-brook, are those of Dennis Cassin, Esq.; and at Moystown are those of Edward Lestrange, Esq.; they are all well supplied with corn, and of considerable powers. No nursery for sale in the barony; trees are had from Galway and the Queen's County nurseries. No timber of any account for sale; building timber had from Limerick by the Shannon navigation. The village of Shannon Bridge is small, and noted for having the best stone bridge over the river Shannon: it has a patent for four fairs, and a weekly market; it is on the estate of Colonel Lestrange, and here is a very conspicuous pass into Connaught.

Clonmacnoise

On the banks of the river, and on the confines of this county and that of Westmeath, in a very wild country, stand the ruins of the seven churches, called Clonmacnoise, or Cluainmacnois, which signifies, the retreat or resting-place of the sons of the chiefs, or the cemetery of the nobles or kings. This place was famous for having entombed the ancient Christian monarchs of this country; 'tis situate on a gentle ascent, and it also was called Druim Tiprarc, which was expressive of its central situation, as, the church in the centre. In the year 548,549, an abbey was founded here, by St.Keiran, or Ciaran the younger; and Dermot, the son of Ceronill, king of Ireland, granted the site, on which the church was built, and which was afterwards converted into a cathedral and bishop's see. Around this were erected seven, or, as some say, nine churches, built by chiefs or kings of the country, as their mausoleums; they were inclosed in a space of about three statute acres. 'Tis said there was also an episcopal palace here, and several smaller sepultures, which are now entirely in ruins, entombing the chiefs and bishops. Many stones are found with characters of various workmanship, and bear inscriptions of the Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Irish tongues. In the year 1552 this abbey was plundered by soldiers from the garrison of Athlone; they despoiled everything in their way, and carried off whatever was of value, not sparing even the books that belonged to the cathedral. Here are also two of these round towers so peculiar to Ireland, and, from their near situation to churches, are considered to have been erected for religious purposes. It has been argued, that they were appropriated for penance in the early days of Christianity, which Doctor Mullock of Bellair, who is a good antiquarian, seems to think; and, in support of his opinion, he states, that there was a penance, which still exists in name, and styled the Thurris Penance: what the nature of this atonement was, I have not learnt, but the words come near in found to Turris, which in latin signfies a tower; and as in the Romish church, particularly in this country, both the Latin and Irish tongues were often in old times intermixed and confounded, it is not very improbable, this may be a sort of confirmation in the opinion of those, who believe that those towers were erected for penitentiary purposes. [Coote was not familiar with Irish and hence the error here]. But in those elaborate and uncontradicted historical accounts of dates of many places of antiquity, contiguous to those towers, we have not a single authority of the use of them, or at what time they were erected; which rather argues, that their origin was in far earlier days, before the era of Christianity; and as they were built for some particular purpose, possibly a religious one, the districts around them certainly became remarkable places, and well known; for which, and perhaps, other good reasons, the founders of churches were induced to build in their vicinity; and it may have been the cause, that these towers were then appropriated by them to religious purposes: but all conjectures on this head only tend to confirm their uncertainity, and place their date before the period of the introduction of Christianity into this island. The deanery is at present the only part of the chapter which exists, as the see was united to Meath: to this deanery the prebend of Cloghran was united, and he hath a seal of office, which, perhaps, was the ancient episcopal seal of the see. A topographical account of Clonmacnoise is to be seen in the introduction, as copied from Sir James Ware's Antiquities of Ireland; the plates annexed to Ware's Antiquities give a very clear view of this venerable place. About six miles from hence, and in this barony, is the small village of Ballicumber; and near a mile beyond which, is the parish church, situate on a hill. This village is fifty-two miles from Dublin. Raghera is a very inconsiderable village, but remarkable for an excellent bridge over the Shannon. There are several ruins of old churches in this barony, and, indeed, are very numerous through the county, which has occasioned the union of several parishes.

BALLYCUMBER , a hamlet, in the parish of LEMANAGHAN, barony of GARRYCASTLE, KING'S county and province of LEINSTER, 3 miles ( W. S. W. ) from Clara. Lewis describes it as a neat village, comprising 13 houses, pleasantly situated on the river Brosna, over which there is a good stone bridge, and on the road from Clara to Ferbane: it has a penny post from Clara. Ballycumber House is the handsome residence of J. Warnford Armstrong, Esq, ; and about two miles distant is Castle Armstrong. Fair's for black cattle, sheep, and pigs are held on May 2nd and Dec. 1st. The Parliamentary Gazetteer adds that in the vicinity are the houses of Prospect of C. Holmes Esq; Moorock, G.A. Holmes Esq; and Bellair, T.H. Mullock Esq. The vicinity of so many mansions and the agreeable aspect of the village itself, are the more striking to traveller on account of the whole being 'encinctured' with belts and expanses of the Bog of Allen.

BANAGHER, a market and post-town ( formerly a parliamentary borough ) , in a justice of the peace within the borough, and coroner and clerk of the market, and empowered the corporation at large to send two members to the Irish parliament. The corporation was styled " The Sovereign, Burgesses, and Free Commons of the Borough and Town of Bannacher alias Bannagher, " and consisted of a soverign and twelve burgesses, with power to admit freemen and appoint a recorder and other officers; but the corporate offices have not yet been filled up since the year 1800, when the borough was deprived of its right of parliamentary representation, and the £15,000 awarded as compensation was paid to the Rt. Hon. Wm. Brabazon Ponsonby. The sovereign formerly held, under the charter, a court for the recovery of debts to the amount of £20 late currency, which was discontinued about forty years since: the only court now held is a court of petty sessions every alternate Monday. The lands granted by the charter for a preaching minister are said to have been formerly held by a clergyman appointed by the corporation, who officiated in a church now fallen into decay in the town; but they have for many years become united to the rectory, and are now held by the incumbent of the parish. At the entrance to the town is the parish church, a handsome edifice in the ancient English style of architecture, with a tower and spire, built in 1829 at an expense of £2286, of which £2030 was granted on loan by the late Board of Fish Fruits. There is also a R.C. chapel, a large plain building in good repair. A school was established by the corporation pursuant to the charter granting lands for its endowment: by and act of the 53rd of Geo.III. , cap. 107, these lands, which according to a survey made in 1817 comprised about 370 acres, of which about 233 acres are arable and pasture, were vested in the Commissioners of Education, and the schools placed under their control. The lands were formerly let at a rent of £300, but are now held by the master a rent of £148.17. 10. per annum, at the Board had recently proposed to allow him a salary of £200 on the condition of his surrendering all interest in them, with a view to their being placed under the superintendence of a local qualified agent. The school is held very near the town, and was suspended from 1798 to 1807: there are no free scholars on the establishment, which in no respect differs from an ordinary classical school, except that it is under the control of the Board. The parochial school in the town is aided by an annual donation by the incumbent; and there is a national school for boys and girls, aided by voluntary contributions, also a dispensary. In the vicinity is Cloghan Castle, the seat of Garrett O'Moore, Esq., and one of the oldest inhabited castles in Ireland; and a short distance to the south of the town, near the banks of the Little Brosna river, are the ruins of the Garry castle, which gave name to the barony.

BELLAIR, a hamlet, in the parish of LEMANAGHAN, barony of GARRYCASTLE, KING'S county, and province of LEINSTER, 6 miles from Clara; containing 81 inhabitants. The village, which is of modern origin, is situated on the road from Clara to Moat, and was founded by the family of Mullock: it has a neat and orderly appearance; the houses are built of stone and slated. Contiguous to it is the residence of Thos. H. Mullock, Esq., sheltered by plantations raised with great care. Mount Mullock, in the vicinity, is another seat of this family. Petty sessions are held here and at Doon every alternate Friday.

The name is a corruption of Bally-ard 'the high town', but the Gazetteer writer thinks this name seems to have originally belonged to the collection of houses round the chief mansion. The village was commenced about the 1790's and according to the plan of its founder, Thomas Mullock, Esq., it was to consist, in the first instance, of about 50 houses, all stone-walled and slate-roofed, inhabited only by linen manufacturers, and aggregately constituting an orderly, neat, clean seat of population equal to the small manufacturing villages of England. But this plan, so creditable to the projector, and replete with promises of great benefit to the surrounding country, and of speedy and extensive prosperity to the nascent village itself, has been but very slenderly realized. In 1842, a Loan Fund in the village had a capital of £1,080, circulated £3,030 in 2,228 loans, and cleared a nett profit of £6 1s. Pop., in 831, 81; in 1841, not specially returned. In the vicinity rises the hill of Bellair, and stands Bellair-house, the seat of T.H. Mullock, Esq. Toward the end of the last century, the Rev. Dr. Mullock, the father of the founder of the village, improved a large tract of country in the neighbourhood, and planted with his own hands every tree of a considerable extent embellishing woods. A bog, sometimes called, in cumulo, the bog of Bellair, and sometimes designated in a variety of sub-denominations , commences about a mile north of Ballycumber, and extends 4 1/2 miles west-north-westward, with a breadth varying between 100 or 200 yards and nearly 1 3/4 mile. It is bisected lengthwise, nearly through the middle, by the boundary-line-between King's county and the county of Westmeath; and is traversed across its east end by the road from Ballycumber to Moate. Its highest point is opposite Bellair-hill; and its east and west divisions decline respectively to the Brosna and the Newbridge rivers. Its altitude is from 63 to 110 feet above the level of the Shannon; and its depth of morass is from 15 to 42 feet. Part of it has been reclaimed.

BOORA and BEANAMUCK, two large and closely contiguous bogs, chiefly in the barony of Garrycastle, King's co., Leinster. They are bounded on the north by the road from Tullamore to Cloghan; on the south and east by the high grounds in the vicinity of Frankford; and on the west by the Frankford river. Length, from east to west, 5 miles; area, 8,586 3/4 English acres. Lough Boura, which gave name to the larger of the bogs, covered 108 acres, and was situated in its centre, was thus described in 1812: " The whole of it is so shallow that a man may wade through every part of it in summer-time; but, in the winter season, it rises much higher, owing to the bog having a natural declination to it; in consequence of which it is the great receiver for all the surface-water of the surrounding bogs, which are slowly discharged by the stream to Gurteen Bridge, where it is taken up as one of the supplies of the Grand Canal." The lake was then proposed to be drained, and its bottom of fine black bog and gravel converted into meadow. Many tracts of limestone gravel around the bogs are available for their georgical improvement. Estimated cost of reclamation, £18,841 3s. 6d.

CLOGHAN, a village and post-town, in the parish of GALLEN, barony of GARRYCASTLE, KING'S county, and province of LEINSTER, 4 1/2 miles ( N.E. ) from Banagher, and 60 ( S.W. by W. ) from Dublin; containing 460 inhabitants. This place, which is situated on the road from Ferbane to Banagher, and near the river Shannon and the grand canal, contains 84 dwellings, which are chiefly thatched and neatly whitewashed cottages. Fairs are held on Jan. 1st, May 16th, and Oct. 29th; and a constabulary police force is stationed in the village. Numerous ruined castles of the O'Coghlan sept are scattered over the surrounding country, of which the most remarkable is that of Streamstown, near Castle-Iver, where are also some boulting-mills; and about a mile from the village was the ancient manorial mansion of the family. The Gazetteer adds that while the village is pleasant in itself ' it acquires a chilled and irksome appearance from being surrounded by a country of bogs and level fields , -relieved only by comparatively distant woods, and by the fine form and verdant dress of MacCoghlan's-Hill. A building in the village, which is now used as a barrack, was originally the manorial residence of the MacCoghlan family, and was sold to government by the late Thomas Coghlan, Esq., styled 'the Maw.' Cloghan Castle, though near the village, is within the parish of Lusmagh, -a district which was dissevered from Galway at the time of portioning the country into counties; and it sometimes figures in history under the name of Lusmagh Castle. In 1595, when O'Madden was its proprietor, and was regarded as having bearded the government, Sir William Russell, the lord-deputy, stormed the castle, and put 46 of its garrison to the sword. Garrett O'More Esq., the present proprietor and occupant of Cloghan Castle, is said to be descended from a branch of the family of O'More of Leix. Early in the 15th century, O'Madden founded at Cloghan - Cantualig a Franciscan friary. Area of the village, 34 acres. Pop., in 1831, 460; in 1841, 664. Houses 117.

CLONONEY or CLONANA, a village, in the parish of GALLEN, barony of GARRYCASTLE, KING'S county, and province of LEINSTER, 1 1/2 miles ( N.W. ) from Cloghan; containing 79 dwellings and 385 inhabitants. It is situated near the river Shannon: the surrounding scenery is pleasingly varied, and the old castle of Clonana or Clononey , now the residence of - Mr. Molony, Esq., forms a romantic feature in the landscape. It is a quadrangular structure, built on a rock, on the road side between the river Brosna and the canal, and is in a state of excellent preservation. The population in 1841 was 205 and the number of houses 40.

CLONMACNOIS or CLUANMACNOIS, a parish, in the barony of GARRYCASTLE, KING'S county, and province of LEINSTER, 8 miles ( S. by W. ) from Athlone; containing, with the town of Shannon-Bridge, 4446 inhabitants. This place, also called " Seven Churches, " is conspicuously distinguished in the earlier periods of Irish ecclesiastical history for the number and opulence of its religious establishments, its schools for instruction in the liberal arts, and the veneration in which it was held as a place of sepulture for the royal families of Ireland. It was originally called Druim Tipraid, but from its schools, which were attended by the children of the neighbouring princes, it obtained the appellation of Cluain-Mac-Nois, signifying in the Irish language the "Retreat of the Sons of the Noble." St. Keiran, or Kiaran, the younger, founded an abbey here, in 548, on ground given by Dermod Mac Cervail, King of Ireland, which obtained the episcopal authority usually attached to such establishments. In 1199, this place was attacked by the forces of William de Burgo, Fitz-Andelm, and several of the Irish chieftains; in 1200, it was plundered by the English under Miler Fitz-Henry, and 1201 was completely sacked by the same assailants. The churches, the town, and the cathedral suffered the greatest violence and depredation; the vestment of the priests, the books, the chalices, the plate, and the provisions and cattle of the minks, were carried off and their grounds laid waste. The abbey was again plundered by William de Burgo, in 1204, and in the year following the town was partly destroyed by an accidental fire. A castle was erected here by the English in 1214, and 1227 the town was three times set on fire by the son of Donnell Bregagh O'Melaghlin. The see continued to flourish under a regular succession of prelates till the time of Elizabeth, when the English garrison of Athlone plundered the cathedral, destroyed the altars, and mutilated and defaced the ornaments with which it was decorated. On the death of Peter Wall, the last bishop, in 1568, the see was united to that of Meath by act of parliament, and at present this place ranks only as a parish, the very name of the ancient diocese having merged in that of Meath.

PART OF WESTMEATH
The parish formed part of the county of Westmeath until 1638, when, through the influence of the bishop of Meath, it was separated from the barony of Clonlonan, in the county. It is situated on the east bank of the river Shannon; nearly two-thirds of the surface are bog, part of it being a continuation of the bog of Allen; there are many hills, the upper portions of which afford tolerable pasture; on the banks of the river is some good meadow land; and the valleys, which are mostly in tillage, afford excellent crops of corn, although the soil is rather light, and in some parts sandy. Nearly in the centre is a lake of about 90 acres, called Clonfanlagh, encompassed on the opposite sides by an extensive bog, and abounding with pike and perch. The substratum is limestone, which is quarried both for building and for agricultural purposes. The river Shannon is navigable hence to Limerick and Athlone. The living is a vicarage, in the diocese of Meath, and in the patronage of the Bishop: the tithes amount to £264.2.2., payable to the incumbent. The present income of the deanery arises solely from the lands of Kilgavin, comprising three cartrons, in this parish, let on lease at the annual renewal fine of equal amount. The church is one of the ancient structures that were built around the cathedral, and contains some very singular and interesting old monuments; the Ecclesiastical Commissioners have recently granted £220 towards its repair. In the R.C. divisions the parish is in the diocese of Ardagh, and is partly a distinct benefice, called Seven Churches, and partly united to Lemanaghan. There are two chapels, one at Shannon-Bridge and one at Clonfanlagh. The parochial school is aided by an annual donation from the vicar; there is also a school at Shannon-Bridge, under the patronage of the parish priest, and one at Clonlyon supported by subscription. In these schools about 80m boys and 50 girls are instructed: and there are about 200 children in the several pay schools.

The Gazetteer adds ' A hillock which bears aloft the old castle of Leitra, has an altitude above sea-level of 174-feet; and Lough Fin, situated a little west of the centre of the parish, has a surface elevation of 133 feet, produces good pike and perch, and some eels, and is flanked on two sides with bogs, and on the other sides with low, treeless hillocks. A quarry, about one-forth of a mile from the Shannon, produces a shell grey marble, variously tinted, and of a sound useful description; and a few years ago, about 3,000 cubic feet of this marble were sent to the Killaloe Works, -the principal mart and manufactory for marble, within the counties of Clare, Limerick, Tipperary and Galway. Nearly the whole surface of the district has a naked, dreary, monotonous, and repulsive appearance. The seats of Templeduff, Charlestown, and Blackwater, occur in he vicinity of Shannon-Bridge; and a cluster of hamlets, consisting of Deverys, Derryharney, Gahaganas, Lumcloon, and Clonlyon, is situated in the extreme east. The interior is traversed by the road from Ballinasloe to Ferbane and Tullamore. -This parish is a vicarage, and a separate benefice, in the dio. of Meath. Vicarial tithe composition, £264 7s. 3d.; glebe, £60. Gross income, £324 7s. 3d.; nett, £303 6s. 8 1/2d. Patron, the diocesan. The rectorial tithes are equal in value to the vicarial, and belong to the sinecure deanery of Clonmacnoise; but they are not paid. The church is very ancient, and about 104 or 105 years ago was a mere ruin, but was repaired and new-roofed by means of parochial assessment. Sittings 80; attendance, from 16 to 20. The Roman Catholic chapel at Shannon-Bridge is attended by about 350, and that at Clonfanlough by about 700; and, in the Roman Catholic parochial arrangement, they are mutually united. In 1834, the Protestants amounted to 155, and the Roman Catholics to 3,971; and 8 daily schools - one of which was in connection with the London Hibernian Society, and also received £2 a-year from the vicar, and one was salaried with £10 from the farmers of Clonlyon and Clonlyon Glebe - had on their books 205 boys and 146 girls.'

EXTENSIVE RUINS
The ecclesiastical ruins are very extensive: the most conspicuous objects are the ruined gables of the numerous small churches that surround the cathedral, and two of those round towers that are found almost exclusively near the sites of the earliest religious establishments. The cathedral is said to have been built by the O'Melaghlins, princes of Meath; and within the cemetery, comprising about two Irish acres, were ten dependent churches, built by the kings and petty princes of the circumjacent territories, one of which, Temple-Doulin, has been restored, and is now the parish church. A nunnery was founded here at a very early period, but was destroyed by fire in 1180, and one circular arch is all that remains of it. About a furlong from the ruins of the cathedral are the remains of the episcopal palace, a strong but rude castle surrounded by a moat and counterscarp. The cemetery was a favourite place of sepulture with the neighbouring chieftains, many of whom were buried here, and many ancient inscriptions in Irish, Hebrew, and Latin, have been discovered among the ruins. It is still venerated as a place of interment throughout the neighbouring country; and the 9th of September is kept as a patron day, in honour of St. Kieran, when from 3000 to 4000 persons annually assemble here and remain for two days; huts and booths are erected for their accommodation, and such is the veneration in which the place is held, that many persons come from distant parts of the country, and even from the county of Donegal.

COAGHTER, [one of the 'four provinces' of Pollough as the late Denis Kelly used to say]. It is on the east side of the barony of Garrycastle, 2 miles south-east of Ferbane, King's Co.., Leinster. Length, 2 3/4 miles; breadth, 2; are, 3,539 acres, 1 rood, 14 perches. The other denominations are Leamore, Bunn, Derrycarney, and Kinnoor. The bog is bounded on the north by the Grand Canal from Pollough to Macartney aqueduct; on the east, by the barony stream; and on the west, by the low bottom land of Derrycarney, adjoining the Frankford rivulet. Coaghter Island, containing about 3 acres of fine manuring gravel, lies near the centre and summit of the eastern and larger division of the bog; and from its vicinity, that division declines to the canal on the north, the barony stream on the east, and a supply drain of the canal on the west. The other or western division consists of the denomination of Bunn, Derrycarney, and Kinnoor, comprises 1,326 acres, 2 roods, 13 perches, and is, for the most part, a dead level, lying from 20 to 26 feet higher than the keystone of Macartney aqueduct, and from 10 to 16 feet higher than the surface water at Gurteen-bridge. Except from Coaghter Island, the appliances for manuring improvement are very scanty. Estimated cost of reclamation, £4,952 9s. 7d.

CREGGAH, a hamlet in the barony of Garrycastle, King's Co., Leinster. Fairs are held on April 1 and Dec. 12. Pop. not specially returned.

DERRYHOLMES, a seat environed with bogs, on the west margin of the barony of Garrycastle, and of King's co., Leinster. It is situated a the confluence of a bog-rivulet with the Shannon, 2 miles below Shannon-Bridge, and 2 1/2 above Shannon Harbour. Improvements for the navigation of the Shannon at this place were projected by the Shannon Commissioners, to cost, according to estimate, £2,200.

FERBANE, a post-town, partly in the parish of WHERRY, barony of Garrycastle, KING's county, and province of LEINSTER, 8 miles (N.E.) from Banagher, and 57 (S.W.) from Dublin, on the river Brosna, and on the road from Clara to Banagher; containing 501 inhabitants. This town, which is within a few miles of the junction of the Brosna with the Shannon, is pleasantly situated on the banks of the former river, over which is a bridge commanding a beautiful view of the verdant plains and rich plantations though which it winds its course. It contains 106 houses, has a customary market on Thursday, fairs on Aug. 2nd and Oct. 20th, and a constabulary police station. The parochial church of Wherry is situated here, and a large R.C. chapel has been recently erected. There is also a dispensary. In the vicinity are several gentlemen's seats, which are noticed in the articles on the parishes of Gallen and Wheery [to follow later]. The contributer to the Parliamentary Gazetteer adds that 'the country around it, though flat and to a large extent boggy, appears to the eye of a spectator on the bridge, or on other points of observation close to the town, to be a beautifully verdant plain, adorned with a considerable aggregate of plantation, and almost forming a pleasant piece of park scenery. In the immediate vicinity are the beautiful demesne of Gallen, and the ruins of Kilcolgan [now demolished] and Coole castles. A weekly market is authorized by patent, but is not held. Fairs are held on Aug. 2, and Oct. 20. The Ferbane dispensary is within the Birr Poor-law union, and serves for a district of 76,517 acres, with a pop. of 18,308; and, in 1840-41, it expended £112, and administered to 2,300 patients. Area of the town, 45 acres, - of which 33 acres are in Wheery. Pop., in 1831, 501; in 1841, 537. Houses 97. Pop., of the Wheery section, in 1841, 515. Houses 91. Families employed chiefly in agriculture, 26; in manufactures and trade, 42; in other pursuits, 31. Families dependent chiefly on property and professions, 6; on the directing of labour, 58; on their own manual labour, 32; on means not specified 3.'

GALLEN or GILLEN, a parish, in the barony of GARRYCASTLE, KING's County, and province of LEINSTER, 6 miles (N.E.) from Banagher, on the road to Ferbane; containing with part of that town and the post-town of Cloghan (which are separately described), 5021 inhabitants. This parish formed part of the ancient possessions of the family of the McCoghlans, proprietors of the surrounding territory, who built a strong castle here, which was surrendered to Ireton in the parliamentary war; the last male representative of this family, Thomas Coghlan, Esq., M.P. for the borough of Banagher died in 1790. A monastery was founded here in 490 by St. Canoc, or Mocanoc, which continued to flourish till 820, when it was burnt by Felim McCroimhain; and after its restoration was occupied by some monks from Wales, who founded in it a celebrated school, from which circumstance it is supposed to have derived its name. Though repeatedly plundered and destroyed by fire, it subsisted till the dissolution, when the site and lands were granted to Sir Gerald Moore. An abbey was also founded near Firbane by St. Diarmid, who died in 563, and was succeeded by St. Coemga; it was plundered in 1041, and destroyed by fire in 1077, soon after which it appears to have been abandoned, as no notice of it occurs since 1082. The parish comprises 16,313 statute acres, of which about one-third is bog and waste; the remainder, with the exception of a small portion of woodland, is equally divided between pasture and tillage; the system of agriculture is improving, and limestone is found in abundance. The principal seats are Gallen, the residence of A. Armstrong, Esq., beautifully situated in a richly wooded demesne bordered by the river Brosna, [now a convent] and containing the picturesque remains of the ancient monastery; Straberry Hill, of ry; Major Molloy; Castle Iver, of W. B. Armstrong, Esq.; and Clonony Castle of - Molony, Esq. At Castle Iver are some mills for oatmeal, worked by steam. Fairs are held on May 15th, Aug. 15th, Oct. 29th, and Nov. 17th: the May and October fairs are the principal for horses, cattle and pigs.

It is a vicarage in the diocese of Meath, forming part of the union of Reynagh; the rectory is impropriate. The tithes amount to £415.7.8., and are equally divided between the impropriator and the vicar; the glebe comprises 222 statue acres, valued at £154 per annum. The church, a small neat edifice, situated at Cloghan, was built be a gift of £600 from the late Board of First Fruits, in 1813. In the R.C. divisions it is part of the union of Banagher, or Reynagh, in the diocese of Ardagh; the chapel at Cloghan is a spacious plain building. About 130 children are taught in three public schools, of which the national school is endowed with a house and garden by the Hon. Frederick Ponsonby, and one at Shillestown with a house and half an acre of land by Mr. Judge. There are also seven private schools, in which are about 280 children. There are some remains of the ancient castle of Clonana or Clonony. [Still standing.]

GROGAN, a village, in the parish of LEMANAGHAN, barony of GARRYCASTLE, KING's County, and province of LEINSTER, 4 1/2 miles (N.W.) from Clara, on the road to Ferbane; containing 52 houses and 298 inhabitants. The Parliamentary Gazetteer adds in regard to Gallen that 'a great extent of the surface of dismal bog; and the remainder is but slightly diversified by hill and swell, and consists, for the most part, of tolerably good land. The north boundary is traced by the Brosna river; the interior is traversed by the Silver river, the Grand Canal, and the roads from Banagher to Athlone and Kilbeggan; and the western border is part of the marshy, sedgy, flat, terraqueous bank of the middle Shannon. About 9,400 acres are bog; 9 acres, 3 roods, 4 perches, are in Lough Boora; and 60 1/2 acres are in the Shannon. The chief seats are Gallen, Anddrew Armstrong, Esq; and Castle Inver, J.F. Armstrong, Esq. " A monastery," says Mr. Brewer, " was founded at Gallen, according to Colgan, so early as the year 492, by St. Canoc. We are told by MacGeoghegan, that a celebrated school was established here in the year 820 by 'some emigrants from Wales.' O'Melaghlin aided, by Teigroe (O'Melaghlin) and Edmond Faye, an Anglo-Norman leader, wasted this Abbey in 1548; but it was speedily restored, and still existed in Colgan's time. On the suppression of monasteries, this house was granted to Sir Gerald Moore. The Castle of Gallen was built by MacCoghlan, and was taken and plundered by Ireton in 1650." -This parish is a vicarage, and part of the benefice of REYNAGH, in the dio. of Meath. Vicarial tithe composition, £207 13s. 10d.; glebe, £155 12s. 3d. The rectorial tithes arem compounded, £207 13s. 10d., and appear to belong to several impropriators whose claims are disputed. The church is situated in Cloghan, and was built in 1812, by means of a gift of £553 16s 11d., from the late Board of First Fruits. Sittings 130; attendance, about 40. The Roman Catholic chapel has an attendance of from 1,500 to 2,000; and, in the Roman Catholic parochial arrangement, is united to the chapel of Banagher. In 1834, the Protestants amounted to 143, and the Roman Catholics to 4,992; and 10 daily schools, one of which was aided with £10 a-year from the National Board, and some advantages from the Hon. Frederick Ponsonby, were averagely attended by about 334 children. In 1840, a National School at Shannon Harbour was salaried with £12; one for boys at Cloghan, with £10; and one for girls at Cloghan, with £8.

The bog at Gallen was described in the 1840's as one of the three great bogs in Garrycastle alongside Cloghan and Lumcloon. The bog extends westward from the Macartney Aqueduct of the Grand Canal to the immediate vicinity of the village of Cloghan; lies from 1 mile to 2 3/4 miles south-south-west of Ferbane; and is traversed southward, and cut into two section, by the road from Ferbane to Frankford. Length, 2 3/4 miles; breadth, 1 3/4 mile; area, 3,069 acres, 2 roods, 14 perches. The section east of the Ferbane and Frankford road is the smaller of the two, and consists of deep, wet, shaking morass, unrelieved by even one interesting feature; and the larger section has, for the most part, the same character, but is traversed by a fine belt of grazing cush and black bog which would produce good ashes. Estimated cost of reclamation, £6,842 12s. 11d.

Not so distant is the Glaster and Streamstown bog, 'a bog of two denominations, 1 1/2 mile south by west of Banagher, and of King's co., Leinster. Area, 1,227 acres, 3 roods, 14 perches. The depth of some parts of it is nearly as low as the level of the Shannon below Banagher Lock. Its eastern boundary is the almost stagnant stream which crawls from Ballaghanogher to the Shannon below Banagher; and its western boundary consists of high grounds, diversified with abrupt hills of excellent manuring gravel. The estimated cost of reclaiming the bog is £2,862 14s.'

LEMANAGHAN, or KILNEGARENAGH, a parish in the barony of GARRYCASTLE, KING'S county, and province of LEINSTER, 4 miles (S.W.) from Clara; containing, with the villages of Ballycumber, Bellair, and Grogan, 5785 inhabitants, of which number 290 are in the village of Lemanaghan. This place, which is also called Melain, [?], is situated on the river Brosna, and appears to have derived its name from St. Manchan, probably the founder of the monastery, of which he died abbot in 661. The establishment continued to flourish till 1205, after which it became a parish church; and there are still some remains of the building surrounded by a large tract of bog [and some fine tombstones]. The parish comprises 18,690 statute acres, of which 200 are woodland, 6740 arable, 4000 pasture, and 7750 bog; the system of agriculture is very backward, little improvement having been made within the last two centuries; limestone abounds, and is quarried for agricultural and other purposes. The principal seats are Bellair, the residence of T. Homan Mulock, Esq.; Prospect of C. Holmes, Esq.; Moorock of G. A. Holmes, Esq.; the Doon, of R. J. Enright Mooney, Esq.; Castle Armstrong, of Col. Armstrong; Ballycumber House, of Capt. Armstrong; Twickenham, of Mrs. Armstrong; and Hollybrook of J. Henderson, Esq. Fairs are held at Ballycumber on Dec. 1st and May 2nd, for horned cattle, sheep and pigs, but there are very indifferently attended; and petty sessions are held alternatively at Bellair and Doon on Fridays. The living is a rectory and vicarage, in the diocese of Meath, formerly held by faculty with the rectory and vicarage of Tessauran, but now separately, and in the patronage of the Bishop. The tithes amount to £415.7.8.; the glebe-house is a neat small residence occupied by the curate, and the glebe comprises 70 acres. The church, a neat plain edifice, situated at Liss, was built in 1830, at the expense of the parish, and an organ was erected in it at the cost of T. H. Mulock, Esq. [The church i still standing and the tombstones have been recorded.] In the R. C. divisions the parish is in the diocese of Ardagh, and forms part of the union or district of Ballinahone. The chapel is a very humble building; on the altar is an ancient shrine, supposed to contain the bones of St. Manachan. [The church is much improved since the 1830s and the shrine well presented.] About 140 children are taught in four public schools, of which one for 40 girls is

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supported by Mrs. Mulock, at Bellair; and there are also seven private schools, in which are about 340 children. A dispensary is supported solely at the expense of Dr. Molloy, who has also invested £500 in a loan fund, which is supported solely by him. There are some remains of the ancient castle of Lemanaghan [see photograph - now demolished], and at Doon are the remains of the ancient castle of the O'Mooneys, now in the possession of R. J. E. Mooney, Esq., a lineal descendent of that family, whose residence is on the estate. Of the castle, which was a spacious structure on a rock, only one tower is remaining; it is thickly overspread with ivy and forms a picturesque object [still standing at Esker].

Describing the terrain the Parliamentary Gazetteer noted that ' A large proportion of the surface is bog; a portion is pasture with a dry limestone soil; a portion is meadow; a portion is demesne ground; and only a comparatively minor section is arable land. Cor Hill, situated on the west border, has an altitude above sea-level of 378 feet; and Bellair Hill, situated in the nort-east, has an altitude of 413 feet. The river Brosna traces part of the eastern boundary, runs across the south-east wing, and then traces a small part of the southren boundary. The Grand Canal passes across the south-east wing. The road from Dublin to Loughrea traverses nearly the longest part of the interior; and on this road, at the extreme east of the parish, stands the village of BALLYCUMBER. The principal hamlet, with respective pop. in 1831, are Ballyeighter, 76; Bellair, 81; Grogan, 298; and Leamanaghan, 290. The seats are Ballycumber-house, J.W. Armstrong, Esq; Prospect-house, Charles Holmes, Esq; Moorock-house, G.A. Holmes, Esq; Bellair-house, Thomas Homan Mullock, Esq; Castle-Armstrong, Mr. Armstrong; Doon-castle, R. J.C. Mooney, Esq; Corbea-house; Kilnagarenath-house; Hollybrook; Birdsville; Moorock-Lodge; and Twickenham-house. The chief antiquities are the ruins of an abbey, a church, Lemanaghan-castle, Togher-castle, and Esker-castle, - the two last situated in Doon demesne. Lemanaghan-castle was the ancient seat of a chief branch of the O'Molloys [sic. the McCoghlans]. - This parish is a rectory, and a separate benefice, in the dio. of Meath. Tithe composition, £416 7s. 8½d.; glebe, £98 15s. Gross income, £515 2s. 8½d.; nett, £481 2s. 3½d. Patron, the diocesan. The incumbent holds all of the united benefice of Ferbane and Tessauran, in the dio. of Meath; and is non-resident in Lemanaghan. A curate has a salary of £18 9s. 2d., and other advantages which are estimated in value at £98 15s. The church was built in 1826, by means a loan of £923 1s. 6½d. from the Board of First Fruits, and the sum of £138 9s. 2¾d. raised by parochial assessment. Sittings 300; attendance, from 200 to 250. The Roman Catholic chapel has an attendance of 1,500; and, in the Roman Catholic parochial arrangement, is united to Ballinahown chapel in Kilcleagh. In 1834, the parishioners consisted of 388 Churchmen, [Church of Ireland], 2 Presbyterians, 2 other Protestant dissenters, and 5,509 Roman Catholics; 8 daily schools-one of which was supported by Mrs. Mullock, one aided with £2 from the curate and £14 subscription, and one with £5 Irish from the rector, £5 and a premium from the London Hibernian Societies, and £13 subscription-had on their books 258 boys and 149 girls; and 3 other daily schools were usually attended by about 97 children.

At the same time the Lemanaghan bog where so many finds have been made in recent years was noted as 'bounded on the north, by the high grounds of Cor and Thumbeagh; extends, on the south, very nearly to the river Brosna; is bisected near the middle by a vale and a rill; exhibits on both its east and its west border a few derries or islands; and is traversed south-westward by the road from Ballycumber to Ferbane. Elevation above the level of the Shannon, from 43 to 86 feet; dept of borings, from 15 to 32 feet; estimated cost of reclamation per acres, £2 9s. 0¾d. Area of Leamanaghan and Castle-Armstrong denominations of the bog, 2,410 acres, 34 perches; of the Lemanaghan, Clillugh, and Curraghalassa, denominations, 2,319 acres, 32 perches.

Lemanaghan is a historic part of the barony of Garrycastle. In MacCoghlan country it has the famous monastic site, the shrine of St. Manchan and wonderful stories and tradition. A local committee are now working at restoring the old school house into a visitor's centre. Most of the big houses and the fairs are gone as it the linen industry and the brick making.

LOG BOG, one of several denominations of a nearly continuous bog, in the barony of Garrycastle, from 2 3/4 to 5 1/4 miles north-west of Frankford, King's Co., Leinster. The other denominations are Stonestown, Dunagh, and Whigsborough. The length and breadth of the series is each 2 1/2 miles; the are is 5,055 1/2 acres; and the estimated cost of reclamation is £9,799 16s. 6d. The bogs extend upwards of two miles along the west bank of the Frankford river; and this river, over almost the whole distance between Lumcloon-bridge and the wooden bridge at Ardgoga, is nearly a dead level, and could, at an inconsiderable expense, be made navigable for flat-bottomed boats of about 20 tons burden.

LUSMAGH or KILMACUNNA was a parish, in the barony of GARRYCASTLE, KING'S county, and province of LEINSTER, 2 1/2 miles (S.S.W.) from Banagher; containing 3420 inhabitants. A Franciscan friary was founded at Cloghan Cantualaig by O'Madden, early in the fifteenth century, of which no particulars have been recorded. The castle of Cloghan, supposed to have been built in the reign of King John, was taken by storm in 1595 by Sir Wm. Russell, Lord-Deputy, who put forty-six of the garrison to the sword, in consequence of O'Madden, the proprietor, having sent him a taunting refusal to surrender. It is now the property of Garret O'Moore, Esq., whose ancestors have been resident here since the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when they were banished from the territory of Leix, in Queen's county. [The Castle is now open to the public]. The parish is situated on the river Shannon, and on the Lesser Brosna, one of the tributary steams; and comprises 5876 statute acres, as applotted under the tithe act. Limestone is found here and the inhabitants enjoy the advantage of the Shannon navigation to Limerick. It is a rectory and vicarage, in the diocese of Clonfert; the rectory being partly appropriate to the see and partly to the archdeaconry; and the vicarage forming part of the union of Dononaughta, in the patronage of the Bishop. The tithes mount to £104.6.1 3/4., of which £64.12.3¾. is payable to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, in whom the temporalities of the see are now vested; £13.16.11. to the archdeacon; and the remainder to the vicar. In the R.C. divisions it forms a separate district [and is the only Offaly parish in Clonfert diocese]. A large and handsome chapel has been lately built at the cross of Capplevane, and the old chapel at Cloghanbeg is now used as a school, in which, and in another school, about 160 children are educated. Some remains of the old church still exist.

The Parliamentary Gazetteer adds: 'It contains the hamlet of Stream, and the villages of Newtown and Lower Newtown. Length, south-eastward, 4½ miles; extreme breadth, 3; area, 8,919 acres, 3 roods, 26 perches, - of which 187 acres, 1 rood, 34 perches are in the river Shannon. Pop., in 1831, 3,420; in 1841, 3,643. Houses 571. The Shannon describes all the western boundary, forms there several islets, and periodically overflows a considerable extent of land; a canal conducts the Shannon navigation over a distance of 1 3/4 mile along the west border; and the Little Brosna river describes the whole of the southern boundary. The parochial surface is low, flat, extensively boggy, and nowhere higher than 180 feet above sea-level. The only seat is Cloghan-castle. -This parish is a vicarage and part of the benefice of DONOAUGHTA, in the diocese of Clonfert. The vicarial tithes are compounded for £25 16s. 11d., and the rectorial for £78 8s. 2¾d.; and the latter are appropriate to the bishop and the archdeacon of Clonfert. The Roman Catholic chapel has an attendance of 1,500. In 1834, the Protestants amounted to 43, and the Roman Catholics to 3,479; and two hedge-schools had on their books 92 boys and 69 girls.'

NEWTOWN, a village in the parish of LUSMAGH, barony of GARRYCASTLE, KING'S county, and province of LEINSTER, 1 1/2 miles (S.) from Banagher, on the road from Parsonstown to Cloghan castle; containing 59 houses and 348 inhabitants. Here is a station of the constabulary police. The Gazetteer noted that the village stood '2 3/4 miles south by west of Banagher, and 5 north-west of Birr. The castle of Feddaun formerly stood here; and in the vicinity are the hamlets of Lower Newtown and Stream. Area of the village, 12 acres. Pop., in 1831, 348; in 1841, 197. Houses 35.'

RAPEMILLS, a hamlet, in the parish of REYNAGH, barony of GARRYCASTLE, KING'S county, and province of LEINSTER, 3 miles (S.) from Banagher, on the road to Parsonstown; containing 9 houses and 64 inhabitants. It takes its name from some rape-mills erected here. The Gazetteer adds that 'It has a police-barrack; and adjacent to it are the residences of Mount-Erin, Hill-house, and Ballaghanoher-house. Pop., in 1831, 64. Houses 9.'

REYNAGH, a parish, in the barony of GARRYCASTLE, KING'S county, and province of LEINSTER on the road from Parsonstown to Banagher bridge and Galway; containing, with the post-town of Banagher, 4271 inhabitants. This place takes its name from a monastery founded here by St. Regnacia, sister to St. Finian, who died in 563. The establishment, which is called Kill-Rignaighe, was placed under the superintendence of Talacia, mother of St. Finian, who was abbess for some time; but no further details of its history are recorded. The parish is situated on the river Shannon, and comprises 6555 statute acres, of which a very large proportion is bog; part is waste land, chiefly sand hills; and the remainder, which is chiefly under tillage, is of very indifferent quality. The system of agriculture is in a very backward state, though, from the abundance of limestone, which is quarried both for building and agricultural uses, the lands under a better system might be easily improved. About half a mile from Banagher on the road to Parsonstown, is Carrigcastle [Garrycastle], the demesne of H. B. Armstrong, Esq. with the extensive flour-mills, established in 1818 and employing 20 persons: in the ruins of an adjoining castle coins of Queen Elizabeth and several skeletons were found. Mount Carteret is the property of John Prialux Armstrong Esq.; the glebe-house, the residence of the Rev. John Burdett; and Claremount, of the late Henry Goode, Esq. There are extensive flour and oatmeal-mills at Garrycastle. The Shannon affords facility of conveyance by steam-boats to Limerick, and the canal to Dublin. Fairs are held on May 1st and Sept. 15th, for horses, cattle, and sheep; and petty sessions are held at Banagher every Monday. The living is a rectory and vicarage, in the diocese of Meath; one-half of the rectory is impropriate and at present the subject of litigation; the other half is annexed to the vicarage, which in 1798 was united to the vicarage of Gallen, and is in the patronage of the Bishop. The tithes amount to £288.7.8., payable in moieties to the impropiator and the vicar. The glebe-house was rebuilt in 1800, and has been enlarged by the present incumbent, at an expense of £664.12.3¾.: the glebe comprises 94 acres, valued at £173.18. per annum, and there is also a glebe at Gallen of 137 acres, valued at £155.12.3.; the gross income of the benefice, including tithe and glebe, amounts to £681.7.11. per annum. The church in Banagher, a handsome structure in the later English style, with a tower surmounted by a well-proportioned spire, and in very good repair, was erected in 1829, at an expense of £2030 British, advanced on loan by the late Board of First Fruits. There is also a church in the parish of Gallen [Ferbane]. In the R.C. divisions this parish is in the diocese of Ardagh, and the head of a union called Banagher, comprising also the parish of Gallen; the chapel at Banagher is a large plain edifice, and there is also a chapel in Gallen. About 340 children are taught in two public schools; and there are seven private schools, in which are about 350 children. There is also a royal free school at Cuba House, near Banagher, and a dispensary. There are some remains of the Danish rath [sic] called Garrycastle, also the ruins of Streamstown castle, and of an ancient church called All Saints, near which is a holy well.
The Parliamentary Gazetteer adds: ' It lies on the western verge of the province, and contains the town of Banagher. Length, north-north-westward, 5 miles; extreme breadth, 2 3/4, area, 8,826 acres, 2 roods, 20 perches, - of which 112 acres, 2 roods, 37 perches is in the river Shannon. Pop., in 1831, 4,271; in 1841, 5,106. Houses 823. Pop., of the rural districts, in 1841, 2,279. Houses 378. The Shannon describes the north-western boundary; it contributes to Reynagh the lower part of the island of Bullock; and in winter, it is here subject to prolonged and extensive overfloodings. A large proportion of the parochial surface is bog; and the remainder consists, in general, of tolerably fair land. The seats are Mount-Carteret-house, Clarmount-house, Milltown-house, Hill-house, Mount-Erin, Ballaghanoher-house, Castle-Garden-house, and Cuba-Court. The principal hamlets are Rapemills, Coolfin, and Timolin. The chief antiquities are ruins of a church, a monastery, and two castles. Archdall alleges the original of the monastery to have been founded in the 6th century by St. Regnacia, and to have been presided over by Talacia, the mother of St. Finian. -This parish is a vicarage, in the dio. of Meath. Vicarial tithe composition, £144 3s. 10d.; glebe £178 18s. The rectorial tithes are compounded for £144 3s. 10d. ; and are impropriate in several persons. The vicarages of Reynagh and Gallen constitute the benefice of Reynagh. Length, 8 miles; breadth 3. Pop., in 1831, 9,731. Gross income, £681 7s. 11d.; nett £609 6s. 7¾d. Patron, the diocesan. The incumbent holds also a benefice of Ballygurth, in the dio. of Meath, but is resident in Reynagh. A curate receives a salary of £75. The church is situated in Banagher, and was built in 1829, by means of a loan of £2,030 15s. 4½d. from the late Board of First Fruits. Sittings 450; attendance, from 250 to 300. The church of Cloghan in Gallen has an attendance of about 40. One meeting-house serves for both Baptists and Methodists. The Banagher and the Gallen Roman Catholic chapels have an attendance of respectively from 1,500 to 2,000, and from about 1,500 to 2,000;; and, in the Roman Catholic parochial arrangement, are mutually united. In 1834, the Protestants of the parish amounted to 516, and the Roman Catholics to 4,277; the Protestants of the union to 659, and the Roman Catholics to 9,269; pay daily schools aat Banagher, Cloncullen, Garbally, and the Ridge, were usually attended by about 145 scholars; 6 other daily schools in the parish had on their books 260 boys and 82 girls; and there were also 10 daily schools in Gallen. One of the schools in Renagh; was salaried with £12 a-year from the National Board and £3 3s. from subscription; one was salaried with £2 Irish from the vicar and £8 from the Association for Discountenancing Vice; and one was a royal endowed school, attended by 5 boarders and day scholars, and supported by large fees from the scholars, and by the proceeds of an endowment of from 300 to 400 acres of land. In 1843, a daily school and an infant school in Banagher were salaried with respectively £20 and £12 6s. 8d. from the National Board.'

SHANNON-BRIDGE, CLONMACNOIS, barony of GARRYCASTLE, KING'S county, and province of LEINSTER, 8 miles (S.) from Athlone; containing 599 inhabitants. It is situated on the river Shannon, and derives its name and origin from a bridge which here crosses the river and connects King's county with that of Roscommon. The bridge is a handsome structure of stone, 140 yards in length; it consists of sixteen arches, exclusive of two over a parallel canal, the roadway being level throughout. At the western or Roscommon end is a tower and battery forming a tete-du-pont, with an artillery barrack for 2 officers and 44 men, and a magazine annexed. On a rising ground in the vicinity is an advanced redoubt. The village is a station of the constabulary police, and contains one of the two R.C. chapels belonging to the district, and the parochial school.

In the Gazetteer is added: ' The village stands on the left bank of the river Shannon, and on the road from Ballinasloe to most parts of King's Co., 6 1/4 miles south-east by east of Ballinasloe, 8¼ west of Ferbane, and 65¼ west of Dublin. The bridge which gives name to the place is, with the exception of the splendid new ones recently erected at Limerick, Banagher, and Athlone, one of the finest upon the Shannon; it commands a full view of the flat, boggy country around, and of the hugh and sinous bog-ditch formed by the snaky convolutions of the river Suck; it measures 420 feet in length, and has 16 arches across the river; and tow across the brief line adjacent to the canal; and its carriage-way is perfectly level, ample in breadth, and considerably elevated above the water. One of the two arches across the canal admits the transit of boats; and the other, which is small, spans the track-path of the horses. The brief line of canal obviates a fall of about a foot in the current of the river, in the immediate vicinity of the bridge. The Commissioners for improving the navigation of the river Shannon, proposed some changes here- particularly the deepening of the canal cut, the removal of the lock, and the construction of a swivel-bridge across the arch - estimated to cost £7,000. " The Roscommon end of the bridge is occupied by a military work, which forms a tete de pont capable of accommodating a small garrison. The public road wends between the barracks and the fort, is protected on the Connaught side by an advance redoubt on a rising ground to the north by the highway." The fortifications are closely similar to those at Banagher; but the barracks are larger, and the battery is more conspicuous. Shannon-bridge is one of the three fortified passes still maintained upon the Shannon, the other two being Banagher and Athlone. The village is of recent origin, or at least of recent restoration; but, apart from the adjoining garrison, it is a place of very small importance or note. Fairs are held on Jan. 1, April 28, June 24, and Sept. 12. On the Roscommon side is a constabularly station; within a mile of the village, on King's Co. side, is the seat of Templeduff; and 3½ miles up the river are the ecclesiastical ruins, and the quondam episcopal town of CLONMACNOISE. The environs of Shannon-bridge, in a general view, are exceedingly dreary. Area of the village, exclusive of every thing on the Roscommon side, 24 acres. Pop., in 1831, 559; in 1841, 398. Houses 67. Families employed chiefly in agriculture, 25; in manufactures and trade, 23; in other pursuits, 35. Families dependent chiefly on property and professions, 13; on the directing of labour, 33; on their own manual labour, 35; on means not specified 2.'

SHANNON-HARBOUR, a village, in the parish of Gallen, barony of GARRYCASTLE, KING's county, and province of LEINSTER, 3 miles (W.) from Cloghan; containing 199 inhabitants. It is situated at the junction of the Grand Canal with the river Shannon, and near the Upper Brosna river, which falls into the Shannon a little above it. Here is one of the stations of the Inland Steam-Navigation Company, from which, on the arrival of the canal packet-boat from Dublin, a steamer starts for Portumna, Killaloe, and Limerick. In the village, which in 1831 contained 33 houses, is a station of the constabulary police. The Parliamentary Gazetteer tells us that ' Shannon Harbour acquired its name from being the western harbour ofr terminus of the Grand Canal previous to the cutting of the continuation to Ballinalsoe; and it contains the large inn and stores originally constructed by the Canal Company, but now partially used as a constabulary barracks and for other purposes, and presenting a half-forsaken, a cold, and an unprosperous appearance. Within a mile of the village, on the Leinster side of the Shannon, are the seats of Moystown and Huntstown, and the ruins of Liscooney-castle. The transit of the Grand Canal across the Shannon also popularly bears the name of Shannon Harbour; and is effected by means of a wooden bridge, and connecting causeways. A marble quarry is worked in the vicinity of the village, and produces a very fine Irish and Sienna dove marble, which is exported in its rough state. Most of the surrounding country is low, flat, boggy, and irksome. Area of the village, 17 acres. Pop., in 1831, 199; in 1841, 244. Houses 38.

TESSAURAN, a parish, in the barony of GARRYCASTLE, KING'S county, and province of LEINSTER, 2 miles (N. by W.) from Cloghan, on the road to ShannonBridge; containing 5587 inhabitants. This parish is situated between the river Shannon and the greater Brosna river, which latter runs into the former at its southern extremity; it comprises 5184 statue acres of arable land, and upwards of 1600 acres of red bog. Limestone is quarried both for building and agricultural puposes; and great facility is afforded by the Shannon and the Grand Canal for the conveyance of agricultural produce to Dublin and Limerick. Petty sessions are held on alternate Tuesdays at Belmont. The seats are Moytown, the residence of Col. L'Estrange; Belmont, of Robert Baker, Esq.; Kilcummin, of Wm. L'Estrange, Esq.; and Hunston, of Major Carlton. The living is a rectory and vicarage, in the diocese of Meath, united by act of council in 1804 to the vicarage of Ferbane, and in the patronage of the Bishop; the tithes amount to £200, and there is a glebe of 114 acres of profitable land, valued at £256.10. per ann.; there is also a glebe of 282 acres (exclusive of bog) in the parish of Ferbane: the gross value of the benefice, including the gleves, amounts to £876.19.2 per ann. The glebe-house was built in 1812 by the present incumbent, at an expense of £2119. The church is a neat edifice, built in 1806 by grant aid of a gift of £500 Irish currency, from the late Board of First Fruits, and enlarged in 1831 by private subscription, aided by a loan of £300 British, from the same Board; on this occasion Col. L'Estrange contributed £80. In the R.C. divisions the parish forms part of the union or district of Ferbane; the chapel at High-street is a plain building of recent erection. In the national school at High-streete, which is aided by £6 per ann. from local funds, and a female school at Moytown, supported by Mrs. L'Estrange, about 90 children are educated; and there are two private schools, in which are about 130 children, and a Sunday school. A loan fund has been established for the benefit of the industrious poor. Of the abbey founded here about the commencement of the sixth century, and of which St. Trena was abbot, not a vestige exists. The old churchyard, which for the last two centuries has been the burial-place of the L'Estrange family, is still used.

The Parliamentary Gazetteer gives the following description: ' Length, south-westward, 3 3/4 miles; extreme breadth, 2 1/2; area, 7,316 acres, 2 roods, 12 perches - of which 106 acres, 3 roods, 38 perches are in the river Shannon. Pop., in 1831, 2,032; in 1841, 2,029. Houses 346. The north-western boundary is traced by the Blackwater; the south-western boundary, by the Shannon; and the south-eastern boundary by the Brosna. All the northren district , part of the eastern, and most of that along the Blackwater, are bog; much of theat along the Shannon is lowland meadow; and most of the remainder is dry limestone land, pleasant in appearance, and possessing a considerable aggregate of embellishment. The principal artificial features are the mutually adjacent demesnes fo Moystown and Hunstanton, the residences of the Messrs. L'Estrange, situated on the Brosna. "Though Moystown," remarks Mr. Fraser, "has not extensively diversified park scenery to boast of, and is environed by deep brown bog, there is, in the style of the house, in the arrangement of the plantations, and in the beautiful evergreen oaks and other ornamental trees which adorn the lawn, a character which carries us back to the gentlemen's seats of the olden times. This demesne is watered by the Brosna, which pays its ample tribute to the Shannon at the Canal crosses the river in its progress to Ballinasloe." The other principal residences are Woodbine-house, Bellmount-house, Kilcummin-house, and Bleach-hill. The chief hamlets are High-street, Bellmount, Lisdaly, and Newtown. The other chief objects of interest are a constabulary barracks, the church, the Roman Catholic chapel, the ruins of Lisclooney-castle, the ruins of a church, and the sites of Bellmount and Faddanmore castles. The road from Cloghan to Shannon-bridge passes through the interior. - This parish is a rectory, in the dio. of Meath. Tithe composition, £200; glebe, £256 10s. The rectory of Tessauran and the vicarage of FERBANE, constitute the benefice of Tessauran. Length, 9 miles; breadth, 7. Gross income, £876 19s. 2½d. ; nett, £656 11s. Patron, the diocesan. The incumbent holds also the benefice of Kilnagarenagh, in the dio. of Meath; but is resident in Tessauran. A curate receives a salary of £69 4s. 7½d. The parish of Ferbane is also a perpetual curacy; and the following statistics refer wholly to the parish of Tessauran. The church was built in 1805, by means of a gift of £461 10s. 9½d. form the late Board of First Fruits; and enlarged in 1831, by means of private subscription, and a loan of £300 from the late Board. Sittings 200; attendance, from 140 to 200. The Roman Catholic chapel has an attendance of about 800; and, in the Roman Catholic parochial arrangement, is united to the chapel of Ferbane. In 1834, the Protestants amounted to 343, and the Roman Catholic to 1,607; and 4 daily schools- one of which was salaried with £10 a-year from the National Board, and £6 from a local fund, one with £4 12s. 3d. and other advantages from Mrs. L'Estrange-had on their boods 151 boys and 110 girls.

WHEERY, a parish in the parish of GARRYCASTLE, KING's county, and province of LEINSTER; containing, with part of the post-town of Ferbane, 3555 inhabitants. This parish, which is situated on the river Brosna, comprises 16,732 statue acres, of which 80 are woodland and more than 7000 are bog.

The remainder is divided in nearly equal portions between pasture and tillage. The arable land is of very good quality and favourable to the growth of corn; but the pasture, except the lowlands near the river, is indifferent, and the meadow land poor. The system of agriculture is slowly improving; there is abundance of limestone, which is quarried for agricultural purposes and building. The principal seats are Ballylin, the residence of the Rev. H. King, situated in a fine demesne; Killygally, of the Rev. H. Mahon; and Moyclare, of R. Lawder, Esq. Fairs are held at Ferbane on Aug. 2nd and Oct. 20th: the Grand Canal passes within a quarter of a mile of the parish. It is a rectory, vicarage and perpetual curacy, in the diocese of Meath; the rectory is impropriate in the Rev. J. Armstrong and the Rev. H. King; the vicarage forms part of the union of Tessauran; and the perpetual curacy, which is also called Ferbane, is in the patronage of the incumbent. The tithes amount to £276.18.5 1/2 of which one-half is payable to the impropriator and the other to the vicar. The glebe-house, annexed to the curacy, was built in 1818 at the expense of £500, of which £450 was a gift and £50 a loan from the late Board of First Fruits; the glebe comprises 20 acres, valued at £21 per ann.; and the income of the curacy is £99.7.8. 1/2 arising from the glebe, a stipend of £55.7.8 1/2 payable by the incumbent, and a augmentation of £14 by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. The church of the perpetual curacy was built in 1804, at the expense of £461 British, of which £327 was raised by parochial assesment and the remainder by subscription; a belfry turret was added to it in 1819 by the same means. In the R. C. divisions the parish is in the diocese of Ardagh, and is the head of a union called Ferbane, comprising also the parish of Tuessaauran; in each parish is a chapel; that of Ferbane is a handsome edifice lately erected. There are five private schools, in which are about 200 children; and a dispensary. There are remains of old castles at Cool and Kilcolgan.

The Gazetteer contributor adds: ' Length, north-westward, 7 1/2 miles; extreme breadth, 3 1/2; area, 17,556 acres, 3 roods, 22 perches, - of which 8 acres, 1 rood, 8 perches are in Lough Boora. Pop., in 1831, 3,555; in 1841, 3,841. Houses 636. Pop. of the rural districts, in 1831, 3,054; in 1841, 3,326. Houses 545. The river Brosna and the Grand Canal pass across the interior; and the small lake Boora lies on part of the south-eastern boundary. About 3,240 acres of the surface are bog, - principally in the south-east; and the remainder of the surface consists of good meadow-land near the Brosna, and good arable land for corn and potatoes in the other districts. A height among the bogs in the south-east has an altitude of 209 feet above sea-level. the general appearance of even the best parts of the parish is flat and tame; and that of the boggy districts is not a little repulsive. The principal country residences are Ballylin-house, Moyclare-house, and Killymore-house; and the chief antiquities are the ruins of Coole and Kilcolgan castles. The roads from Banagher to Clara and Tullamore pass through the interior. - This parish is a vicarage, and a perpetual curacy, in the dio. of Meath. The vicarage is part of the benefice of TESSAURAN. Vicarial tithe composition, £138 9s. 2½d.; glebe, £282. The rectorial tithes are compounded for £138 9s. 2½d.; and are impropriate, in equal proportions, in Messrs. King and Armstrong. The perpetual curacy is a separate benefice. Salary payable by the vicar, £55 7s. 8¼d.; glebe £21. Gross income, £90 7s. 8½d.; nett, £74 10s. 6d. Patron, the incumbent of Tessauran. The church was built in 1804, by means of £327 2¼d. raised by parochial assessment, and £134 10s. 0s. 6½d. raised by private subscription; and a belfry was erected in 1819, at an unreported cost, provided partly by assessment and partly by subscription. Sittings in the church, 200; attendance, from 100 to 130. The Roman Catholic chapel has an attendance of from 1,300 to 1,400; and, in the Roman Catholic parochial arrangement, is united to the chapel of Tessauran. In 1834, the parishioners consisted of 275 Churchmen, 17 Protestant dissenters, and 3,293 Roman Catholics; a hedge-school at Creggan was usually attended by about 30 scholars; and 2 daily schools at Ferbane, and 2 hedge-schools at respectively Endrim and Lemore, had on their books 102 boys and 82 girls.

The first Offaly County Council was elected in 1899, following the passing of the Local Government Act 1898. A similar Act had gone through in the rest of the United Kingdom ten years before. The 1898 Act has been described as "the Legislation Father of the Irish Free State". For one thing it gave the vote to all male householders or occupiers. The democratic net had been considerably widened, but women were still excluded from the supposed benefits of the franchise. By 1935 all restrictions on adult voting had been removed.

Grand Jury

The new County Councils took over the administrative functions of the Grand Juries. The Grand Jury had been comprised of the County's leading landowners. Every year some two dozen gentlemen were selected by the High Sheriff, who was in turn appointed by the Lord Lieutenant. The Grand Jurors met twice a year at the Assizes for the purpose of passing presentments, i.e., voting expenditure for local government functions. Unlike England, police and education were province of central government. Public health was in the care of the boards of Guardians up to 1898 and thereafter with Rural District Councils. This letter tier of local government was abolished about 1925 and its health functions were transferred to the County Councils.

What did the County Council have? They were responsible for the County's roads, for the County Infirmary, they appointed members to an asylum committee; public lighting; and of course they passed resolutions on the great political questions of the day. The new County Councils provided a convenient point of focus for national issues such as the abolition of Landlordism and Home Rule.

All Home Rulers

The first Councils, about 29 in number, were almost all home rulers. The unionist minded Grand Jury members polled badly. In Eglish, Edward Dooly was elected with 191 votes whereas Lord Rosse polled only 29. In Birr, John Powell, the editor of the Midland Tribune obtained 366 votes as against 116 of William Edwards Woods. In Geashill, Joseph Ryan got 280, Reginald Digby 87. The story was the same throughout the country.

Adams - v - Daly

The contest for the Tullamore seat on the County Council was fought between Williams Adams and Bernard Daly. Adams had served on the Board of Guardians for 35 years and also as a Tullamore Town commissioner, and was well known as the man who had championed the building of rural cottages. Daly was a partner in the Tullamore distillery and spoke of the need for more employment. The farmers, he felt, should be busy improving output instead of getting involved in political issues. Daly's Pragmatic approach has a modem ring about it, but was unsuited to a time when great national questions remained to be settled.

He polled 206 as against 385 for Adams. It showed he remembered that aside from the southern unionists, very much a minority, all others were members of the Nationalist party or persuasion. A convention to select as candidate for Tullamore was held in St. Mary's Hall, with the Parish Priest, Father Behan, in the chair. The meeting was a noisy one and at one stage the Reverend gentleman had to leave his chair and go down the hall to quieten boisterous elements.

Policy Making

The policy statement of William Adams is representative of the stand taken in this county and elsewhere. Adams read the following resolutions to the meeting; "That this meeting is of opinion that no person should be selected as candidate for the office of County Councillor or District Councillor for the Tullamore division who is not prepared to support the demands of the Irish people on the following important questions - Home Rule; the providing of proper sanitary dwellings for the labourers and artisans; the establishment of a Catholic University in accordance with the demand of the Irish bishops, priests and people; the compulsory sale of land on equitable terms; the release of the remaining political prisoners. The resolutions were passed without dissent.

Board of Directors

The first Council met in April 1899, under the chairmanship of Tullamore's prominent businessman and nationalists, Henry Egan.

The first memory was taken up with the formation of committees. An interesting feature of this and later Councils was the relationships between elected member and official. The Committee directed; the officials carried out. Rule by committee in favour of the conduct of services under a single appointed individual came about following the passing of the County Management Act in 1940. The early councils were very much boards of directors with the officials acting in an executive capacity. In terms of socio-economic status, the members of the early councils ranked high up the scale. While no detailed study has been made, there is evidence that this group, basically a conservation one, did not move with public opinion and by 1920 many had lost their seats to poorer but more republican elements.

Republican Council

The first republican Council met in June 1920. Eamon Bulfin, who had been deported to Argentina, was elected Chairman in his absence. The Tricolour draped the chairman's seat and the members answered to roll call in Irish. There is no time here to look at the issues discussed. However, on resolution was of some significance - a motion by James O'Connor to change the name of the county from King's County to Offaly. This was carried, although the County Secretary showed some reluctance to accept the idea. It was decided that the name of the old country capital, Philipstown, should be dropped in favour of its earlier name Daingean.

What's in a name?

From the point of view of historical accuracy, we started off badly. The name Offaly applies only to the eastern side of the county. Also our pronunciation is wrong, the accent should be on the second syllable. As far as I can establish, the name had been used by the county football team. It was also used on the new street name for Wheelwright Lane, Tullamore, in 1907. The spelling of it at the time and still on the Ordinance maps - Offaly Street - shows just how shaky we were on the county's history. Nothing much can now be done unless this name was to go out of use should the County Councils be abolished in favour of a regional structure.

The history of the administration of Offaly - King's County - is certainly deserving of more serious study. However, a first step would be established just what record material survives.

William Garner, Tullamore Architectural Heritage, Dublin 1980.
William Garner, Churches and houses of architectural interest in Co. Offaly.
Mark Girouard, Charleville Forest, Co. Offaly, Eire. In Country Life, (27th September 1962), pp 710-14.
Mark Girourard, Birr Castle, Co. Offaly. In Country Life, (25th February 1965), pp 410-14, (4th March 1965), pp 468-471 (11th March 1965), pp 526-529.

It was entirely appropriate that the doyne of architectural historians, Mark Girouard should make the preface to Jeremy Williams' Architecture in Ireland, 1837-1921 (Dublin, 1994). Girouard did much to promote an appreciation of the great Irish houses in his articles in Country Life over the period 1959 to the mid-1970s. As can be seen above, local houses surveyed included Charleville (1962), Birr Castle (1965). Other Midland houses to be reviewed included Belvedere (1961) and Tullynally (1971). Edward McParland later wrote up Ballyfin (1973) and Emo (1974). But what of the smaller houses? William Garner's Tullamore: architectural heritage (Dublin, 1980) is now out of print while his unpublished survey of Offaly churches and country houses deserves to be better known. Jeremy Williams, himself a descendent of the D.E. Williams of Dew Park (1898), Tullamore, in his Architecture in Ireland, 1837-21, devotes a chaper to Offaly's victorian architecture. I reproduce below here his comments. I have inserted at the end, in square brackets, my own comments.

Ballycumber: Bellair House
Neo-Classical villa by Sir Richard Morrison, extended in 1889 by Sir Reginald Bloomfield with a single-storied pilastered diningroom, a rare appearance in Ireland of the Queen Anne Revival. Commissioned by W.G. Mulock, whose unpublished memoirs survive. Inherited by the poetess Sheelagh Wingfield, Viscountess Powerscourt, who later sold it.

Banagher: Church of Ireland
This over-restored Board of First Fruits church contains memorials of the Bell family-a marble tomb to a doctor who died in India, meticulously detailing his surgical equipment; and a brilliantly coloured pre-Raphelite stained-glass window above the altar, inserted a generation later, made by Revd A.L. Moore of London, whose best work can be seen in Ely Cathedral.

Banagher: Waller's Maltings
Large distilling complex sited dramatically on the edge of the river Shannon. Part demolished, the remainder derelict. [Most of this is now demolished and is in fact part of Midland Maltings at Garrycastle. The buildings were erected as a distillery concern in 1873. The guager's cottages at the entrance are of interest and compare with the Goodbody warehouse in O'Connor Square of 1870 and some work at Geashill village of the same period.]

Birr: Birr Castle
No other Irish castle can compete with the Birr in the architectural evolution, from medieval gatehouse of a Celtic prince to a Plantation fortress repeatedly besieged and stormed in the Cromwellian and Williamite wars, and then into its ultimate transformation, a Regency Gothick fantasy as perceived by an improving earl. At he dawn of the Victorian era, the castle was so complete, and so attuned to the historical sensibility of the time, that there was no need for major work, only decorative embellishments. Most of these appear to have been designed by the astronomer 3rd earl, who succeeded in 1841, or else by his immediate family. His wife's uncle, Col. Richard Wharton Myddleton, designed the star-shaped ramparts that separate the castle from its park, looking as if they were dug in order to repel the armies of the Jacobites, rather than to give employment during the Famine. Access is through a gateway designed by the wife of the 3rd earl, with elaborate cast-iron Gothic gates here, and another pair before the front door, both cast on the estate; their design matches the plasterwork of the bedroom. Lady Rosse is also credited with the design of the stables, which today house her pioneering photographic experiments, and the incredible Gothic Revival furniture of her bedroom.

The most important architectural achievement of the 3rd earl himself was the Gothick folly in the park (1842-5), the most functional folly ever built, since its purpose was to support his telescope, the largest telescope in the world for three quarters of a century, which made Birr a pilgrimage centre not only for scientists, but also for the ordinary public, who were allowed view with their own eyes the outer confines of the Universe. The 3rd earl used his telescope to discover spiral nebulae and record them. He trained his two sons to assist him. The elder, who inherited, improved the workings of the telescope; the younger, Sir Charles Parsons, invented the turbine. During the Troubles the six-foot diameter reflector was deposited in the Kensington Science Museum, where it is now purely an exhibit. The tube was dismantled to its present state like a crashed leviathan. It is the ambition of the 7th earl to retrieve the reflector and resurrect the telescope to view again the stars. Stableyard due to be converted into Irish science museum by the OPW.

Birr: Church of Ireland
Regency Gothick galleried church by John Johnston, extended in 1876 by Thomas Drew with a new chancel. He designed a reredos including the emblems of the four Evangelists which caused such uproar that they were deleted along with a few cherubs result being anonymously vandalised in the middle of the night. The original design, by Heaton, Bulter and Bayne, commissioned from Charles Kempe by the 4th earl of Rosse for the great east window above the altar was also rejected and was finally accepted in 1891, provided that the Crucifixion was excluded. This condition seems to have been forgotten by the glassmakers. Marble memorials to the 3rd and 4th earls, the latter by Burke and Co. of London.

Birr: Convent of Mercy
The Catholic church by Mullins of 1837 pre-dates our period, but on the adjoining site A.W.N Pugin designed in 1845 one of his least-known commissions for an English nun called Sister Beckett, a personal friend. Only two sides of the cloister were completed on Pugin's death, the north entry facade and the range to the west. The south range with its circular staircase tower, and the eastern range terminating in a projecting chapel were completed seven years later not in the original design.

The orphanage and chancel were added (by George Ashlin himself). However, from the garden front the controlled freedom of E.W. Pugin can be savoured in stark contrast to grim monotony of Ashlin's adjoining orphanage- the long restful roofs counterbalanced by the corner tower and a single powerful buttress, against which nestles a lean-to porch. Unassuming interiors with Gothic fireplaces. Small museum displaying a few architectural drawings. The chapel still contains a repositioned eastern window by Hardman of 1858, but its elaborate decoration on the walls and roofs have been painted over. Inevitably the road screen has also vanished. [The convent is now closed and the buildings are the property of the Offaly County Council and the Midland Health Board.]

Birr: Model Schools
Charming round-arched composition, not quite symmetrical due to the incorporation of the schoolmaster's residence. Designed by Jacob Owen and dating from 1860.

Birr: Model Cottages
Designed as a partly double-storied with their gables facing the road linking informally by single-storied ranges. Drawings in Birr Castle collection, signed R.E.B. (probably R.E. Buchanan). 1874.

Birr: Rosse Memorial
The memorial statue of the 3rd Earl of Rosse, the astronomer, who died in 1867. Carved by John Henry Foley. [Unveiled in 1878.]

Birr: The Mall: Church Hall
Designed in neo-Tudor by J.F. Fuller in 1890. Gable end facing the road with entrance beneath a richly carved corbelled balcony. Sold off in the 1930's by the Church of Ireland and now disused. [Oxmantown Hall completed c. 1889.]

Clara: Ballycumber Road Experimental Housing
Most of the housing in Clara was built over a period of a hundred years ago by the Goodbody's, a Quaker family who built up the largest jute-spinning business in Ireland. The housing they built for their workforce tends to be traditional, with pitched roofs, except for this terrace which has shallow segmental roofs covered with an experimental felt.

Clara: Charlestown House
One of the several houses designed by J.S. Mulvany for the Goodbody family. Almost symmetrical with curved bows at each end of the facade. Interlaced parapet concealing the roof.

Clara: Franciscan Monastery
The most domestic religious institution in Ireland, built like a small country house and adjoining farmyard. Its construction represented official recognition for its founder, Matthew Delahunty, who had set up a small community of Franciscan brothers to make their living off the land and teach the children of their neighbours in 1820. The symmetrical facade of five bays flanked by double-height Gothic windows lighting chapel and refectory, would appear to date from that time, but in reality was not built until 1854. Elegant ribbed vault in the chapel and early painted glass.

Clara: Inchmore
One of the houses built by J.S. Mulvany for the Goodbody family. Two-storied front with columned porch and bay windows characteristic of Mulvany's abbreviated Classicism. Built out of grey limestone set off against white rendered walls. Despite a three-storied tower, the house rambles off at the rear. Now owned by a religious institution; a startling version of the grotto of Lourdes, sliced off in the shape of a human heart, has just been dismantled. [Now the residence of Mr. Derry Kilroy. The grotto has been moved.]

Clara: Catholic Church
J.J. O' Callaghan was the youngest pupil of Benjamin Woodward, and throughout his long life, he never abandoned his faith in Gothic, whether for churches or for pubs. Here the predominant influence is Augustus Pugin, and the church stylistically dates from the 1840's. It was designed in 1876, and completed in 1881, a miniature version of Killarney Cathedral, cruciform with central tower and spire. The facade is made boldly asymmetrical by the staircase tower to the organ gallery. Interior of equal assurance with the timber roof underplayed to stress the stone-ribbed vaulting beneath the tower. The comparative narrowness of the nave, choir and transepts are emphasised by their end walls two windows wide. This duality is resolved in the nave and transepts by rose windows at a higher level. In the chancel the duality was once resolved by the high altar, but this was destroyed after the Second Vatican Council, when parts of it were relegated to a side chapel. Remarkably consistent stained glass by Mayer taking up the windows of both transepts, an admirable foil to the robustness of the architecture.
The early Gothic Revival predecessor has been preserved nearby as the parochial hall. [The spire is much later and c. 1910.]

Clara: Meeting House
Quaker meeting house treated as Italianate garden pavilion surrounded by yews. Attributable to J.S. Mulvany. [Now owned by Clara Musical Society.]

Edenderry: Catholic Church
Started in 1913, and completed three years later by Anthony and William Scott, this is a competent essay in Hiberno-Romanesque. But it should have been much more than that. Judged as successor to Spiddal, the interior is profoundly disappointing. The facade has a certain bombastic formality, contemporary with St.Mary's College in Galway, and there is the occasional detail like the staircases to the organ gallery, where William Scott reveals his finesse as the leading Irish Arts and Crafts designer of his day. Otherwise, no risks are taken with the traditional- continuos nave and chancel, screened transepts, terminating apse. Good mosaic floor in the sanctuary. Lavish altars, communion rails and pulpit that would appear to predate William Scott but are dated 1929, eight years after his death.

Edenderry: Rahan Church of Ireland
J.F. Fuller at his most unassuming. A simple cell neo-Hiberno-Romanesque with projecting porch, vestry and organ chamber. Sited above the remnants of an entrance into the vanished demesne of the Dudley Palmers, who are buried alongside of the chancel. Stylised carving on the arch of the porch, repeated on the arch of the chancel. Date: 1914

Geashill: The Schoolhouse
Picturesque, cut-stone, Gothic Revival schoolhouse with gabled porch, dormer and return, the latter topped by a dormant bellcote. Designed in 1864 by the architect of Glenveagh Castle, John Townshend (Townie) Trench. [Trench no doubt was connected with Lord Digby's agent, Wm. Stewart Trench.]

Kilcormac: Rathrobin
The seat of the Biddulph family, rebuilt for them c.1880 by Sir Thomas Drew as an irregular and neo-Elizabethan pile with mullioned windows; gables and dormers topped by finials. Now an ivy-clad ruin but revealing unexpected experiments by Drew in ferro-concrete. Its destruction during the Troubles was recalled by Arthur Magan in The Magans of Umma More, as it was his mother's home. [The improvements made here may be later, 1903.]

Kinnitty: Castle Bernard
Gothic Revival castle by brothers Pain, incorporating remnants of an earlier fortress set below the wooded foothills of the Slieve Bloom; dating from 1833. Three-storied facade with borrowings from Mitchelstown Castle (which they designed fourteen years before)- an oriel inserted over a projecting porch to light an inner hall, and a corner octagonal tower crowned with crockets, all in limestone ashlar. Acquired by the department of forestry for use as a school. A recent bid to turn it into an open prison led to widespread opposition from the locals; now for sale. [This is now the well known hotel.]

Kinnitty: The Schoolhouse
Delightful triple-gabled facade. c. 1840 survives but in a state of dereliction. [Happily, now restored as Kinnitty Community Centre.]

Shinrone: Mount St. Joseph's
The earliest building is a country house called Mount Heaton, bought by Count Arthur Moore and donated to the Cistercians on condition that his posterity had the right to be married there. His donation was certainly a more effective means of reviving Irish Catholicism than his other dream- to rebuild a replica of Cormac's chapel for his private worship.

Mount Heaton was one of those delightfully unpredictable stylistic hybrids, here Gothic to the front (now much mutilated) and Classical to the rear (reasonably intact). The first abbot was Dom Camillus Beardwood, a brother of W.H. Beardwood, an architect who spent his entire life building in Dublin churches designed by others. Here in the Irish midlands it would appear that he was merely implementing the ideas of his formidable brother, who had trained his monks to be builders, as they would have been in the middle ages. The abbot left the Gothic front of Mount Heaton intact (a policy not followed by his successors) and built an adjoining cloister with the nearest range taken up by the abbey church which is imbued with the Cistercian tradition but also influenced by W.D. Butler's Roscrea church nearby.

The church took only three years (1878-81) to build, apart from the later tower and spire, built unaccountably in smooth ashlar, compared to the bush-hammered masonry of the remainder. The interior has a long nave and aisles, austere columless arcades, generously proportioned clerestory and open roof leading to a tower-like crossing. Unfortunately the stained glass, banned by the early Cistercians, here trivialises its setting.

On the other side of the church, the abbot built his most remarkable range, its fenestration indensifies the different functions of the rooms- the refectory, the dormitory and the sacristy treated as an outer chapel of the church. The austere internal cloister reflects the values of a life devoted to silence. Since the death of Abbot Camillus, the building programme has continued, but with lessening motivation. The principal school complex from 1905 is crude if jolly. Finally, Mount Heaton itself was transformed into a guesthouse, with the loss of its Gothicory; it is ironic at the same time that the Gothic Revival should be deployed in 1941 to build the school chapel, to prove how long the movement lasted in rural Ireland.

Tullamore: Catholic Church
Designed by William Hague in a tired conventional Gothic-unbroken nave and chancel, polygonal apse, off-centre western steeple. Hague died a year after the foundations were laid in 1898. Work was restarted in 1902, under T.F. McNamara, who was responsible for fitting up the interior. Accidentally burnt out by intruders in 1983. Church rebuilt, retaining only the tower walls, the steeple, and the west facade, now the end wall of the reorientated chancel. Clarke Studios windows brought from Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin.

Tullamore: Charleville Forest
Francis Johnston's most impressive castle was unexpectedly inherited by the younger aunt of the 5th and last earl of Charleville after he had a row with her elder sister. Her husband was a Howard of Castle Howard, patrons at that time of Phillip Webb and the later pre-Raphaelites. Hence the only commission of William Morris in Ireland-to redecorate the interiors, in 1875. By then he was so affected by Socialism, that he was far more absorbed by the living conditions of the poor in rural Ireland, and he never referred to his redecoration in his correspondence. Hence his contribution slipped into oblivion. His furnishings were dispersed in the great sale, c.1950. His wallpapers were removed during its recent restoration. Some painted decoration and a frieze survive in the diningroom. Open to the public.

Tullamore: Courthouse and Gaol
An impressive neo-Classical design by J.B. Keane (built in 1833-35) which has survived its destruction by fire in 1922. In the rebuilding, unfortunate changes were made to the internal planning; extra windows were inserted at the expense of its monumentality; and the statue of Justice seated with her scales above the six-columned portico was removed. Keane's drawings survive, with his horizontally channelled masonry carefully foiled by superimposed corner pilasters-an idea he was to reuse to throughout his career. (Longford Cathedral, Waterford Courthouse). Two D-shaped courtrooms approached by columned halls.

Next to the serene courthouse, is sited a formidable neo-Medieval gaol, entered by a massive machiolated gatehouse, now converted into a factory. Attributed to John Killay.
[The well-known civil engineer.]

Tullamore: Charleville Road: The Bungalow
Red-Brick and tiled Anglo-Dutch cottage ornee set in matching garden designed by F.G. Hicks in 1906 for the author's great-grandfather. [Hicks did other work in Tullamore, including two small schemes - Emmet and Convent View terraces.]

Tullamore: Columcille Street: Gleeson's
Formerly Scally's, grandiose provincial emporium of three floors, the two lower devoted to shopping; designed by T.F. Mc Namara, the architect of the Catholic Church. It dates from 1911. The fenestration that had revealed the magic of the Art Nouveau to the Irish midlands, has long since been conventionalised, and its curvilinear oriel has been replaced-as has the telegraph system connecting each assistant to the central cash desk.

Tullamore: Durrow Abbey
Designs survive in the collection of William Murray dated 1837 for Lord Glandine, later 2nd earl of Norbury, transforming his Georgian house into a large, dull, Itialiante palazzo. No drawings survive of the incomplete Tudor Revival scheme, that was actually built, and where the 2nd earl was murdered just after he had moved in. His descendants, the Otway-Tolers, were burnt out in 1922, but decided to rebuild in 1924, choosing Ralph Byrne, who improved Murray's proportions by lowering the front range to two floors. Within the shell, he constructed a simplified Arts and Crafts interior, full of space and light around a galleried tunnel-vaulted living hall. A rare example of a house improved as a result of its destruction in the Troubles.

Tullamore: Durrow Church of Ireland
Built by the Otway-Tolers to replace the still-extant Georgian church on the historic site, but embarrassingly close to their own house. Designed by J.F. Fuller in his characteristic Gothic. Corbelled spirelet on the western gable. [Now a private house.]

Tullamore: Lynally Church of Ireland
Neo-Romanesque church built alongside the demesne wall of Charleville by Lady Emily Howard-Bury in 1887 to the designs of J.F. Fuller. A single cell ending with an apse. Open roof with arched trusses resting on corbelled brackets. Arcaded organ recess. Celtic Revival altar, pulpit and lectern. Painted decoration in vault of the apse. Now sold off to be a private house.

Tullamore: O'Connor Square : Goodbody's
Three-storied warehouse in Ruskinian Gothic, built by an unknown architect, c.1870. Gabled roofs with decorative bargeboarding. Taken over and restored by adjoining Bank of Ireland. ['Restored' c. 1977. Its restoration marked a turning point in architectural conservation in Offaly.]

by Michael Byrne

Poverty in Ireland existed in plenty in the Famine years. It was not something that came and went with the Great Famine of 1845 - 49. An American writer has left us with a vivid impression of Tullamore and much of the rest of Ireland in a book published in London in 1847 entitled Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger; or, Excursions through Ireland in 1844 and 1845, for the purpose of Personally Investigating the Condition of the Poor. The author was Asenath Nicholson, born in Chelsea on the New England frontier in 1788, she died in 1855. Dr. Rolf Loeber of Pittsburgh sent me the extract from her book about Tullamore, reproduced below and I have since had an opportunity to examine a copy of the old volume. I was aware of Mrs. Nicholson but only through an abridged edition of her work published in New York in 1927 under the title The Bible in Ireland, Ireland's welcome to the stranger or excursions through Ireland in 1844 - 45. This version was edited and introduced by Alfred Tresidder Sheppard. His introduction told us little about Asenath Nicholson and a lot about the editor's preoccupation with Burrow's, The Bible in Spain and related matters.

More recently two books have been published which throw light on Nicholson. The first by Helen E. Hatton, The largest amount of good: Quaker relief in Ireland, 1654 - 1921 (Canada, 1993) and Chris Morash and Richard Hayes (eds.) Fearful Realitites: new perspectives on the Famine, (Dublin, 1996).

Hatton in her first class study of Quaker relief methods adverts to Nicholson in passing and describes her as a remarkable American woman who at one time ran a vegetarian boarding house in New York. "Unattended and unafraid" she travelled throughout Ireland to investigate the condition of the poor, staying with the peasants in their pitiful cabins. At the height of the Famine in 1847 she returned to Ireland as the field agent of the New York Irish Relief Society. "Full of blunt Yankee common sense, Nicholson was not a ranter and did not approach her task from a "missionary" frame as did some of the relief officers of the evangelically based agencies."

Her second book on Ireland arising from this experience was published in London in 1850 as Lights and Shades of Ireland and the Famine section was re-issued in New York in 1851 as Annals of the Famine in Ireland in 1847, 1848, and 1849.

Nicholson was not herself a Quaker. She also refuted the idea that the Famine was "God's will" as some evangelical preachers had said. "Was there a God's Famine in Ireland in 1846-7-8-9"...."No, it is mockery to call it so". She saw that religion helped people to accept their sufferings but as Hatton points out she also saw that the people had a degree of political awareness.

In Fearful Realities Margaret Kelleher has written an essay on Nicholson's narrative 'The Female Gaze: Asenath's Nicholson's famine narrative" (pp 119 - 130). The article is about "re-reading" the old account of the Famine of Nicholson from the perspective of feminist studies. Instead of male accounts and "male gaze which objectifies the woman" where woman has the quality of "to-be-looked-at ness" i.e. "women as image and man as the bearer of the look" Nicholson's study of the Famine is seen as the "female gaze".

In 1998 an edited version of Nicholson's Annals of the Famine in Ireland was published by Maureen Murphy . Originally published in 1851 it provides a valuable account of that tragedy and according to Murphy is 'the extraordinary narrative of Nicholson's work and witness in Dublin and in the west of Ireland.'

Mrs. Nicholson departed New York in 1844, arriving at Liverpool and eventually at King's Town or Dun Laoghaire. After visiting some of the sites in Dublin, including an asylum for unmarried ladies, she made her way to Tullamore because of an obligation to deliver letters to the mother of a young girl who had stayed with her in America. She mentions in her book staying at a terrace in Tullamore and that there were twins in the house aged 11. I looked through the parish registers for the Catholic parish of Tullamore to see what twins were born in 1833 and in fact there were three or four sets that could have fulfilled Mrs. Nicholson's description and at such it was not possible to identify the family that she visited.

She travelled by [Grand canal] fly-boat and gives an interesting description of the voyage from Dublin to Tullamore which she reached in eight hours. Her description of the poor of the town bears out what Francis Berry, Lord Charleville's agent had said about poverty in correspondence of that time and which has survived in the Charleville correspondence in Nottingham university. Asenath Nicholson wrote as follows:

Tuesday, July 2d 1844 - Must leave for Tullamore. I had removed my lodgings from the first kind house where I stopped, and had found in the second all that hospitality which is so congenial to a stranger, and was becoming much attached to Dublin; but rest was not my errand to Ireland, and the kind daughters of the family accompanied me at seven in the morning to the [Grand Canal] fly-boat, where I was packed as tight as livestock could be in any but a slave ship. Here I found a company of would-be intelligent Irish and English aristocrats, who, on "both sides of the house," were professed enemies to the poor Irish, calling them a company of low, vulgar, lazy wretches, who prefer beggary to work, and filth to cleanliness. How much of this may be true I pretend not to decide, but this may be safely hazarded, that it is an established law of our nature to hate those we oppress. The American slaveholder, while he keeps his foot upon the slave, despises him for his degradation, and while he withholds a knowledge of letters, and closes the Bible against him, hates him because he is ignorant and a heathen. In eight hours we reached Tullamore, a distance of fifty miles, and the first novelty was the market-place.

The appearance of the people here was not prepossessing, for there was not one among them decently clad, and everything indicated that a last effort had been made to set off the merchandise to the best advantage, while the looks of the seller seemed to say, "We have toiled all day, and caught nothing."

A son of the lady to whom I had letter, conducted me to the terrace, and as the letters were from her daughter in America, I expected a cordial reception, and was not disappointed. Tinctured a little with aristocracy, well educated, and disciplined by family disappointments, her mind had become chastened, and she appeared as if struggling to support an independence which a heart sinking under silent grief could not long sustain. The children were well trained, and had been educated mostly at home by herself. Her husband was of a good family, and had speculated her property away, and as the last resource fled to that "house of refuge," America; and an absence of three years, without sending her any relief, left suspicions on her mind that all was not well. I had seen her daughter in New York, who had followed her father thither, and she begged me to search out the family in Ireland, and do what I could to comfort her mother. My errand was a painful one, - family troubles can seldom be mitigated by foreign legislation; and while this noble minded afflicted woman made full, meaning, but indirect inquiries, her voice faltered, the tear was in her eye, and for a moment I regretted that I had complied with her daughter's request. Her well regulated family being assembled around the family altar, she read an appropriate prayer with practical observations, adding suitable ones of her own, which made the devotions pleasant to me, for it savored of a heart that had been made better by the things it had been called to suffer.
The next morning, the twin daughters of eleven years accompanied me into a lane to see the poor. Here I found these lovely girls had long been acquainted, for they inquired of a poor old man about the growth of a pig, and kindly patted the well known pets of donkeys, goats, and dogs, calling them all by name, while the mistress went into the garden to pluck a bouquet for the fine girls, who, she assured me, were the smartest in the parish.

I had always heard the Irish were celebrated for giving the pig an eminent birth in their cabins, and was a little disappointed to find that though it was really so, yet there was some nicety of arrangement in all this; for in two cabins I found a pig in a corner snugly cribbed, with a lattice work around him, a bed of clean straw under him, and a pot of food standing near the door of his house, to which he might go out and in at option. And in both these huts, though the floors were nothing but the ground, yet these were well swept; a peat fire was smouldering on clean hearths, and the delf was tastefully arranged upon the rude shelves. An old cobbler sat with his lap-stone, and said he could make one and six and one and ten pence a day, and he took care of the bit of ground at the rear of the cabin for the rent of it. "My wife, praise be to God, is dead, but I can get a comfortable bit for my children." An old blind man of seventy-two, sitting at the door of his cabin, thanked God that he had no right to complain, though he had seen better days; for he had "two kind girls, who, when they had done all in and out of the cabin, got little jobs now and then, which kept the bread in all their mouths." On looking into the cabin, nothing could be cleaner. Here, too, the family pig was snoring snugly in his crib in one corner of the room; and here, in all justice, I must say that these pigs were well disciplined, for when one of them attempted to thrust his nose into a vessel not belonging to him, he was called a dirty pig, and commanded to go to his own kettle, which he did as tamely as a child or a dog would have done.

Another cabin attracted us by the tidy white aprons upon two little girls who were standing at the door, and their nicely attired mother, with clean cap and handkerchief, who welcomed me heartily to Ireland. On my commending her for her cleanliness, she said, "Plase God, poor folks should be a little tidy who have nothing else to set' em off. Would ye walk into the garden? May be ye'd like a rose or two." We willingly complied, and found an acre of kitchen garden well cultivated, with a few flowers interspersed, which they rented for nine pounds, and sold the avails for the support of the family. She plucked her fairest roses and ripest gooseberries, and bade me God speed, long life, and a safe return to my own country.

I returned for this lane much gratified by the cleanliness, simplicity, and comfort of this humble people, for I had ever associated a mud wall, a thatched roof, and a pig as an inmate, with all that was wretched in the extreme; and I had so far as this lane could speak, abundant evidence that a very little will made the Irish content, and even happy.

Tullamore jail and workhouse
In the afternoon I visited the jail, a building, with its appendages, including an acre and a half of land. It contained eighty-one prisoners; seventeen had been that morning sent to Dublin for transportation. They were all at work; some cracking stones, some making shoes, and others tailoring or weaving. Their food is one pound of stirabout, and milk in the morning, and four pounds of potatoes for dinner. There are two hospitals, one for males and the other for females. The drop where criminals are executed is in front; four had suffered upon it within the last two years.

From the prison I went to the poor-house, [ erected at Arden Road in 1841 and demolished in 1978] which was conducted on the same principle as that of Dublin; but the funds were so low that but three hundred could be accommodated, and multitudes of the poor were suffering upon the streets. A flourishing school was in operation, the specimens of writing doing honor to the teachers. The children are fed three times a day; they get a noggin of milk at each meal, with porridge in the morning, potatoes at noon, and bread at night.

The next day rain kept me within doors, and I had the painful annoyance of seeing beggars constantly walking back and forwards before the parlor window; nor would they depart, though often told they could have nothing. The sister, who supported the family of her brother-in-law, now returned from Dublin. She was a woman of some worth, and apparently possessing much piety. The poor afflicted wife and mother, as soon as her sister returned, and the excitement abated became unwell, imputing the cause to her visit at the poor-house; but sickness of the heart was the mover of it all. In the morning, when I went to bid her adieu, she answered not a word, but looked as if in a state of deep despondency:-

"When woman droops, she droops in silence;
The canker grief gnaws stealthily, but sure;
The pallid cheek, the sunken eye alone
Give note of death's dire work within."

Report has said something of the class of beggars in Ireland; but her busy tongue, extravagant as she often is, could not exaggerate here. It was scarcely eight o'clock when I reached the coach, but the beggars had assembled before me; for the going out of this vehicle is the hey-day of expectation. To them a foreigner, or a stranger, whom their shrewdness will readily detect, is a kind of common plunder, and escape is a hopeless undertaking. The coach was to leave at half past eight, and while I stood waiting, I saw some half dozen of men with spades standing in a cluster, and inquired if they had to work for the day. "Not a haporth, but we are hoping to get some." I asked what was the price of labor. "From six to ten pence and we don't get work half the time at this." And does this support you?" "O ma'am," said an old man, leaning on his shovel, "we hope to see better days, plase God; it's but a sorry bit this gives us." Father Mathew has done much for you." "Yes, praise be to God, as early as now in the morning, the people round here, standing as they do now, would be cursin' and fightin'; but now, thank God, there's not a word from their lips."

The chief centre of attraction was now where we stood, as I was a stranger. They attacked me with, "God bless you," "a penny, if you plase, lady" "a ha'penny for the poor woman and child, whose father is dead this twelvemonth," " one haporth for an old man," and "the price of bread for a poor boy;" the boy grasping my clothes, and holding fast, in spite of my efforts to disengage myself- the cries and importunities redoubling, while, like swarming bees, they sallied out from every quarter, till the crowd was immense. In vain I preached loyalty to the government, temperance, and peace; my voice was lost in the clamor of "plase, lady, it's the haporth ye'll give us, thank God." The overseer of the coach, from his window seeing my dilemma, hastened out, and kindly begged me to get upon the coach, where they could not annoy me so seriously. He helped me aloft. Labourers and beggars, some on crutches, some with two legs, and some with one, mostly clad in coats of divers colors, variegated with all shades and hues; boys with a garment suspended from the hips, hanging in strips, making a kind of frill - these all followed in pursuit. By the time I was well adjusted, a sea of upturned faces, some with hats and caps in hasd, to catch the falling penny, lavished all sorts of blessings on America and the kind lady who had come to see them, who as yet had not given them a farthing. Waving my hand for a moment, all was silent. I endeavoured to count them; there were about two hundred and twenty, one half at least beggars. The huddling became so confused that I could not proceed, and I resorted to exhortation, telling them to be true to their young queen; that they had a Father Mathew to keep them sober; a never-tiring friend in O'Connell, who said he would "rot in prison for them if need be;" and under all these encouragements, they must be patient. "That we will , lady and the blessin' of Almighty God be on ye, and the prayers of the blessed Virgin, if ye'll give us a penny." The scene had now become, to say the least, ludicrous, painful, and unseemly. I had travelled by sea and by land among the savages of my own country, the poor abused slaves on the plantations, the degraded, untutored native Canadians; but this eclipsed the whole. I looked down upon the forbidding mass, and saw every lineament of talent, every praiseworthy and noble quality, every soul-speaking glance of the eye, every beauty of symmetry, that God's image ever possessed, united with every disgusting, pitiable incongruity that imagination could depict. Much did I wish that the good queen would leave her throne for the one on which I was sitting, and see for a few moments her subjects, her loyal Irish subjects, as they really are, disgusting to refined eyes as it might be. She must, she would pity, and though her administration had done nothing to produce this state of things, yet her administration should and could produce something better. I begged the coachman to make speed, knowing that a few pennies dropped among them would endanger faces and eyes, if not pull me from the coach; and the promise was given, that when my bag of money should come from America, part of it at least should be poured down upon them. "Faith", cried a poor woman with a dirty urchin hanging to her, "and ye'll be here no more, if the bag's to come with ye." The coachman attached his horses, leaving the whole town with the troop of ragamuffins swinging hats and caps, cheering America and the queen, shouting and calling for a penny till we were out of hearing.

When we had well escaped, "What is this?" I begged the coachman to tell me. "It is the case of all Ireland wherever you travel; a fine country but cursed with bad laws." "But when could all these miserable objects that swarmed around the coach proceed?" "From the mountains and places around; they all know the time that the coach goes out, and are always in readiness; they are not all street beggars, only trying their hand at the coaches and canal-boats."

Tullamore is the assize town of the King's county; it is situated nearly in the centre of the bog of Allen, and the proprietor, the Earl of Charleville, has done much to improve it. Good schools are established and the poor in the town are more comfortable that in many others in the vicinity. The road lay from Tullamore through a part of King's county and Kildare, to Dublin, a distance of fifty miles; and forty five of this it was lined on each side with hawthorn and cinnamon-briar hedges. The briar was in full bloom; the air had been purified by the preceeding day's rain; and the fragrance of the sweet brier, united with that of the new-mown grass, which lay here and there as we passed, made a day's ride of the pleasantest I ever enjoyed, so far as sweetness of air and beauty of scenery were concerned. But the beggars we had left, and the beggars that met us at every village where the coach stopped, made me dread the appearance of a human creature. We passed the most beautifully cultivated fields, where not a stone or a stump could be seen, and saw gardens joined to the most forbidding-looking hovels, where roses were blooming upon the walls, and even upon many a thatch were waving flowers of variegated beauty; so that the unaccustomed stranger must ask, "What means this strange contradiction? How can such taste for farming and gardening be blended with such unseemly rags, such debased minds, and such a lack of self-respect as many of these beings manifest? What must be the state of that people, who can walk and breathe in such a paradise of delights, and not be assimilated in some measure to the more than enchanting prospects around them?"(from pp 24- 31 of the London edition of 1847).

Roscrea and Birr October 1844
On returning to Dublin, Nicholson visited the counties of Wicklow, Kilkenny, Tipperary and eventually reached Birr via Roscrea. Before leaving Roscrea she went up to the top of the castle to see the town. She noted that the old building was now used as a barrack and that she was shown over the place by Dr. Downer who told her that "you see what remains of its former greatness and what a lesson it gives of the frailty of human grandour." It was the end of October 1844 when she reached Birr to stay first of all in what she described as a miserable Protestant lodging house. She wrote as follows:

My walk of five miles was not tedious; the air was wholesome, the lark was singing, the road smooth, and the scenery pleasant. The town of Birr was the residence of Lord Rosse and his telescope, [completed in 1844], and here I had hoped to have a feast of some other worlds of light but this, on which I had so long figured to so little advantage. It rained as I entered the town, and turning into a neat little cottage, found a kind welcome by the cleanly master and mistress, who are Roman Catholics, and was invited to eat, and then they directed me to a Protestant lodging-house. I say Protestant, because the Catholics knowing me to be one, generally selected this sort, supposing I should be better pleased. They told me the people were kind and respectable; this was true, but the rooms were dark and without floors, and two enormous hogs which were snoring in an adjoining closet were called out to take their supper in the kitchen, which made the sum total a sad picture. (A cabin-keeper near Roscrea, who kept her pigs in the room, told me, "An' throth, ma'am, I'd take him into my bed wid me, if he'd thrive any better." Her bed was curtained and her cabin was clean.) I was kindly urged to take supper, and sat down with them, took an apple, and passed a solitary evening. Not that I was sorry for my undertaking, but the lack of all social comfort, where comfort should be expected. When I went into my bed-room I felt like bursting into tears; every thing looked so forbidding, and so unlike cleanliness about the bed. Clean sheets were begged, and clean sheets were granted; yet it was a doleful night, and in the morning, after taking some potatoes, and asking for my bill, four pence was the answer. Cheap indeed! I paid her more.

A drunken Birr distiller
The morning was dark; the rain poured fast. At six, a hearse passed, bearing the corpse of the son of a distiller, [probably Robinson of the Castle Street distillery. The surviving records indicate that this refers to Robert Robinson a distiller of Castle street Birr, probably son of Arthur Robinson also a distiller. Death records for the period are poor but there is a record of a Robert Robinson of Birr dying in 1844. who fell from his horse, and was killed, when intoxicated. The keeper of the lodgings remarked, that he had seen the father, and twelve sons grown to manhood in church together. Seven of these sons have died by intemperance. Are whiskey-making, whiskey-selling, and whiskey-drinking attended with a blessing?

I set off in the heavy rain to find the house or castle of a rich man, who was considered a great eccentric. He was owner of three domains, but had divested them of all their frippery, and put on a frieze-coat and brogues, and literally condescended to men of low estate in dress and equippage. He had taken many orphans into his house, and provided them food and clothing. When I reached his dwelling, my clothes were profusely drenched. Mr. S.___ was not at home. I asked the housekeeper if I might step in till the rain should abate, and dry my clothes. She allowed me to do so; and I followed her through a long gangway of desolated halls, to a kitchen, and found a company about to dine in the same way and on the same materials as the cabin people do. The rain continued, and an invitation to stop over night was not needed a second time. A fire was made in a parlour, where no carpets or supernumeraries met the eye. Tea, bread, and butter were offered, and the housekeeper made everything pleasant. She had embraced the principles of her master, who had taken her, when but two years old, begging her from a widowed mother, who was embarking for England. He had been a father, indeed, she said, and the care of the house was entrusted to her.

When I was comfortably prepared in my lodging-room, with a fire and clean bed, and contrasted it with the preceding night, in what extremes do I find myself, from cabin to castle, tossed like a "rolling thing before a whirlwind," yet never destroyed. I slept in peace, and thanked God that in Ireland one rich godly man could be found, who called all mankind his brethern.

In the morning, I took my breakfast, was kindly invited to come when Mr. S. should be at home, and went out, and called at the lodge-house, where was a godly-woman, poor in this world, but rich in faith. A pleasant hour was passed with her, for with such, lessons are to be learned which the rich cannot teach. The rain had deluged the country the preceding night; and many a poor cabin was swept away with the miserable furniture, and the affrighted inmates had fled, with their children in their arms, naked as they were, from their beds of straw.

The lawn containing the telescope of Lord Rosse was open, and passing the gate, the old lady who presided in the lodge asked me to go through the grounds, which were free to all. Much did I regret that clouds obscured the sky the whole time I was in Birr, so that not one gaze could I have through that magnificent instrument. The pipe is fifty-two feet in length, and six and a half in diameter. The earl is mentioned as a man of great philanthropy, and much beloved by the gentry and poor.

Sabbath - Heard the baptist minister preach to an audience of five, and he likewise broke bread to three. He observed, when he went out, that he felt it his duty to keep the light a burning, the more so, as there were but a few tapers kindled in the island. In the intermission, heard a sermon in the neat Methodist chapel, and that day and evening heard four good sermons. At the house of Mr. W. heard a Roman Catholic, who had been converted from Popery, relate his exercises of mind. A few others had renounced the doctrines, and united with Protestant churches. The priest at whose chapel he attended had left also, and became a Presbyterian clergyman [Father Crotty], that when any become converts from that church, they are the most spiritual Christians of all others, and we must take great stride to keep up with them. ( From pp 146-49)

November 4th - Early on foot I commenced a walk to Ballinasloe.

After spending much of November walking about the county of Galway, Nicholson was at Eyre Court towards the end of that month which she described as a beautiful little place and she passed on through it and walked the five miles into Banagher [pp 181-95]. She wrote: "I reached a beautiful little place called Eyrecourt, toasted my piece of bread, and went on at two o'clock to walk five miles to Banagher. The road was quite muddy, and my feet were now blistered. I was obliged to wear course shoes and my feet, never having been accustomed to them, were tender. Darkness overtook me, and the way became quite difficult. I enquired of all I met the distance to the bridge, and the distance to the town; and the way lengthened in proportion as I passed on, till I found myself upon the bridge; and meeting a woman, she led me to a lodging-house, which she assured me was as "clane and dacent as I could find in a day's walk."

This lodging-house in Banagher has associations which will live in grateful rememberance while memory lasts. Did they say, when I entered wet and weary, (for I had walked for hours in a heavy rain) did they say, "Who is this strange woman, at this late hour asking for lodgings she must be mad?" but "Come in, come in, ye're wet and wairy. How far have ye walked in the stawrm? Come into the kitchen and dry yer clothes, and yer must be a stranger, and we'll get ye the cup of tay; ye must be hungry." All this was said and more, before I had told them who I was, and what brought me there. When this was known, if possible the kindness was redoubled. I told them I had but sixpence-halfpenny in my purse, and could only get a night's lodging and two or three potatoes. "And that you will get; and a week's lodgin' in welcome. Not a hap'orth of them two crippled feet shall go out of my house till they're hailed," answered the man. The servant was called to fetch water to bathe my feet, "and we'll do what we can for ye, the cratur!" And faithfully did they perform their promise; they were kind to a fault. They were Catholics, but they listened to the Word of Life with the most profound attention, and without any opposition. They told their neighbours they fully believed I was inspired of God to come to Ireland, and do them good. What was this good? Certainly not money, and this they well knew.

They gathered about me in the evening in crowds; and when I had read two hours, such a breathless silence was in the room, that I looked about to ascertain whether all who were behind me had not left it, when I saw the place was filled to crowding, sitting upon the floor; and so quietly had they entered that I knew it not. Till one o'clock I read, a peasant woman, sitting at my feet, holding a candle; and when I said, "you must be tired," "And that I ain't, the long night wouldn't tire me, to be listenin' to ye."
"Ain't she a Protestant?" an old man whispered. "She's a Christian sent here to discoorse us, and do ye think the like of her would crass the ocean to see the poor, and discoorse' em as she does, if God hadn't sent her?" The old man seemed satisfied, and the point was settled by "Aw ! there's no use in tawkin'. The like of her couldn't be found in all Ireland." This last was said audibly, while I was turning the leaves of my book for a new chapter.

Mrs Nicholson wrote:
Among this group was a peculiarly interesting woman of forty-five, who had been the mother of twelve children. Six of them, she said, had "gone innocently to heaven." She was endowed with good talents, had been well bred, and was quite engaging in her manner. But the desire she manifested for her children, their education, and their eternal good, almost exceeded belief. She raised her hands, he full grey eyes glistening with tears, and said,"Can you, will you tell me how I can get to your country, where I can place my children under a good and virtuous influence, and where they will be taught the way to heaven as they should be ? We are here in darkness, darkness! Our clergy are good for nothing; they go to the altar, and say mass, but they preach no sermons. They give no other instructions, and who is any better? We have schools, where they learn more that is bad than is good. I go to bed at night, and I pray, pray. I wake up, and do the same, and here I am. Will you talk to my husband, and tell him what privileges you have in America. I can do nothing with him; he does not feel the accountability of training the children, as I do, and could I persuade him to go from this dreadful place, I would work night and day, not for myself, but for my children." I heard her through, and said "You say you are all in darkness, and I say to you, Christ and his word can give you light. Believe me, you must read the Bible; your children must read the Bible; or they never can reach those high attainments which you so greatly desire. There is a science in that Book of books that can be found no where else, and this science cannot be taught except by the Holy Spirit." "Is it so?" she eagerly said. "Have you a Bible?" I enquired. "No; we have never had one." The mistress then remarked, "There are but two Catholic families in all Banagher that have a Bible." "Well you may be in darkness, if you have not the chart that God has given to guide you to heaven." The company now dispersed, when she entreated again. "Do say what you can to my husband. He may listen to you." "That woman," said one, when she had gone, "has always been goin' on in this way. Her children, she says, are goin' wrong, and her husband cares nothin' about it."

A little clean, curly-headed girl called the next day, the youngest of this doting, anxious mother, and led me round the corner to show me her home.

"Welcome", said the mother; "you find me in this dirty cabin, where the pig and the shoemaker's bench are always with me. I live in wretchedness: I was not so rair'd. But my husband will have it so; he is a passionate man; but it was a runaway match; and though he often beats me, yet I am fond of him still. Forgive me for making so free with a stranger, but these dear, dear children; my heart is burning up; it is scalded for them, and I cannot get rid of it. We are not poor, though we live here in this humble cabin with pigs. I can spin, weave, and make all kinds of cloth." She then went up a ladder, and brought down two nice specimens of worsted and flannel cloths which she had manufactured. "And could any such work as this do any good in America for my children? I believe", she added, "Almighty God has put this in my heart, and what shall I do at the day of judgement when I meet my children?" I listened to this woman with the full conviction that the Spirit of God had enlightened her, and would yet bring her further out of darkness into his marvellous light.

I went to church, and found a small congregation; but so engrossed was my mind with the sermon I had heard from the woman, that I was but little improved by what I heard there.

The evening introduced me to a family, where I was invited by the father to see a daughter of seventeen years of age, who had three weeks before had a leg amputated. She was sitting upon the bed, and looked to me uncommonly interesting. She was handsome, becomingly dressed, and received me with a dignified cheerfulness that would have suited maturer age and higher education. She was mistress of the tidy cabin; her mother was dead, and she was the eldest of a pretty group of cleanly dressed children, who looked to her as their guide. When I spoke of her misfortune, she cheerfully answered, "I must submit to what the Almighty puts on me." I went away, and was told more fully the cause of this sad misfortune, of which no mention was made by the family.

The father had a mill of some kind, and was in the habit of taking his dinner in it. This daughter had prepared it, and carried it to the mill; but it was later than the usual hour. The father was angry at the delay, and lifted his hand to strike the faithful child. She, to avoid the blow, stepped aside; her dress caught in the wheel, and her leg was torn nearly off. This family discipline needs no comment. The cheerful girl, it is said, has never been heard to reproach the father.

When I returned from this cabin, a new era, opened. A company of Connaughtmen, in rags and dirt, returning from their potato digging in the county of Kilkenny, had turned in hither for the night. They wanted a pot of potatoes; they wanted them cheap and they wanted them in "God speed." All this could not be accomplished without some bustle, and the good man offered the potatoes for two pence half-penny a stone. That, they, in plain language, declared they would not pay. This took some time to settle, and ended by their going out and purchasing the article elsewhere. This adjusted, then came the lodging. They must be up at two, to pursue their journey; they must lodge in one room; and this room must be the one occupied by me, as no other was of sufficient length and breadth. I cheerfully relinquished all claim, as I was but a guest, and the floor was spread with et ceteras for the lodgers to lie down. The clamour and clatter which commenced and continued were somewhat peculiar to themselves. I had quietly put my Polka coat upon a chair managed to make myself a bed; and as this bed, like the other, was gratis, I had no right to complain. The peat fire was dimly burning at twelve o'clock, when the master came in, and hearing the tumultuous jabbering, and feeling the house to be shaking to the centre, he ran up stairs, telling them to be off, every blackguard of 'em, as it was two o'clock, and not a minute more should they stop in his house, disgracin' the divil himself. They declared they had paid for lodging till two o'clock, and they had not slept a ha'porth. He drove them up, and they tumbled down stairs to the kitchen. I had placed myself in an upright position, and was in a corner. They, as if by consent, all stopped short in a semicircle about me, and in perfect silence surveyed me attentively, and my condition for a few moments was not an enviable one.

There were nine of these nondescripts, not one of them with a whole garment or a clean face, standing in array. The room was nearly dark, and the master not in it. I seriously thought of my sixpence-halfpenny, but before having time to offer it, the good man of the house entered, and poured them out of the house at once. They had the kindness to give the man a timely caution when they were on his steps, for they told him seriously that the stranger in his house was a man in disguise, and that he had come to do some great mischief in the country, and they had not a hap'orth of a doubt but that he had hapes of sovereigns. He added, "Some of the blackguards would not hesitate to take your life, should they meet you alone."

These men certainly are distinct in their appearance from the provinces of Ulster, Munster, or Leinster. Yet I should not feel authorised to say that they are more malicious or dangerous than their neighbours. They are more coarse in appearance and manners; but they do not lack either shrewdness or hospitality. In justice I must say, I have experienced more real kindness from these people, than from many of more refined education and fashionable appendages.

Reader, if you are prone to be incredulous; if you are but a nominal Christian; if you know not how to believe in God without doubting; if you cannot trust him with your body as well as your soul; if you are not willing to deny yourself, and never have done it, and if you do not believe in "particular providence," in particular exigencies, you may as well lay down this book, - at least pass over a few succeeding days, for they will appear like fairy tales, and the teller of them as a silly if not wicked imposter.

Monday: - These Banagher friends wished me "God speed," without taking a farthing, and told me their house should be welcome as long as I would stay. Others in the town did the same: but the time had come; new things were before me, and these new things I must meet.

On leaving Banagher and her account of her stay there, Mrs. Nicholson was back in Birr dining with a Mr. Walsh who insisted that she should go that very evening to visit the good Mr. S., whom she mentioned in her earlier visit to Birr. She had hoped to stay with this Mr. S. at his castle at Rathmore but things did not work out and he refused to see her. Mr. S. was apparently formerly a member of the Church of Ireland and appears to have become a Catholic and did not accept Mrs. Nicholson, who would have been considered a Protestant with a small 'p' - probably a Baptist but certainly not a Quaker. The identity of Mr S. is not disclosed by Nicholson but at a guess it may be Edward Synge who is listed as a landowner in Griffith's Valuation under Rathmore barony of Clonlisk p. 37 and in Burke's Irish Family Records (1976) at p. 1087 is described as born 1788 son of George of Rathmore and residing at Syngefield Birr and Dysart Co. Westmeath. He died unmarried. This was to be Nicholson's last stay in Offaly, at least during the course of the 1844 - 45 visit. She passed out of the town on the way to Roscrea where she recounts further difficulties in obtaining suitable basic accommodation. As she says herself, she had an unfortunate departure from Roscrea in that she had met a Quaker near the town who had provided her with accommodation and helped her to get to Urlingford. Money had arrived for her from America and a young man who was to call and collect her to bring her to Urlingford told her that "uncle has the letter for you at Urlingford, money in it from America; but he found the seal broken at the office, and thought it might be unsafe to send it on to Galway".

"Breakfast was prepared. I passed the day in making repairs in garments, sadly racked by storms and trials before knowing, the next morning the boy and car were sent to carry me to Urlingford. My money was in waiting, my friend was as kind as when I left, and I sat down to rest and reflect".

It appears unlikely that Mrs. Nicholson visited the county in the context of her volume on the Famine, which appeared in London in 1850. Her work is quite distinct from that of previous travellers, nearly all of whom are from a well-to-do background and stayed with the wealthy while on their visit. She afterwards visited Wexford, Tipperary, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Galway and Mayo, following the coast route. Writing at the conclusion of her trip she recorded: "I visited Ireland to see it as it is, so I reported as I found it. I have stayed to witness that which, though so heart-rending and painful, has given me the proof of what common observation told me in the beginning - that there must need to be an explosion of some kind or another. But awful as it is, it has shewn Ireland who are worthy ones within her and who are her friends abroad, it has shown her greater things than these". She completed her preface to the book in June 1847 and noted in the introduction her thanks to the Hibernian Bible Society, which had given her the Word of God, in English and Irish and it also procured suitable books for distribution on her tour. She wrote that nothing had been added to her description of Ireland to meet the state of the Famine in 1846 and 1847. "Facts are related as they occurred and were described in 1844 and 1845. These facts then indicated that an explosion must soon take place and that Ireland was to be turned inside out". In many ways that is why her book is so useful in that it is a pen-picture from an observer who lived among the poor just prior to the Famine years.

When the Midland Tribune was founded in 1881, Birr in common with most other south midland towns had been in a state of gradual decline for almost forty years. That decline had intensified in the late 1870's following three bad harvests and a fall in prices that in turn resulted in a fall in consumer spending. The agricultural depression was matched by an industrial crisis and zero or negative urban growth rates. The Irish craft-based industries were being over-run by English large scale producers whose goods could now find a convenient route to every port of Ireland via the railways.

Decline Exacerbated

All the south midland towns declined during the fifty-year period after the Famine with the exception of Clara where the Goodbody jute factory provided employment for 700 workers in the 1880's. The towns of Birr and Banagher were most severely hit. The decline of Birr was exacerbated by the final closure of the large military barrack at Crinkill, outside Birr, in 1921. In the same year Birr workhouse was closed and amalgamated with Tullamore. At a time of depression and scarce employment opportunities it was not surprising that the County Capital, Tullamore, should draw to itself whatever job opportunities existed in the public service sector.

Many people in Birr felt that the town was being victimised by the Free State administrators for not giving its unanimous and wholehearted support to Sinn Fein. Birr had the most vociferous unionist minority of any town in the south midlands, but it appears to have been underlying economic rather than political factors that led to its continued decline until the 1960's.

The overall change between 1861 and 1926 as shown in the accompanying panel hides the stark contrast between Roscrea and Birr in the period 1911-26. During that fifteen year period Birr lost two service "industries", the workhouse and the military barracks, while in Roscrea Fr. Cunningham's bacon factory project was increasing in importance and employing about sixty persons by the mid-1920's. Roscrea was one of the few towns in the Free State, outside the Dublin area, to show an increase in population of 19 per cent between 1911 and 1926. In contrast Birr suffered a decrease in population of 16 per cent during the same period.

Urban Hierarchy

It was during the latter half of the nineteenth century that the present urban hierarchy in Offaly took definite shape. In 1871 the population of Tullamore exceeded that of Birr for the first time, but only because the rate of decline at Tullamore was 8.5 per cent for the previous decade as compared with 19.5 per cent at Birr. Banagher also suffered severely andin 1881 moved from fourth to fifth place in the County's urban hierarchy. Banagher gave way to Clara where a remarkable turnabout in population occurred between 1861 and 1926. With an increase of 69 per cent Clara could lay claim to being the only industrial town in Offaly prior to the 1930's. However, a close second was Edenderry where Alesbury's coach and furniture factory gave substantial employment until its closure in 1931. Evidence as to the industrial situation in Birr and Roscrea in the latter half of the century was given before a house of commons select committee on Irish industries in 1885. It was noted that:-" In Birr, King's County, there were forty years ago extensive factories of tobacco, snuff, candles, combs and brushes. It had also two extensive distilleries, two breweries, and an extensive production of woollen and stuff goods both for general and local use. There is now only one distillery working in Birr and one factory. At Roscrea there were forty years ago a thousand men employed at wool combing, weaving, and spinning. There are now only two men."

The Roscrea woollen industry was almost extinct by the mid-1850's, but a good retail trade in wool survived a little longer as also did a large factory for coarse cloths. This and several flour mills contributed to the prosperity of the town in the 1850's and 1860's, whereas at Birr one of its two distilleries survived until a disastrous fire in 1889.

Birr Distilleries

The destruction of Birr's last distillery was seen as a death blow to the town. Birr had strong associations with whiskey distilling from at least the 1800's. Probably, the large military barracks at Crinkill acted as a stimulus to production. In1818 only two distilleries were operated in County Offaly and both were located in Birr. In competition with Birr was the Birch distillery at Roscrea. One of the Birr Distilleries, that of Robert Robinson, was located at Castle Street and formed part of what is now Williams-Waller Ltd. (formerly Birr Maltings Ltd.). The second distillery, established in 1805 by the Hackett family, was located Elmgrove on the eastern side of the town. The third distillery, described as the 'old distillery' in 1838 was located near what is now the Mill Island Park. Ample remains of all three distilleries still survive. The Castle Street distillery of Robert Robinson and later Arthur Robinson remained in production until the late 1840's when the latter was declared bankrupt. At the time the whiskey business was in a depressed state due to the success of Father Mathew's temperance campaign. Hackett's distillery continued in business until the fire in 1889. In the 1860's or 1870's it had been leased to the Wallace brothers and was generally known as Wallace's distillery at the time of the fire. The output of the distillery was about 200,000 proof gallons per annum in the mid-1880's and as such was similar to distilleries at Kilbeggan and Tullamore, but much smaller than distilleries in Dublin and Dundalk.

The Fire

Despite several major fires at Springfield mills near Birr in 1851, and at Boyne's coach factory in 1888 the Birr town commissioners were reluctant to equip a fire brigade, presumably on the grounds of economy. In 1889 the town was dependent on an old fire engine purchased some forty years earlier and the army fire engines which had to travel from Crinkle.

When the distillery fire started (March 1889 ) the hose of the town commissioner's engine was placed in the river, but quickly became useless as the sand in the river bed forced its way into the hose. Despite the work of 100 soldiers, the Scottish Fusiliers, very little of the distillery was saved. The Tribune commented: "The destruction of the distillery will prove a great loss to all classes in the community. Town and county will suffer by it. A number of workmen have been knocked out of employment, a market for the sale of corn and the purchase of grains, and wash has been closed to the farmers, and the outlay of money consequent upon the influx of country people into town has been lost to the traders of Birr.

Over the next two years efforts were made to re-establish the distillery but without success. Mrs. Hackett, the owner of the property, was prepared to set up a company with local shareholders, but the invitation to subscribe fell on deaf ears. It was just as well for the prospective shareholders as the distilling industry was in a depressed state in the 1890's and again after 1910 until the 1960's. Over that long period the only prosperous years were those of the two World Wars.

Older Industries

The Midland Tribune supported the setting up of a new distillery company and in doing so reviewed the fortunes of Birr since the Famine years. The older inhabitants could remember the Manor, Springfield and Derrinsalla flour mills. The rape mills at Springfield had been destroyed by fire in 1851 but may have been rebuilt. Eventually the milling business here was superseded by a new industry, that of mineral water manufacture. Under the ownership of Messrs. Dillon and Dagg this industry began in1882 and closed in1885 when the owners were declared bankrupt. The machinery at Springfield could handle 40 dozen bottles per hour. The Dillon and Dagg enterprise was followed in 1890's when St. Brendan's mineral water works was established. The mineral water and whoesale bottling business of Clark and Co., Birr was purchased by the Midland Mineral Water Co., Street in 1924.

No Investment

The Tribune writer of 1891 could also recall "the busy hum of Wallace's saw mill and" the hundreds of sturdy toilers who enlivened the town with their presence are no longer to be seen marching in their groups from the old brewery ".
This may be a reference to Newbridge Brewery witch carried a "To be let" tag in 1846 and may have closed soon afterwards. The decay of Birr in 1891 the Tribune writer blamed on the "general disinclination on the part of many to invest in ordinary speculations." The effect of this lack of entrepreneurial flair was everywhere to be seen: "The streets of Birr daily present a shocking appearance of inactivity; the shops are seserted and the artisan and the labourer grow sick of enforced idleness during nine out of every twelve months."

However this pessimistic view of Birr enterprise was perhaps coloured by the distillery fire and the destruction a year earlier of Boyne's coach factory. During the 1860's the Wilmer Road Iron works had been established and in 1873 a steam saw mill was added. However, the proprietors of this business were declared bankrupt in 1878. Lord Rosse (the fourth earl) established a saw mill in 1887 at the old manor mills situated on the river near Moorpark Street.

Building Activity

Despite the low level of industrial activity in Birr in the latter half of the nineteenth century building contractors did well with a surprising amount of progress made in this area. This was in contrast to Tullamore where few new structures were erected until after the 1900's. The extent of the building activity tends to confirm the Tribune writer's view that Birr owed its lack of industrial activity to want of entrepreneurs rather than want of capital. Among the public buildings and monuments to be erected or improved upon was St. Brendan's Catholic Church which was completed in 1824. It was now remodelled and enlarged. Improvements were carried out at St. Brendan's Church of Ireland church in 1879 under the supervision of Mr. Drew, architect. The church was enlarged by extending the eastern gable. The organ was removed as also were the horse-box pews. In 1885 the stone was laid for a new Presbyterian church at John's place, beside the house of the parish priest, Dr. Bugler. The new church here was part of the southern side of John's Place. The old Crotty meeting house in Castle Street was sold for secular use.

John's Place

The completion of the building of John's Place in the 1880's was perhaps the grandest of the building developments of the period, but to it should be added the opening of St. Brendan's Street in 1887, (opposite Castle Street) and the erection of labourers dwellings at Cappaneal by Lord Rosse in the 1870's and 1880's at a cost of c. £120 each. The John's place development began in the late 1820's and 1830's with the construction of the present houses on the Northern side and the mechanic's institute (John's Place).

Apparently, no further building development took place here until the 1870's when it was decided to place the Foley sculpted monument of the third earl of Rosse in John's Place rather than Oxmantown Mall where the sculpor would have preferred to see it. Over the period 1866-78 about £1,900 was subscribed towards a monument to commemorate the dead astronomer earl. After paying £1,600 for the monument, a balance of £300 was in hand for improvement to John's Place. It was decided to construct two oval plots at either side of the statue to be enclosed by a handsome chain supported on ornamental metal pillars, and at intervals, four three-light gas lamps. The fourth earl, for his part, promised to replace the "unsightly cabins" that run from Dr. Bugler's house (the present parish priest's house) by an uniform row of houses and at the same time to widen the road to give perfect uniformity to John's Place. The substitution of neat houses for the unsightly wall opposite the Provincial Bank was also to be part of the improvement programme. Many of these improvements went ahead in the 1880's as planned.

Lord Rosse had improvements in mind of for the Market Square / Castle Street area from the late 1870's, but seems to have been thwarted in his efforts by property owners likely to be affected. It was his intention to demolish semi-ruined houses in the Castle Street area extending round to Market Place so as to extend the Market Place, thus facilitating the sale of agricultural produce. This scheme was later abandoned and in its place came a suggestion to open a new street from the Market square to the Catholic church. The Birr painter and decorator, Mark Quigley, applied to Lord Rosse for a lease of the area with the intention of widening the street and building about a dozen tenements at a cost of £1,000. It appears that no more than five tenement houses were built along with several larger houses.

A Review

Reviewing the progress of Birr buldings the Tribune's rival thr King's County Chronicle reported in May 1885. "Parsonstown can look back in time when its status in the industrial world was higher, but neither is it sinking so rapidly as some inland towns. Many of the mean looking tenements which disfigured the streets are giving way to better houses. In Bridge Street, William O'Meara is erecting a fine block on the site of the old buildings which formerly occupied this locale, and belonged in the last century to a Mr. James, the official assignee, who was a celebrated goldsmith in Birr…….
Close to where the Main Street debouches into Bridge Street the Earl of Rosse is rebuilding the house which was formerly used by Mr. O'Carroll as a pawn office. After this is done the two houses next door will be removed to allow the opening of the new street……this is the oldest part of the town……The Presbyterian Church is finishing in John's Mall. In Newbridge Street Mr. William Woods, J.P., has worked a change for the better among the cottages. And along the Eden Road the dwellings erected by Lord Rosse are models of what habitations of the workers ought to be. In Cumberland (Emmet) Square the National Bank has spent a large sum adopting it to banking purposes…..

Oxmantown Hall

Birr's premier residential area, Oxmantown Mall, did not escape improvement. On the recommendation of the architect Mr. Fuller, it was decided to place a proposed new hall in the Mall. The idea of a new large room for meetings in Birr was first mooted in 1885. Following bazaars and other fund raising exercises work began in 1888 under the Birr contractor, Mr. William Sweeney, and was completed a year later at a cost of almost £2,000. The hall is in the Elizabethan style of architecture with grey limestone and Bridgewater brick. The ornamental timber beams at the front form a kind of lattice work and are supported by superbly carved corbels. Further improvements to Oxmantown Mall was made in 1889 when it was regrassed and a wall erected on the rising green.

Martyrs Memorial

So far as building activity is concerned the 1890's appears to have been quiet in Birr. The only significant addition to the town in the 1890's was the Manchester Martyrs memorial in the Market Square. After four years of fund raising under the chairmanship of John Powell, the Tribune editor, the monument was unveiled by O'Donoval Rossa in July 1894. The monument was sculptured by the Birr "monumental artist" Mr. Daniel Carroll and is similar to one erected in Ennis - John Powell's home town.

The first decade of the present century was almost as active as the 1880's. Mr. William Hickey, a Birr Contractor, erected the new Birr Post Office in 1903-04 at a cost of £5,000. Soon after he rebuilt the Chronicle office following its destruction by fire. The Hibernian Bank built a new bank house and Mr. Hoctor, a Birr merchant, erected two business houses in the Main Street. Mr. G.A. Lee of Castle Street, the cycle specialist, reconstructed his premises. Also in the middle of that first decade of the century Mr. William Egan of Green Street purchased the old Mathew's Hotel and erected a new frontage at a cost of £600 to £700. Compliments were paid to D.E. Williams on the modern frontage to his Castle Street shop erected in 1905. This included a "magnificant sign board and plated glass window" . Williams had purchased the premises from the O'Meara family in 1898.

"Whither Birr"

After the First World War expansion and improvement in Birr came to a halt as the effect of the decline in population began to make itself felt. In the years 1861 to 1926 the population of Birr town declined by almost 45 per cent. During the period 1926 to1971 it increased by 13.3 per cent. Although an improvement, it was possibly the smallest increase in the south midlands and was half that of Tullamore at 26.6 per cent. The emigration rate was high because of the scarcity of job opportunities in Birr and the continuing decline in agriculture. An editorial in the Tribune on 'Whither Birr' in 1935 had led to the formation of Birr Industrial Development Association. This body was instrumental in attracting the promoters of a shoe factory to Birr.

However neither Birr Shoes Ltd. nor the later Birr Fabrics Ltd. were sufficiently large employers to stem the tide of emigration. Further improvements came in 1960 with the establishment of Erin Peat Ltd. and more recently IDA grant aided industries such as Ko-Rec Type Ltd. Birr is expected to benefit from the more intensive promotion of the town by the Shannon Free Airport Development Company since the transfer of responsibility for the development of small industry in South West Offaly to SFADCO in July 1980.

Housing

Because of the decline population the demand for new housing and slum clearance was not so severely felt as elsewhere and in the period up to 1932 the rate of house building by the council was poor. From 1902 to 1930 Tullamore U.D.C. built 198 houses by contrast to Birr U.D.C. where only 46 houses were erected. After 1932 when government subsidies for slum clearance were much increased the pace quickened and a further 177 houses were built in Birr by 1940. By the mid-1970's the Birr U.D.C. had completed 350 houses or about one-third of the present housing stock.

The slow rate of economic growth in Birr had undoubtedly helped to preserve much of its historic character. Birr is now well geared to benefit from Ireland's second largest industry, tourism, and were it not for the general depression in tourism in Ireland because of political troubles this industry it is thought would show a significant return for the town.