Upcoming Events

Thursday15th Feb 2001 @ 8.30 Lecture on the Development of Tullamore; the past fifty years, the next fifty years by Fergal McCabe Architect and Town Planner This meeting will be chaired by the County Manager Mr. Niall Sweeney and we look forward to a substantial attendance.

This promises to be a very important meeting and should be of interest to Town Planners, Developers and anyone who feels they have a stake in the development of Tullamore, looking at what has gone by and what may be to come. Mr. McCabe has substantial experience in the area of town planning and is an advisor to the Government. In addition he has contributed to legal aspects of planning law and is an acknowledged authority on this area. We are very fortunate to have him give this lecture which will be substantially illustrated with overheads and charts etc.

March Lecture

Thursday 15th of March 2001

Mr. Charlie Doherty of the Department of Early History in UCD will give an illustrated lecture on the early history of the midlands.

Please note for your diary:

Sale of Syngefield House Birr

The attention of members and the public is drawn to proposed sale of Syngefield House Birr. This follows several years of representations to Offaly County Council to do something about the house which is in their ownership. It has now been decided to sell the house by way of 999 year lease. It is an important house and features in many publications. It had a Tullamore connection in more recent years with the family of Dick Williams. The house may attract heritage status, tax relief and if it does it will then be open to the public during the summer months at a minimum. We want to thank the County Council and Birr U.D.C. for their decision to sell rather than to demolish or to allow to decay any further.

Library evenings

Library evenings continue to be very successful with upwards of 12 to 15 people attending each Thursday night. We do hope to buy three or four more microfilms readers in a short time to make it easier for people to access the Local newspapers and the 1901 Census.

www.offalyhistory.com

Our site is improving all the time thanks to Sean Hackett and John Kearney and staff at OHAS. We are now developing a new site for our family history service under irishmidlandsancestry.com. If you have any suggestions for additional material for the Offaly website please contact us at ohas@iol.ie.

Deceased members

Sincere sympathy to the Mercy Convent and our members there on the death of Sr. Celestine who was a regular attainder at our lectures over many years.

Emailing of newsletters

There has been a very good response to this and for all members who have email would you please today send us by email your address for the purpose of newsletters. It speeds up matters greatly and saves us substantial cost in postage.

Membership Subscription

If you have not paid your membership would you please do so. The membership subscription is £20 for individuals and families. £50 for corporate membership and £250 for life membership. There has been a good response to the life membership with about 15 such members now. If you would like to do this please send on your cheque for £250 to the Society.

Visit of AOH from Pearl River New York 16th – 18th Feb

This tour is now reasonably well organised with the American visitors arriving on Friday the 16th of February. They will be visiting the Society in the afternoon of the 16th of February post 3p.m. and have a local tour organised on Saturday and again on Sunday. If you would like to attend the dinner at the Court Hotel on Sunday night and meet the visitors would you please book your meal directly by ringing the Court Hotel. You would also be welcome as a member to come along on Friday afternoon after 3p.m. to have coffee with the eighty or so visitors. We propose to organise the tour as follows; Steve McNeill to do the Tullamore Dew Heritage Centre Tour, Peter Burke, John Kearney, Sean Hackett to do the tour of the centre and the Society to arrange an illustrated slide show for the visitors to give them an over view of Offaly’s historic sites when they visit the centre.

New Publications

Congratulations to Harman Murtagh our long standing friend and a member of the old Athlone Society who has published an important History of Athlone. This book is about 250 pages and in hard back and is available at a cost of £30 from the Society bookshop at Bury Quay.

Diary of Historical Events

We are planning to publish in the newsletter a diary of historic events occurring in the area by Maureen Kincaid who looks after the newspaper collection of the Society and in particular the preparing of booklets of heritage news on an annual basis for the past fifteen to sixteen years. We are now proposing to have our newspaper collection bound in hardcover to make it easier for our members to consult and to use a digital camera to make copies of anything that anybody might want out of an old newspaper which is not already microfilmed. Mr. Noel Guerin is helping us on the digital camera side and we hope to make further improvements in this area soon.