Reproduced courtesy of Ireland of the Welcomes
Vol. 28 no.6, November – December 1979

It sounded like a perfectly reasonable idea: pen sketches of small towns and villages. Why start with Banagher in County Offaly? Well, why not? A quiet little place (pop. 1,260), it lies on the River Shannon, on the road to nowhere in particular, apparently minding its own business. It has literary connections of a sort: Anthony Trollope worked for the Post Office here from 1841 until 1844, and managed to complete the first two of his ponderous Victorian novels in what was presumably the undisturbed rural peace and quiet; and Charlotte Bronte’s widower lived here.

With hindsight I can see that I should have taken warning from a saying that everyone in Ireland seems to know but no one can quite explain: ‘That beats Banagher, and Banagher beat the devil.’ But the place seemed harmless enough when I first followed its one main street down a gently sloping hill to the Shannon.

The great river, of course, was the town’s original reason for being; Banagher grew with the commerce on the river, and should have faded away as that trade moved to the railways and highways. The Shannon here is dyed almost black with peat. Broad and deceptively quiet, with no banks to speak of, it lies like a pond against the shore - Offaly on one side, Galway on the other. The only barges on the river today have been converted to pleasure craft, and at the new marina by the bridge, compact and comfortable cruisers are hired out by Carrick Crafts and Silverlines.

Across the road from the marina is the Crannog Pottery, an intriguing place snuggled up against the ruined walls of Banagher barracks.

The fortifications on the river are picturesque; signs on the main street indicate the way to nearby castles and abbeys; the Ordnance Survey map shows a sprinkling of interesting historical sites in the immediate area; and, of course, there’s always Trollope and Charlotte Nicholls née Bronte. All in all, material for a pleasant day’s exploration.

And it might actually have been that simple, if I hadn’t made the fatal mistake of allowing the people of Banagher to insinuate their way into the picture. A person making that ‘mistake’ could spend a lifetime in the place; it’s being done all the time.

It started at the Brosna Lodge, a well-run, homelike establishment for the provision of ‘B & Bs’, with bar and evening meals. All ordinary enough. But who could have expected that the owners would have three beautiful, harp-playing daughters who gave up a promising career to……(but that’s another story), or that the food would be great and the fellow guests intriguing? or that . . . but then, all travellers in Ireland tend to become fiercely loyal to their guesthouses and hosts, so let that be.

Down the hill at the pottery, I caught a glimpse, through wrought iron gates, of a garden that is pure Alice in Wonderland. Pottery cats lurk in the grass, there’s a bright red and yellow caravan, and a bench for basking in the sun, and birdbaths with mottoes. Inside is a warren where one room full of doves and owls and ashtrays and goblets leads to others with rushwork, tweeds, ceramic jewellery, and an enormous music box that plays ‘When I Marry Amelia’ on a great brass disc.

Two throwers and a glazer work in the studio. In the Vine Room, so-called because a grape vine covers the ceiling, there’s a turf fire and stone tables and chairs and a stone bar dispensing wine or minerals, and there’s a curious little thatched cubbyhole full of home-made marmalade. Gothic windows looking as if they came from a demolished church (which, in fact, they did) look out on yet another garden, full of irises, bluebells and tulips, and great drifting banks of cherry and apple blossoms where the land slopes down to the Shannon. It seems, in fact, to be an extension of the vivid personality of one woman — Valerie Landon— which I suppose is why it feels less like a place and more like a cosy if strongminded sort of being.

Pursuing the Bronte Connection, I wandered back up the hill for a chat with the Church of Ireland incumbent.

Canon Boyle apologised for his unclerical gardening clothes and invited me into his home — Hill House, where Charlotte Bronte’s widower, Arthur Bell Nicholls, once lived the life of a gentleman farmer.

Banagher, the canon said, had always been a prosperous, self-respecting sort of town. Charles I granted charters for both a secondary school and a great fair; in Anthony Trollope’s day the horse fair was one of the biggest in Ireland, and children were kept home from school on fair day for fear they’d be trampled. The Famine, and the coming of the railways that spelled the beginning of the end for river trade, had hit the town hard. But Banagher had never quite knuckled under, and kept a tradition of small local industry — malting, feedstuffs, furniture and building materials — to this day.

Its key position on the river made it a town worth fighting over from the earliest days, and left a legacy of picturesque ruins: Cromwellian and Williamite forts, designed to keep the savage native Irish on the Connaught side of the river; a Martello tower and great gun batteries designed to keep Bonaparte from sneaking up the Shannon; and a barracks with gun ports testifying to the days when police were armed and natives restless.

Back down the hill again, and into the one-room library for a chat with Mrs. Quirke, who runs this humming information cum social centre. I wanted to know about Banagher? Certainly — how many weeks had I to spare? And it was there in the library, listening to Mrs. Quirke and to the townspeople of every possible age and sex who trotted in and out, that I finally admitted it to myself: it is beyond anyone’s capacity to scratch the surface of Banagher in a few days. Not only does Banagher beat the devil, it also had me beaten.

There are the abbeys and monasteries — awesome Clonfert, once a great centre of learning; Meelick on the river, and Lorrha; and further afield, Callen Priory and sweet Clonmacnois.

There are the castles — Clonony, where Ann Boleyn’s cousins are buried; and Cloghan, begun in the 12th century and still lived in and open to callers; and Carry Castle, with a traditionally obscene shiela-na-gig perched on the battlements.

There are assorted spots of historical interest — Cuba House, built with money from the sugar plantations, a superb ruin that could tell the history of Ascendancy Ireland; Shannon Harbour, the melancholy ghost of a prosperous and busy inland port.

There’s an enthusiastic local historical society who pounce with glee on anything of interest and are delighted to share their finds. Then there are the more usual community groups: a tennis club; St. Rynagh’s GAA club; an athletic club for the youth, and a sub-aqua club, and a community billiards hall in the old one-room school. Not to mention the badminton club, the social centre, the bridge and whist clubs, ladies club, scouts, brownies…… and above all, the people of Banagher, the yeast that keeps all of this bubbling and seething.

I staggered back down the hill, to the dim recesses of the singing pub, where the till is a cigar box, and young Michael Hough doesn’t want to change the place because he wouldn’t want it looking plastic.

It was full of locals and continentals and Americans, none of whom looked foolish enough to try to do what I was doing; so I gave up and relaxed and joined them. The shade of Anthony Trollope may have looked reproachfully at me, but I couldn’t help it: he was only a ripple on the Shannon here, and I just couldn’t fit him in.