Modern Offaly: The Formation Of A New Landscape

New Towns, Blacksmiths, Canals And Power Stations

From the eighteenth until the twentieth century, Offaly experienced major changes in its landscape. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, development and innovation in agricultural practices could be regarded as a revolution in the world of farming. Improvements such as drainage schemes, new crops, new breeds of livestock and new labour-saving machinery increased output and led to the introduction of new farm buildings and new farm landscapes, which in turn, had a dramatic effect on the appearance of the county.

Rural industries such as flour-milling, brewing, brickmaking and turf harvesting all gathered momentum during this time. This agricultural revolution was accompanied by the industrial revolution which had a major impact in our urban areas. These changes were driven by the landed gentry who were both the innovators and business entrepreneurs of their time.

The combination of this technological revolution, along with the growth of the landlord system, has left an amazing legacy of monuments in our county.

The homes of these landlords can still be seen at Birr Castle, Charleville Castle and Kinnitty Castle to name but a few. However, most of these buildings were constructed mainly in the nineteenth century as part of a demesne, i.e. a planned and carefully designed estate with pathways, gardens and ornamental buildings, all of which were constructed to enhance the setting of the landlords house.

The ice-house at the Scurragh in Birr was constructed to provide a luxury item of its day, ice for the nearby big house. A gazebo at Toberdaly House near Edenderry was built to provide the owners with a teahouse from which they could survey their demesne. Estate villages and towns were being re-designed and built by landlords in the nineteenth century. Towns such as Birr and Tullamore experienced a burst of building activity stimulated by the Rosse and Bury families respectively. The village of Geashill is an excellent example of an estate village, built by Lord Digby, and which was of such high quality that it received a bronze medal for the cottages at the Paris exhibition of 1867. The layout of the village with the village green and the excellent build and design quality of the cottages, make Geashill one of the most attractive villages in the county. Timber fronted shops with their hand painted lettering, the market house and square, middle class Georgian houses and artisans and labourers' cottages, reflected the new found prosperity of eighteenth and nineteenth century market towns.

As mentioned above, the industrial revolution was to have a major impact on the landscape of the county. The construction of the Grand Canal from Dublin to Shannon Harbour in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century has left a lasting legacy which is beginning to prosper once more, this time as a valuable amenity in the leisure and tourism sectors of our economy.

Towns like Edenderry, Daingean and Tullamore developed as inland ports and became prosperous trading towns as a result of being connected to Dubin by the canal. The Digby Bridge near Edenderry, built in 1797 AD, is a classic example of a hump-backed canal bridge. The lock-keepers house is another distinctive building which can still be seen today along the banks of the canal. The stone warehouses and stores along the canal, and their harbours at Tullamore, Daingean, Edenderry and Shannon Harbour are symbols of the economic prosperity of the county during this period. As late as 1971, turf was still being transported from Offaly to the harbours at Harolds Cross and Portobello, where the local people would purchase the turf for the fires of their Dublin homes.

Around twenty five per cent of Guinness was transported along the canal, and the Guinness barges passing through Offaly were one of the great traditional images of our county. Today the canals are experiencing a new lease of life as holiday barges slowly cruise through the county. This would never have happened if these canals had been allowed to disappear.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the fate of the railways in Offaly. By the end of the nineteenth century, railway stations had been built in Birr, Tullamore, Edenderry, Portarlington, Belmont, Ballycumber, Clara, Ferbane, Banagher and Geashill. Today, all that survives of this once impressive network of railway lines and their buildings are the stations at Portarlington, Tullamore and Clara.

The quality of the stonework, and the classic design of railway stations with their impressive iron, stone bridges and storehouses were easily recognisable in the landscape of the towns of our county. Over the past few decades, these buildings and bridges have either been pulled down or left to decay through neglect, and the rail lines have disappeared for good.

The military Barracks at Crinkill, near Birr, was once the finest barracks in Ireland and was built around 1809 to accommodate over 1000 infantrymen. Other impressive buildings of the nineteenth century are the courthouse in Tullamore, the Edenderry market house and the reformatory at Daingean to name just a few. The latter building was constructed as a prison for boys under the age of sixteen and was used recently as a store for the National Museum's folklife collection, now on display in Castlebar, Co. Mayo.

The remains of the military barracks at Crinkle.

The Great Famine of the 1840s left an everlasting impression in the minds of the Irish people. Not only did it have a psychological impact, but it also left behind a legacy of monuments such as the workhouses and famine relief roads, walls and bridges. These are the physical remains of the most traumatic phase of our history and should be preserved and presented to the public as reminders of this important period.

There were three workhouses in Offaly, at Tullamore, Edenderry and Birr, all of which were built around the 1840s. These structure were built to a standard architectural plan, and the workhouse at Birr is one of the best preserved examples in Ireland.

In 1849, 756 people died in the Fever Hospital in Birr which was the second highest figure of deaths recorded that year in Ireland. The future of this building and how, as a community, we protect it, will be a reflection of our attitude to the past and the physical remains of our ancestors.

By 1850, there were nearly 80 mills in Offaly, the majority of them located in the rich fertile soils of south Offaly, though there were seven corn mills located in the parish of Geashill. These were impressive five storey buildings, accompanied by a mill race and mill pond, often with other buildings clustered around the mill. A good example of one can be seen at Keeloge near the village of Shinrone. During the same period, one of the most familiar images of an Offaly village or town was the sight of the blacksmith at work in his forge. These distinctive buildings, with their horseshoe shaped arches, were probably built around the 1850s-70s and can still be seen around the Killeigh area, where they have been sympathetically restored and converted for modern usage.

The appearance of the petrol station and modern garage heralded the decline and eventual disappearance of the forge and the blacksmith. At these buildings, the blacksmith would handcraft horseshoes and many agricultural implements, as well as some impressive field gates which are, in some instances, good examples of local or folk art. The products of the blacksmith's forge are often all that is left of this once important craft and should be maintained and preserved in their original locations where possible.

A bust of St. Ciaran, an example of 19th Century folk art.

Paddy Heaney of Cadamstown in his book "At the foot of Slieve Bloom", describes the old forge at Cadamstown as a building with a 'thatched roof and an old earthen floor with the anvil taking up the centre. The big bellows, the long ash handle with the weight attached, the hob for the fire, the horses shoes hanging from a rack on the wall, the tools laid out on the bench and of course, the big 8-stone pot full of water'. This image recalls our recent past, and shows how quickly we have moved away from our agricultural origins.

Our farming heritage represents the most important part of our past and the physical remains of our nineteenth century farms, such as farmyards containing animal shelters, pig sties, hen houses, farmhouses, dairies and farm machinery, should be at least recorded and surveyed before they are lost forever.

The lime-kiln is a another example of a common building which is now a rarity and was once a feature of every parish. At these kilns, lime was burnt to produce quicklime, which was then used either as a fertiliser or as a lime mortar in the construction of a local building, and as a lime wash for the external rendering of a building. These large limestone built structures were often built into the side of a hill so that they could be loaded with stone and timber from the top. The majority of the surviving kilns date from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as they became obsolete when cement was introduced around the 1820s.

The development of our bogs during this period has uncovered many archaeological treasures. However one of the most important legacies of this exploitation are the physical remains of the factories and workshops involved in the working of the bogs. Between 1930 and 1950 the bogs were being exploited initially with machinery imported from Germany, but later with machines designed and manufactured by Offaly people in the workshops of Bord na Mona. By the 1950s the ESB had constructed large peat fired power stations with impressive cooling towers at Portarlington, Boora and Rhode and these became landmark buildings.

The now demolished power station at Portarlington, part of the country's 20th century heritage.

The towers at Boora were, at one stage, the largest examples of their kind in Western Europe and represented a feat of engineering design unparalleled elsewhere on the continent. Only the cooling tower at Rhode survives, while the other two sites have been demolished. These towers were the architectural symbols of the contribution Offaly made to the industrialisation of Ireland. The bogs of Offaly brought prosperity to our county during a period of mass emigration and poverty and attracted immigration from other parts of rural Ireland. The story of this prosperity is still visible and waiting to be told to the next generation of Offaly people. Hopefully, there will be something physical to show them, namely the buildings in which their grandparents had worked and the unique machinery which they designed and manufactured.

The term monument can be used to describe the material remains of past generations, from the earliest times until the modern era. They offer us a physical connection with our ancestors and what we do with this legacy will depend on our attitude as a community towards the past and how we want to progress into the future.

If we decide to remove the monuments of our past, and replace them with modern buildings, we are effectively removing our history from the towns, villages and countryside. In doing so, we are in danger of losing our identity and changing our landscape from a unique picture, which has evolved down through the ages, and replacing it with a bland imitation of new monuments which can be found everywhere in the developed world.

It has been suggested that the presence and knowledge of the past enhances the quality of a person's life. People, in general, appear to be inherently attracted to historic monuments as if it was in their human nature. In the rapidly changing landscape of modern Offaly, the knowledge of our past often provides us with a sense of security and timelessness which helps us advance into the future. There is a need for modern development, but it does not have to be at the expense of our past.

It can happily sit side by side with our historic landscape, and in doing so, can help to tell the story of the economic development of our county in the new millennium.

Holy Wells and Forges of Kilcormac

Around Kilcormac there are three wells dedicated to St. Cormac, the following is a story about these wells from the folklore collection of the 1930s. The second story describes a local forge located on the Kilcormac-Birr road. St. Colman of Lynally near Tullamore prophesised that St. Cormac would be torn to pieces by wolves. St Cormac was terrified at the dreadful prospect. He erected a tower like one of the old round towers of Ireland in St. Joseph's field, Kilcormac. The tower had a hole or window in the top by which he got his food and drink. One day St. Cormac was praying in the field when two wolves appeared before him. When Cormac saw them he ran up an iron rail and pulled it in after him. Then the wolves changed into snails and crawled up the wall and got inside the tower and on doing so turned back into wolves. St. Cormac threw himself out of the tower and fled the field with the two wolves snarling at his heels. At last they caught him but he broke away.

This happened three times and every time he fell a spring of clear water burst up. That is how all the wells of St. Cormac came to be around Kilcormac. It was recorded that local people used to visit St. Cormac's well which was able to cure any disease. There was a bush beside the well where people go to visit and hang pieces of cloth on it. When people visit the well they rub the affected part and leave the piece of cloth used hanging on the bush.

A young boy near Kilcormac recorded that there was one forge in his parish owned by a man named Thomas Mahon. Both his father and grandfather were smiths in times gone. He describes the forge as being "situated at a crossroads about six miles from Birr and is built from cement and stones. The roof is covered in zinc which is painted red and has two black doors. There is one fireplace and there is also a bellows for kindling the fire. The smith shoes horses and donkeys and he can make all kinds of farm implements such as ploughs, harrows, cultivators, grubbers and chains. When the smith is going to shoe a horse, first he puts the shoes into the fire to get red, then he takes them out when they are red, and beats them into the shape of the horses hoof. The he puts them on the horses hooves with horse nails. When he is going to make a plough he reddens the iron in the fire, then he beats it into the shape of the plough. He also makes cranes and grates for the houses".

Acknowledgment:
The Offaly Heritage Forum and the 'Tribune' would like to thank Offaly County Library and particularly, the local studies section, for their assistance in producing this series.