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    Founded in 1938 and re-established in 1969, Offaly History (Offaly Historical and Archaeological Society) aims to preserve and promote the rich heritage of County Offaly. Since 1993, the Society has occupied premises at Bury Quay, Tullamore offering a Bookshop, library, reading room, and lecture hall for researcher and members of the public.  Offaly History Centre is beside the new Aldi Supermarket and Old Warehouse restaurant), and best approached from Kilbride Street via Patrick Street or Main Street.

    The main objective of the society is the collection and sharing of research and memories. We do this in an organised way; through exhibitions, the publication of local interest books, weekly blog posts, monthly lectures, and more. The bookshop and reading rooms at Bury Quay are open to the public Monday to Friday, 9am-4:30pm. Regular updates can also be found at our website, www.Offalyhistory.com and on our social media channels on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and X.

    To promote Offaly History including community and family history

    What we do:

    • Promote all aspects of history in Co. Offaly.
    • Genealogy service for counties Laois and Offaly.
    • Photographic collections of County Offaly
    • Purchase and sale of Offaly interest books though the Society’s book store and website with over 3000 history books in our shop and up to 1000 online.
    • Publication of books under the Society’s publishing arm Esker Press.
    • The Society subscribes to almost all the premier historical journals in Ireland.
    • The Society manages the collections if Offaly Archives under the care of a professional archivist.

    Our Society covers a diverse range of Offaly Heritage:

    • Architectural heritage, historic monuments such as monastic and castle buildings.
    • Industrial and urban development of towns and villages.
    • Archaeological objects and artefacts.
    • Flora, fauna and bogs, wildlife habitats, geology and Natural History.
    • Landscapes, heritage gardens and parks, farming and inland waterways.
    • Local literary, social, economic, military, political, scientific and sports history.
    Offaly History is a non-profit community group with a growing membership of some 150 individuals. The Society focuses on enhancing educational opportunities, understanding and knowledge of the county heritage while fostering an inclusive approach and civic pride in local identity. We promote these objectives through:
    • The holding of monthly lectures, occasional seminars, exhibitions and social media. Organising tours during the summer months to places of shared historical interest.
    • The publication of an annual journal Offaly Heritage – to date twelve issues.
    • We play a unique role collecting and digitising original primary source materials, especially photographs and oral history recordings
    • Offaly History is the centre for Family History research in Counties Laois and Offaly.
    • The Society is linked to the renowned Irish Family Foundation website and Roots Ireland where some 1,000,000 records of Offaly/Laois interest can be accessed on a pay-per-view basis worldwide. Currently these websites have an estimated 20 million records of all Ireland interest.
    • A burgeoning library of books, CD-ROMs, videos, DVDs, oral and folklore recordings, manuscripts, newspapers and journals, maps, photographs and various artefacts (now over 25,000 items and a catalogue online)
    • OHAS Collections
    • OHAS Centre Facilities
    The financial activities of the Society are operated under the aegis of Offaly Heritage Centre c.l.g, a charitable company whose directors also serve on the Society’s elected committee. None of the Society’s directors receive remuneration or any kind. All the company’s assets are held in trust to promote the voluntary activities of the Society. Our facilities are largely free to the public or run purely on a costs-recovery basis.

    Acting as a policy advisory body –  Offaly History endeavors to ensure all government departments, local authorities, tourism agencies and key opinion formers prioritise heritage matters.

    Meet the current committee: Our Committee represents a broad range of backgrounds and interests. All share a common interest in collecting and promoting the heritage of the county and making it available to the wider community.

    2024 Committee
    • Helen Bracken (President)
    • Shaun Wrafter (Vice President)
    • Michael Byrne (Secretary)
    • Dorothee Bibby (Treasurer)
    • Charlie Finlay (Assistant Treasurer)
    • Niall Sweeney
    • Ciarán McCabe
    • Noel Guerin
    • Angela Kelly
    • Rory Masterson
    • Oliver Dunne
    • Frank Brennan
    • Pat Wynne
    • Laura Price
    Co-opted
    • Reneagh Bennett
    • Michael Scully
    • Jim Keating
    • Eamon Larkin
    If you would like to help with the work of the Society by coming on a sub-committee or in some other way please email us at [email protected] or let an existing member know.  
    +353-5793-21421 [email protected] Open 9am-4.30pm Mon-Fri

    The Troubles in Cloneygowan, 1920–23, by P.J. Goode

    ‘Well, Tommy, I am sentenced to death on this day 23rd February [1923] and tomorrow will face it. I feel quite happy thank God only I feel very lonesome when I think of you… I am praying for you as I know you will for me, and I hope they will be heard… from your old chum Tom, Goodbye ever, it’s a long way to Tipperary.’

    Last letter from Thomas Gibson who was executed at Portlaoise during the Civil War.

    The piece below is from my Cloneygowan and District book of 1998 which is overdue for a new and updated edition. I am presently researching a centennial tribute to Cloneygowan Company, Second Battalion Offaly Number One Brigade and with that in mind hope to present an update in booklet form. (P.J. Goode)

    There was a unit of the Volunteers in the Cloneygowan area, indeed a Sinn Féin club had been formed as early as 1917. Locals were employed in transporting arms and other supplies through the area for use in more active districts. Some units were involved in ambushes outside of the immediate area, and one volunteer (Dan Quinn) recalled… ‘The site of an ambush was carefully chosen. The escape route through ditches and dikes had to be carefully memorised, right down to the number of paces it took to find that all important gap in the hedge and safety. The ambush took place at dusk, the retreat in full darkness. We had to be safely in our beds before the soldiers and peelers came raiding.’

    Bill Quinn recalled being involved in an ambush on the Black and Tans as far away as Edenderry and then making his way home through the fields (source Jack Fitzpatrick Cloneygowan) The main through road was trenched to disrupt military traffic, locals then being forced make repairs. Sometime in 1920 an ambush had been laid on the Garryhinch road. When firing commenced, the British soldiers sent up Very lights to illuminate the scene. The attackers withdrew with no casualties.

    At other times known activists were liable to be rounded up without warning ; the Crossley tenders could be heard approaching the village, slowing down to negotiate the railway bridge, allowing sufficient time for a hasty dash up the Moor Lane and dispersal through the fields.
    Volunteers had safe houses in the countryside, one such house in Kilcooney being McEvoys later Carters where Jack Drum and his unit took refuge. Drum, later a lieutenant in the Free State Army, was to lose his arm in a shoot-out in Killeigh during the Civil War.

    In June 1921 a month before the Truce, the train from Portarlington to Tullamore was held up by 30 armed men about a mile and a half from Geashill station in the townland of Ard. There were some R.I.C. among the passengers who returned the fire of the attackers. The firing lasted about 30 minutes, one civilian was reported injured among the attackers, who then withdrew.
    The R.I.C. barracks at Cloneygowan and other villages had been evacuated early in 1920 as part of a regrouping of constabulary in the face of armed attacks , these small barracks being considered difficult to defend. At Easter the G.H.Q. of the I.R.A. issued an order for these abandoned buildings countrywide to be destroyed. On Saturday night, April 25th, the barracks and courthouse were destroyed by fire, at the hands of the local unit.
    From local knowledge, the roll call of those active in the district, although by no means complete, runs as follows… Din Hyland, Bill and Dan Quinn, Bill and Joe Dempsey, Johnny, Dennis and Martin McEvoy, Tom Guinan, Jack Deegan.
    Din Hyland was interned in Ballykinlar Camp, Co Down, from January to December 1921, along with Dennis (Froggy) Kelly, Walsh Island who was lifted for felling telegraph poles around Cloneygowan. Din recollected the escape attempts, tunnels dug and the clay scattered from pockets, clay in the turn-ups of trousers being the giveaway, and a water filled moat around the camp ending the digging; other attempts were via the carts that delivered provisions to the camp.

    Green Linnets and Diehards, the Civil War Period.
    From July to October of 1922 the I.R.A. following their expulsion from Tullamore, continually disrupted communications in the general area. Railwaymen are stated to have been laid off as the G. S. & W. section from Portarlington to Tullamore was continually being subjected to disruption. Trees were felled to block the road outside the village and the Kilcooney bridge was broken down; the postman Peter O’Rourke was held up at Cloneygowan bridge and mail stolen; Scallys shop was raided but little taken. Derrykillane bridge was damaged by explosives along with Newtown bridge further up the line.

    Derrykillane has a sharp turn in the road at the top of the bridge; local man John Byrne hurrying to Mass on his bicycle failed to negotiate the gaping hole, and landed on the railway track, fortunately not being seriously injured.

     


    Ambush site, and Irish Independent for Tuesday January 9th 1923, and January 12th 1923.

    This usually tranquil district was not to be spared the full horror of Civil War violence then in progress nation-wide. Fourteen soldiers of the National Army (Green Linnets) were attacked from the hill of Cappinska, Raheen townland, overlooking a bend in the road, near the Barony walls, and close to Raheen church. This area had been the site of sniping activity previously, but this full scale attack was planned and serious. Rifle and machine gun fire swept the column of soldiers and civilians. Two bombs were thrown over the wall but did not explode. The attackers, estimated at about 30, had positioned the machine gun in a gap on the stone wall overlooking the road. The engagement lasted half an hour, and a discarded weapon, a Lewis gun containing 60 rounds which jammed shortly after fire was opened, was recognised as an old model left behind in Crinkhill Barracks by the departing Leinsters (British Army).

    The attackers retreated across the fields pursued by the troops. Among the wounded were Lieutenant Lacey, commander of the Geashill garrison; Private Mulpeter, Daingean; Private Patrick Lynch, Croghan; Private P.C. White, Blessington. The wounded were removed to Geashill and from there to Tullamore Hospital.

    Private Patrick Lynch (24) died at the Curragh military hospital from gangrene in two large wounds received in the calf of his leg. At his inquest (Irish Ind. Jan.16, 1923) it was stated that the bullet wounds were too large to have been inflicted with an ordinary bullet ‘unless it was flattened out’ (dumdum bullets). He is interred in Croghan graveyard. He had joined the Volunteers before 1916 and was on standby for the Easter Rebellion,with access to the local stock of arms and munitions. His father was also a member of the National Army.

    Cadet P.C. White (25) also died at the Curragh from wounds received above the heart, the bullet entering from the left rear shoulder. Patsy White was the only son of shopkeeper Simon White of Lugnagun and Main Street, Blessington, Co. Wicklow. He is interred at Manor Kilbride cemetery in the White family plot. Sadly the new state did not (and does not) commemorate the actual site of their fallen soldiers. A simple wayside monument would suffice, as neither cross nor marker identifies where these soldiers of the National Army were mortally wounded.

    The fledgling state found it necessary to introduce draconian powers, the Emergency Powers legislation, as the Civil War worsened. Thousands of known republicans, among them Jack Deegan and Din Hyland, were interned for up to two years in the Curragh camp.

    Local man Thomas Gibson, a corporal in the National Army, was alleged to have absconded from the Portlaoise garrison to join the ‘Irregulars’ (opposing the Treaty). A son of Michael and Anne Gibson, grandson of William, he was born in Cloneygowan townland around 1897 and lived in Clonyquin. In the early years of the Civil War returning to former comrades was not an unknown practice, but circumstances throughout the country, and especially the Raheen ambush, provoked a strong reaction. In January 1923 Gibson and two comrades were captured in an army sweep of the Cullenagh district of Leix as they lay sleeping in a safe house. His companions, Tom and Frank Dunne were, respectively, a battalion commander and an adjutant of the Leix brigade. The Offaly Chronicle linked these arrests with the Raheen ambush. Four rifles and ammunition, telephone equipment, documents and dispatches were all found in their possession

    At a general court martial held at Roscrea on 18th January 1923, Volunteer Gibson was charged that being on active service on 19th November 1922, he left Portlaoise barracks taking rifles etc. and was absent until the Jan 10th when he was arrested. He was found guilty of the charge of treachery, and was sentenced to suffer death by being shot. Among the last letters he wrote on the eve of his execution was this note to the Dunne brothers which reads (in part)… ‘Well, Tommy, I am sentenced to death on this day 23rd February and tomorrow will face it. I feel quite happy thank God only I feel very lonesome when I think of you… I am praying for you as I know you will for me, and I hope they will be heard… from your old chum Tom, Goodbye ever, its a long way to Tipperary.’ The sentence was duly confirmed and was carried out on the morning of Monday February 26th at Kellyville barracks, Portlaoise, where he was initially interred. His remains were re-interred in Raheen graveyard, where a memorial was raised by his comrades in the Leix brigade.

    The judicial killing of a citizen by the State is a horrific act. Even today, and at this remove, the execution of over seventy citizens found carrying arms, an act the new state sanctioned, is difficult to come to terms with. Thomas Gibson’s last resting place has for many years been venerated by an Easter commemoration march and ceremony, and old comrades paid their respects. To us schoolchildren it was simply ‘The March’, an occasion for crowds and excitement, with little understanding of the solemnity of the event being recalled.

    Service medal War of Independence

     

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