Well, I’m here. Boots on Irish ground, and the research part of the trip begins tomorrow. Today was all about getting here, and then wandering round a town I’ve only ever seen as two words on a record card.
Getting here
Heathrow Terminal 2 gave me two things. The first was an epic piano busker, who had half the terminal hanging about pretending they weren’t listening. (The other half was filming him – he was amazing!) The second was a Leon “English breakfast box”, and the kindest thing I can say about it is that it was a breakfast, and it came in a box.
I spent three times as long in the airport as I did in the air. The flight is barely long enough to finish a cup of tea, and getting to it eats the whole morning.
After that, an easy train to Athlone. I timed my arrival perfectly for school let-out, so the roads were solid, and I got myself an Uber driver to not only get me to my accommodation but also take me out to the farm tomorrow. Yes, that farm.
A mooch round Athlone
Athlone’s Irish name is Baile Átha Luain, the town of Luan’s ford. This is where you could get across the Shannon, so it’s where people built defences, fought, and built more defences.
It also means Athlone has always been a town in two halves. The Shannon runs right through the middle: the east bank is County Westmeath, in Leinster, and the west bank is County Roscommon, in Connacht. The west side, round the castle, gets called the Left Bank, and that’s where I’m staying.
The castle
The first fort here went up in 1129 to guard the bridge. The stone castle came in 1210, built by John de Grey on top of an Anglo-Norman motte, around a central keep that’s been altered and enlarged many times.
Its big moments came in the Williamite War. In 1690 the Jacobite governor, Colonel Richard Grace, held the castle for James II against a Williamite army. They came back in June 1691 with Godert de Ginkel in charge, and this time it was brutal: a ten-day bombardment, with more than 12,000 cannonballs fired into the town. The bridge was the prize. Jacobites kept working hard to tear up the planks the Williamites laid across the broken arches.
In the end the bridge didn’t matter. At the end of June, Ginkel sent a few men to test a ford south of the bridge. They waded across and back unharmed, and then 2,000 grenadiers went over the same way and took the west side from behind. Two weeks later the war ended but Grace was killed on 20 June 1691 in the bombardment at the western end of the bridge.
The castle has a 20th-century chapter too. A plaque on the wall tells how, on 28 February 1922, it was handed over by British forces to Lieutenant General Seán Mac Eoin on behalf of the Provisional Government. It was renamed Adamson Castle after Brigadier George Adamson, who was shot dead on 25 April 1922, just two months later.
Two churches, one on each bank
Right beside the castle on the Left Bank is the big twin-towered church that everyone assumes is a cathedral. It isn’t. It’s the Catholic Church of Saints Peter and Paul, designed by Ralph Byrne and built between 1932 and 1939 on ground that used to belong to Custume Barracks. It looks far older than it is.
Then I crossed the river to the east bank for St Mary’s, the Church of Ireland on Church Street. The church itself dates from about 1827. There’s been a church on the site since at least 1452.
The bit that stopped me in my tracks is the tall, separate tower standing beside it. That’s all that’s left of the earlier church, built around 1622, and it’s the tower that carries a small plaque:
Near this place lie the remains of Colonel Richard Grace, who held the Castle for James II in 1690, and was killed in battle on the Jacobite side in the Siege of Athlone, 1691 on June 20.
So the man who held the west bank is buried on the east bank, the side his enemies took first. That feels like it should be a bit of a slap in the face?
The river
And in between all the history, there’s the Shannon, wide and grey and silver, depending on which way the clouds were going.
The Bastion, twice over
If you’re in Athlone, go to the Bastion Gallery on the Left Bank. It’s packed with things designed and made in Ireland by local makers, including Ogham Treasure jewellery, which is made right here in Athlone. I can highly recommend it, and that’s as much as I’m saying, because my shop finds are a secret until I get home.
The shop has a history of its own. It used to be the drapery shop of Michael Kilkelly, choirmaster and teacher of the Athlone-born tenor John McCormack, who used to practise upstairs. And the sign outside is not making things up: in 2006, while he was recording at Grouse Lodge in Westmeath, Michael Jackson turned up one evening with his family and spent a couple of hours shopping there. The owners were apparently asked to sign non-disclosure agreements about what he bought. So keeping my finds quiet puts me in very good company.
I’m staying the next door down at The Bastion, a super cool, funky B&B on the Left Bank, all bare stone, old beams, sloping ceilings and wonderful rugs. Look at that colourful street. It’s a lovely base.
Why Athlone matters to me: Thomas Brennan
Athlone is where Thomas Brennan came from, the husband of Catherine Coughlan. I believe Catherine was a sister of my own ancestor Patrick Caughlin (more on that here). But Thomas himself is documented, and he’s an Athlone man.
What I know about him comes mostly from the paperwork of the 1841 bounty emigration scheme to New South Wales. His entry gives his native place as “Athlone Co. Westmeath”. He was a 22-year-old farm labourer, Roman Catholic, and couldn’t read or write. His parents were John Brennan, a labourer, and Bridget Welsh.
On 1 May 1841, Thomas married Catherine at Clonmacnoise, just down the Shannon from here, where the register spells them “Brannin” and “Caughlan”. Two weeks later, on 14 May, they sailed from Plymouth on the barque John Renwick, one couple among about two hundred emigrants. They reached Sydney at the very end of August 1841.
There’s a little clerk’s note on Catherine’s entry that I love. Her native place is given as “Clunemackny (Clonmacnois)”, and next to it someone has written “which is not far from Athlone”.
Thomas and Catherine settled in the Ipswich district of what became Queensland and had nine children. Thomas died on 5 September 1861 at Seven Mile, near Ipswich, only twenty years after he left Athlone. Catherine outlived him by thirty-six years. She died at Taroom on 9 November 1897, aged 78.
So I walked both banks today knowing that Thomas would have known those roads, lived in the East side, will have visited the the castle and the old tower at St Mary’s, though not the twin-towered church, which came a century too late for him.
Tomorrow
In the morning, I head to the farm….
More soon, and yes, the shop finds will be revealed eventually.