Ardclough

Template:Infobox Irish Place Ardclough is a village and community in the parish of Kill County Kildare, Ireland, two miles off the N7. Amongst its buildings today are a national school, a church, Ardclough GAA Club, and one shop. Ardclough also contains the historic round tower at Oughter Ard, the graveyard in which Arthur Guinness is buried.

Etymology

‘Aclagh’, marked in Alexander Taylor’s map of 1783 on the opposite bank of the canal from the site of the masshouse (later old Ardclough church) and school, is believed to be the first occurrence of the name. Ard Cloch literally means high stone, but there is no high stone in the area today. There has been a suggestion that the name is derived from Ard Clochar, referring to the convent at Oughter Ard.

History

Royal site

The earliest evidence of human habitation at Ardclough was the discovery of a flint dated to 4800-3600BC, at Castlewarden below Oughter Ard Hill, rare for a dry-land location from the time. Lyons Hill was the inauguration site and base for 10 Uí Dúnchada kings of Leinster. The Battle of Glen Mama, where Brian Boru defeated Máel Mórda king of Leinster and Sitric Silkbeard King of Dublin in 999, is believed to have taken place on the Dublin side of Oughterard Hill. The area was accorded its own place-legend in the Dindsenchas, Liamuin. Lyons subsequently became home to the Aylmer , Tyrrell and Lawless families.

Historic buildings

There are five medieval churches and three castles in the area. Most important is Oughter Ard founded by St Briga (feast day January 21) around 650 and site of a round tower. Recent research has estimated that the ruined church there dates to 1350, not 1609 as previously believed. It was the site of a Royal Manor. Whitechurch became an important monastic site after it was established in 1300 and enfifed in 1506. A single headstone is the only reminder of the church of Castledillon (1000), once a parish of its own. The graveyard beside another disappeared church at Clonaghlis (pre 1206) is still in use while Castlewarden (c1200) has disappeared.

A mass house built below Oughter Ard hill in 1714 became the site of the first modern Catholic church in 1810 and a school in 1839. Lyons parish was united with Oughterard in 1541 and with Kill in 1693. The centre of the parish moved to Kill in 1823. The former Lyons parish church (built 1810, refurbished 1896 was deconsecrated in 1985 and is now a private house. It was replaced by new church in Tipperstown, designed by Paul O'Daly. A marble font brought from Rome by Valentine Lawless and presented to the church was removed to Lyons House for safe keeping but remains the property of the parish.

A well-preserved moated site at Puddlehall dates to the 1200s and was cited by University College Dublin Professor Sean O Riordain as one of the finest examples of a moated house in Ireland.Lyons, Reeves and Oughter Ard tower houses date to the 1300s. The large houses of Bishopscourt (constructed 1790) and Lyons (constructed 1804-10) provided an economic focus of the community in the 19th century, as did the Grand Canal (reached Ardclough 1763) in the vicinity of the 13th lock.

Grand canal

When work on the Grand Canal begun in 1756 Ardclough’s was one of the first sections to be dug. The canal reached Ardclough in 1763, when the 13th lock, a 137 feet double lock built with Pozzuolona mortar, was opened, following to the ambitious design of the canal’s original engineer, Thomas Omer. After Omer's plans proved too expensive a new engineer, John Trail took over construction of the canal in 1768, the proposed canal capacity was reduced from 170 ton barges to 40 ton barges. Canal records show that “ Lyons or Clonaughles lock” was reduced in size in 1783, but the canal through the thirteenth lock serves as a reminder of Omer’s original plan, 20 feet wide, compared with the 14 feet width adopted by Trail.

Ardclough bridge was named in original plans for the Bruton family of Clonaghlis but constructed with a name plate bearing the name of the Henry family of Straffan. From 1777 a local river, the Morrel was proposed as water feeder for the canal, construction resumed and the first passenger boats were towed to Sallins in February 1779.

Local landowner Valentine Lawless was a canal enthusiast, constructing the Lyons mill and lockyard village complex in the 1820s and serving as chairman of the Grand Canal Company five times during his lifetime. The canal was an important, if slow, passenger thoroughfare feeding passenger’s to John Barry’s hotel at Lyons. When in 1834 Flyboats increased the average speed for passenger boats from 3mph to 9mph Ireland’s first railway was already under construction.

The canal peaked at 120,615 passengers in 1846, the year construction started on the Dublin-Cork railway line. When a Dublin-Galway railway line was opened in 1850 the closure of the rarely-profitable passenger service followed in 1852. Cargo traffic continued to use the canal for another 108 years, peaking at 379.045 tons in 1865 when an average of 90 barges a day passed through Ardclough. The canal was motorised 1911-24 and closed to cargo in 1960, but is still a popular thoroughfare for leisure boats. The tracks of the ropes of the horse drawn barges can still be traced at Ardclough canal bridge. A folk belief prevailed that the canal was haunted at the thirteenth lock because it had been dug through a graveyard. Indeed Clonaghlis graveyard is nearby.

Notable events

The Great Southern & Western Railway (constructed 1844) and Straffan Station (used until 1947) opened communications to Dublin for cattle and horse dealers. A railway accident on October 5 1853, the third worst in Irish rail history, killed 18 people including four children in the townland of Clownings. It occurred in heavy fog when a goods train ran in to the back of a stalled passenger train at a point 974 yards south of the former Straffan Station. The goods train smashed the first class carriage, which was driven a quarter of a mile through station. The tragedy was the subject of a poem by Donegal-born poet William Allingham. It was the third worst accident in rail history to that date.

The Barnewell homestead at Lyons was the headquarters of the anti-treaty forces in north Kildare during the Irish Civil War. On June 22 1975 Whitechurch resident Christy Phelan was murdered after he engaged a group of men planting a bomb on the railway line near Baronrath. The bomb was designed to derail train for Bodenstown commemoration. His death prevented greater loss of life through his intervention. The incident is one of a group of British undercover operations launched against civilian targets in Ireland which is still under investigation by the Barron Comimssion.

The biggest train robbery in the history of Ireland took place at Kearneystown on March 31st 1976 when £150,000 was taken from the Dublin-Cork mail train, the equivalent of Eu1.24m today.

Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847) fought a duel with John d’Esterre at Oughterard in 1815 (Feb 1).

Economy

Limestone quarries (sinkhole recorded 1804) made Ardclough canal bank the focus of economic activity from the 1820s until the deathn of owner Patrick Sullivan in 1879 (peak activity 1850s). Boston Lime Company reduced the price to six shillings per load in 1875 but a footnote in the 1891 census returns attributes the decline in population from 75 to 21 in Ardclough townland to the closure of quarries . Stone was brought by light railway to the nearby quays and by canal barge to Sullivan’s lime kiln. Ardclough limestone used on construction of Naas jail and hospital.

A cluster of warehouses and workshops at Lyons lockyard village on the canal was largely constructed in the 1820s, featuring a mill (leased to William Palmer 1839 and Joseph Shackleton, second cousin of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, 1853, converted to roller mill 1887), hotel (leased by Patrick Barry 1840-60), police station (active 1820-60) and boatyard employed over 100 people at their peak but declined when the focus shifted away from the canal, the decline in fortunes of the Lawless family and most dramatically as a consequence of the accidental burning of the mill in 1903. In September 2006 the buildings were restored as themed residences and a restaurant.

"Relocation"

When the GAA club (1936), community hall (1940, reconstructed 2004) and school (1950) were built on a crossroads beneath Henry Bridge it shifted the focus of the community to a site in Tipperstown, which is regarded as the modern Ardclough. The population was boosted by houses built at Wheatfield (1940), Boston Hill (1949-51) and Tipperstown (Wheatfield Estate 1976, Lishandra Estate 1989). A new Catholic church designed by Paul O’Daly was sited nearby in 1985 and a new school and graveyard are proposed.

Sport

GAA

Ardclough GAA (community associated with Hazlehatch Irish Harpers 1887-8, active as Ardclough 1924-5, refounded 1936) is the smallest community to win a Kildare County Senior Football Championship, defeating an Army team that featured All Ireland and inter-provincial players in the replayed final of 1949. The hurling club was founded in 1948. One of the most successful in Kildare, it has won 12 Kildare County Senior Hurling Championships - in 1968, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1985, 2004, and 2006. In 2006 they went on to become Leinster Intermediate club champions, losing to the eventual All Ireland champions in extra time in the quarter final, and were awarded Kildare GAA club of the year. Five Ardclough players were selected on the Kildare hurling team of the millennium: Richie Cullen, Tommy Christian, Bobby Burke, Johnny Walsh and Mick Dwane. The 2008 Kildare senior hurling panel includes six Ardclough players.

Ardclough Camogie club (founded 1962 by Mick Houlihan, revived 1983 by Phyllis Finneran) won a Kildare senior championship in 1968. Bridget Cushen was selected on the Kildare camogie team of the century.

Equestrianism

Notable Ardclough horses in both flat and national hunt (once described as "the four horses of the Ardcloughalypse") include The Tetrarch (1911, regarded as probably the finest two year old in Irish racing history), Captain Christy (winner Cheltenham Gold Cup, 1974), Star Appeal (winner of the Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe, 1975) and Kicking King (winner Cheltenham Gold Cup, 2005). Horse breeder Edward Cub Kennedy came from Baronrath, while father-and-son trainers Pat Taaffe and Tom Taaffe came from Alasty. As a jockey Pat Taaffe (1930-92) rode two winners of the English Grand National, Quare Times in 1955 and Gay Trip in 1970 and was Irish National Hunt champion six times.

Other sports

David Ritchie who lived at Oughterard laid out Ireland's first golf course. Ardclough had a soccer club briefly in 1941-3.

Clubs

Ardclough had a brass band which performed at Bodenstown in 1914 and at the 1949 Kildare County Senior Football final. There was a branch of the LDF/FCA (Nov 8 1941), Fianna Fail (1931), Labour (1943), Fine Gael (1943) and Macra na Feirme (1955). There are active branches of the Irish Countrywomen's Association (active 1941-42 and revived 1974, with Maura Costello as Chairwoman) and Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann (branch established in 1966 with Paddy Corry as Chairman).

People

Lived in Ardclough

• Ronan Keating (1977-) lead singer with Boyzone, lived briefly in Tipperstown (1998-2000).
• Tony Ryan (1936-2007), aviator, founder of Ryanair and Guinness Peat Aviation and patron of the arts purchased a home in Lyons some years before his death. He is buried in Clonaghlis.
• Philippa Bayliss (1940-) artist, lived in the former school house on Ardclough canal bank between 1978 and 2002.
• Nora J Murray (1888-1955) Carrick on Shannon born poetess, author of "A Wind Upon the Heath" (1918), school teacher at Ardclough and subject of a notorious "sedition in the classroom" case in November 1917 when local Unionist landlord Bertram Hugh Barton (1858-1927) complained about her teaching of Irish history.
• Lydia Shackleton (1828–1914), botanical artist, lived in Ardclough between April 1853 when she moved to the family's newly acquired mill at Lyons, where she was housekeeper for her elder brother Joseph, until 1860.
• David George Ritchie (1819-1889), sportsman, who laid out the first golf course in Ireland on the Curragh in 1851.
• William Brabazon Ponsonby, (1744-1806) leader of the Irish Whigs (1789-1803).
• George Ponsonby (1755-1817) first counsel to the revenue commissioners.
• Valentine Lawless 2nd baron Cloncurry (1773–1853), financier of the 1798 and 1803 rebellions and United Irish organiser in London who became a British Peer in September 1831 to add to his Irish title.
• Mattew Read (1713-1790) brewer and uncle of Arthur Guinness
• John Ponsonby (1713–1789) of Bishopscourt, speaker of the Irish House of Commons (1756-1769)
• Brabazon Ponsonby (1679-1758) founder of one of the most powerful political dynasties of the 18th century. Ponsonby descendants include Sir Alec Douglas-Home (British Prime Minister from 1963-4) and William Windsor, heir to the British throne.
• John Swayne (d. 1439-42), later archbishop of Armagh, who was clerk of the diocese of Kildare then canon and prebend of Lyons, before becoming Archbishop of Dublin (1417) and then Armagh (1418).
• James Butler (1390–1452), fourth earl of Ormond (the White Earl) who was granted Castlewarden and Oughterard in 1412 for his support for the Lancaster cause.

Born in Ardclough

• Charlie McCreevy (1948-) Minister for Finance in the Government of Ireland (1997-2004) and European Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services (2004-) grew up on the Grand Canal in the lock house at 14th lock and played under-age hurling and football for Ardclough.
• Mary Redmond (1863–1930) sculptress responsible for the statue of Father Mattew on O’Connell Street Dublin was born in Ardclough and spent her childhood at the Canal Bank where her father was a quarry manager. Her first work was with clay at a sinkhole near her home.
• Emily Lawless (1845–1913) writer and granddaughter of Valentine Lawless born in Lyons.
• Major-General Sir William Ponsonby (1772–1815) whose inept charge at the Battle of Waterloo resulted in his death at the hands of the Polish Landers and was studied as an example of failed battle strategy for generations afterwards,
• George Ponsonby (1755–1817) opposition leader in the British House of Commons at Westminster and leader of the Whig Party (1808 –1817), born in Bishopscourt he lived in Newlands in a house formerly owned by Arthur Wolfe.
• Mary Ponsonby, wife of Charles Grey, British Prime Minister from 1830 to 1834 and best known nowadays as the Earl Grey of the tea brand.

Buried in Ardclough

• Arthur Guinness (1725–1803) founder of the famous brewery is buried in Oughterard cemetery, near the plot of his uncle Mattew Read. He was the son of Richard Guinness and Elizabeth Read (1698–1742) from Bishopscourt, who was agent and receiver of Dr Arthur Price and lived in Celbridge at the time of Arthur's birth.
• Arthur Wolfe first Viscount Kilwarden (1739–1803), judge and most famous victim of the rebellion of Robert Emmett is buried in the family vault of the Wolfes in Oughterard cemetery. He was born in Forenaghts, and lived at Newlands.

Bibliography

• Eoghan Corry and Jim Tancred (2004): Annals of Ardclough
• Ardclough Churches 1985 Souvenir Brochure.
• W J Fitzpatrick: Life, Times and Contemporaries of Lord Cloncurry (1855). (Online version available)
• Valentine Lawless, Personal recollections of the life and times, with extracts from the correspondence of Valentine Lord Cloncurry, Dublin: J. McGlashan; London: W.S. Orr, 1849. (Online version available)
• Lyons House: A Guide (2001).
• "Irish Geography" Vol 18 1985 DN Hall M Hennessy and Tadhg O’Keefe Medieval Agriculture and Settlement in Castlewarden and Oughterard pp16-25
• "Kildare Archaeological Society Journal". Volume I : pp84-86, 195, 296, 297, 298, 299. Volume II : pp179, 183, 395. Volume III : pp361, 364, 456. Volume IV : pp64, 165, 179-183, 255, 257. Volume XII : pp264, 332, 339-341, 400, 429.