Silvermines journal features abducting prospective wives, banshees and local history

Silvermines Historical Society has launched the 11th edition of its journal Mining The Past.

The launch was carried out by local journalist and history buff Simon O’Duffy.

Appropriately enough, the journal opens with a chapter on mining.

In Sinking the Knight Shaft, Denis Gleeson transports the reader back to the early 1960s, when north Tipperary was plagued with high unemployment, low paid jobs and emigration.

This changed in 1968 with the opening of the Mogul mine, an operation that gave employment to more than 500 people, for whom the wage bill over a 14-year period amounted to some £33m pounds.

At its centre was the Knight Shaft, named after HW Knight of Consolidated Mogul, Canada.

The operation was not without its setbacks, most tragically of course being the death of five miners who worked at Mogul.

Billy Feehily writes of times past inspired by the discovery of a rock in a land reclamation project around 20 years ago. The rock was carved with the names of his uncle Nicholas, and cousin Nicholas Gleeson from Roscrea, in that auspicious year of 1920. It now stands as a feature in the author’s front garden.

In The Rise and Demise of Castle Otway, Paddy Ryan charts the local dynasty that descended from Cromwellian officer John Otway.

In its early years the Otway estate measured some 5,000 acres stretching to Latteragh, Borrisoleigh and elsewhere.

Paddy encapsulates this intriguing and far-reaching family story from there up to the burning of Castle Otway in 1922, a year after its last occupant had died.

We next move to a theme synonymous with Mining the Past over the years, that of emigration and Silvmerines descendants living abroad seeking to connect with their ancestral homeland.

In this volume, Mary Kennedy, who emigrated to Australia in 1975, publishes a letter written to her that year by her mother, Nonie, in Dolla. Nonie wrote twice a week and, as her daughter points out, her letters would have made a great record of life in Dolla in the 1970s. Sadly, Mary kept only one letter.

Things then take a fascinatingly macabre twist when Michael O’Brien documents the cillín - or children’s grave - at Capparoe Cross.

The local Tidy Towns committee used a dolmen to mark its presence in 2016. Michael tells us that this cillín was probably in use between the period 1600 and 1900 and was just one of many similar burial places in the parish.

Poignantly, this volume of Mining the Past also features an appreciation to an annual contributor to the series over the last 11 years, Tim Boland, who died in 2022.

Also featured is an article written by Tim as part of his 2004 MA, in which he looked at the comparatively better experience of the Great Famine in Ballinaclough, thanks largely thanks to the Bayly family, who went far beyond the call of duty to ease the hardship on the people of the townland during those harrowing years.

Returning to that theme of emigrant descendants researching their forebears' past, Patricia Mary Quinlan Manwell tells of her superstitious grandfather, John James Quinlan, who believed he was driven by banshees from Kilboy to new life in New York in the late nineteenth century.

Mary refers in her piece to her cousin Michael Quinlan sending her copies of 'Mining the Past' every Christmas, and she rightly regards the series as a "treasure trove of information".

In sport, Paddy Ryan (C) profiles the “Friarfield Colossus”, six-foot five inches Martin Kennedy of Curreeny, without doubt one of the greatest throwing athletes of the 1920s. Paddy outlines how this local man could well have enjoyed Olympic success, such was his ability.

Another regular contributor to this series, Cáit Logue this time brings a truly remarkable account of the abduction of a young female by a man who thought he could obtain her fortune through forced marriage.

Hard to comprehend now, such occurrences were not rare in the nineteenth century and Cáit here relates a local example with the abduction of Hanna Cleary in Toomevara in 1854.

Patrick J Ryan’s summation of the life of his father, Paddy Ryan Lacken of Knockfune. A hardline Republican, fighting for the freedom and unity of Ireland a hundred years ago, Paddy shot dead the notorious District Inspector Biggs in an ambush. In his detailed relation of a fascinating story, Patrick also mentions how Sonny O’Neill appears to have taken refuge in the family home shortly after the killing of Michael Collins.

Things take a humurous twist when Damian John Gleeson looks at some of the many Gleeson nicknames of the north Tipperary. Humurous, but also important, as the author points out that our knowledge of these nicknames - and indeed those of the Ryans and Kennedys - has begun to diminish.

James Hayden writes about local hurling, and it is refreshing to see his profile of Jason Forde. In attesting to history he has already made, James points out that there is still much history yet to be written about Forde.

Another chapter contributed by Cáit Logue tells us about the visit of two very distringuished guests to Silvermines, Lord and Lady Dunalley, and of the incredible reception accorded to them by local people in 1850.
council’s roadmen

The value of historical societies is underscored in an article in which Canadian William McGrath talks about how he traced his ancestors with the help of SHS. He also used DNA testing to find that he is a cousin of Tom Hickey of the Silvermines bar.

Una Egan serves a fascinating slice of social history when she looks at the many and varied activities of the Roadman from the 1920s to the 1980s.

Employees of the county council, roadmen did everything from filling potholes to trimming hedges, and the tools of their trade changed greatly over the decades.

Using the shared memories of James Kiely of Templemore and Phil Sheehan of Silvermines, Una looks at the important social service roadmen often gave in addition to their physical work, and their distinct knowledge of the local area.

In 'A Most Unorthodox Courtship', Joan Kennedy and Jacinta Bennet tell the story of Tipp emigrant to Australia Richard Kennedy, who came home in 1904, at the age of 57. He married Johannah Kennedy, 33, of Queen Street, Nenagh, on August 29 of that year, and by September 1 they were leaving Southampton en route back to Australia to begin a new life together.

Tommy Collins contributes to this volume an interesting article on the Land Commission and its importance over the decades - locally and in the national context.

He looks at the changing shape of farming over the years and of how situations changed with the opening of the Shallee mine in 1963, in a read that will resonate with people of that generation.

The concluding chapter of this volume is a continuation of one began in Mining the Past 2022 with a transcript from a forgotten resource, an Irish Tourist Association Report on Templederry from the early 1940s.

Providing another valuable insight into local social history, it is interesting to read down through the facilities, amenities, history and other aspect of this area, which the author deemend worthy of note 80 years ago.

As well as the articles, the journal is dotted with a great collection of poems, songs and photographs.

Mining the Past is for sale in local bookshops.