As the 13th of August comes around, the present rising tensions between Russia and the West bring me back sixty-five years to the Summer of 1961 and my ringside seat at its most momentous event.
The Cold War was hotting up and the nuclear powers were preparing for a confrontation when myself and some classmates from the School of Architecture in UCD arrived in London hoping to make enough summer money to get us through the next year. Our skills were instantly snapped up by firms engaged in the delivery of priority defence projects.
For the next two months I worked night and day churning out drawings for the construction of a nuclear submarine base at Faslane in Scotland. By the end of July we were all exhausted but having saved enough money, we badly needed a break. One of us had bought a second-hand car so we decided to make an architectural pilgrimage to the Continent before returning to Ireland.
This appreciation is based on an interview Andy Gallagher conducted with the late Maurice O’Keeffe in 2012.
Introduction:
The recent passing on 14 September 2026 of Andy Gallagher in his ninetieth year—just a couple of weeks short of his 90th birthday—marks the end of an extraordinary era for Offaly and Tullamore. A towering figure in the GAA, a dedicated public servant, and a cherished community leader, Andy Gallagher was, in every sense, a proud son of the Faithful County whose immeasurable contribution and legacy will endure for generations. To chart Andy Gallagher’s life is to chronicle the growth of modern Tullamore and the transformative rise of Offaly hurling from modest beginnings to the pinnacle of All-Ireland glory.
Early Days: Born and raised in the heart of Tullamore, Andy’s roots ran deep into the local soil. When once asked about his lineage, Andy proudly confirmed that his family went back as far as records could trace in the Tullamore area. The son of Matthew (Matt) Gallagher, a skilled carpenter who worked with local contractors, Andy grew up steeped in the town’s traditions. He received his education at the local Christian Brothers school, where his natural sporting gift and lifelong love for Gaelic games were nurtured.
A blog contribution had been planned closer to the envisaged eventual publication of the biography; however, following a request from Offaly History for an article prior to the lecture on 28 September, I have composed the following internet pages. I will return to the story of the biography from initial acceptance by my agent in 2022 in a separate blog.
[Monday 28 September 2026 at 7 30 p.m. Timothy Moloney on William Bulfin: his Life and Works at Offaly History Centre, Bury Quay, Tullamore (beside new Aldi). All are welcome.]
Timothy Moloney describes the life of William Bulfin using his works as a frame in which to set the biographical details. Drawing on his as yet unpublished biography, Timothy surveys his main works, Tales of the Pampas and Rambles in Eirinn, but he also pays attention to his lesser-known creations ̶ ‘Sketches of Buenos Aires’ and a novel A Man of the Pampas, as well as a series of articles he wrote on a trip to the Andes in 1905. He accompanies the lecture with interesting slides showing samples from Bulfin’s oeuvre and pictures from his time and of his family members.
Editor adds: Bulfin was an important figure in Irish Ireland of the early 1900s. His premature death in 1910 robbed Offaly and Ireland of a leader in cultural nationalism who might well have been a senator and perhaps a candidate for the presidency. The family have lived in County Offaly since at least the 1800s if not much earlier. Bulfin was buried in the Eglish churchyard. ]
The topic was to be a choice of my own, and after consideration, I chose ‘William Bulfin: his Life and Works’. It should have been easy to prepare, but since I had been working on other projects since completion of the biography ̶ a novel completed in 2023, and another historical work in 2023 and 2024, it proved more difficult than I expected. I had to review his life again, and had to distil it into manageable chunks for a sixty minute lecture. The life itself was one aspect, but then there were also the works: I planned to examine the genesis of his well-known works such as Tales of the Pampas and Rambles inEirinn, but also wanted to draw attention to his lesser known literary or journalistic creations, such as his ‘Sketches of Buenos Aires’ under the nom-de-plume Che Buono, an unpublished novel he wrote called A Man of the Pampas, and also a lengthy series of articles he composed about a trip to the Lower Andes in 1905.
The foundation stone for the Tullamore jail was laid on 13 September 1826 just 200 years ago. Two hundred years of history as we pass those gates of what is now Kilcruttin Business Park. We may wonder at what went on there over 200 years. In many ways the former jail encapsulates the history of Tullamore since the 1820s. When the jail was built Tullamore was not yet the county town. There was no railway until 1859 at this location. No road up from Kilcruttin until 1938, Lloyd Town Park was agricultural land with an old out-of-town cemetery nearby. Only the ‘Charleville Parade’ houses north of the courthouse were built. The courthouse was not completed until 1835. The jail was designed to accommodate 120 prisoners and had double that number during the Famine years of the late 1840s. It was well run on reform lines but Victorian prisons were tough places.
The Grand Canal, like all great waterways, has its own traditions. One of the most enduring of these customs is the tradition of loyal service given by those men and women who work on, or at the canal. In many cases, this tradition of service remains within a family, and is passed down from generation to generation. The Cummins family of Ballycowan Lock are such a family.
In the early years of the twentieth century when trade and commerce flourished, and the Grand Canal was still a thriving transport waterway with barges steaming up and down from Dublin to Shannon, Michael Cummins worked as a greaser in the Canal Basin T Shannon. In 1915 he was the victim of a tragic drowning accident in the place where he had spent his whole working life. He left behind a widow, Catherine, and a teenage boy, Joseph and to keep the wolf from the door, they had to find a new means of living. Thus began the long association between the Cummins family and Ballycowan Lock.
In 1852 Birr in King’s County decided to have a town commission/council in an attempt to improve facilities in the town that had aspirations to be the county town in the 1640s and perhaps up to the 1780s. The earl of Charleville ensured that Tullamore was named as the capital of King’s County after legislation was passed in the House of Commons in 1832 before becoming the capital town in 1835. This was by way of becoming the chief assize town with the full apparatus of county courthouse and jail.
How people travelled in the country towns in the midlands during these years is a mystery as the state of the roads were an absolute disgrace from mud and horse droppings that made travel impossible and unhealthy as the threat of cholera and typhoid fever was prevalent in the country and killed more people than the years of the Great Famine. Indeed, King’s County despite a low death rate from 1847 experienced emigration to an unprecedented level and Birr was no exception as the town suffered a serious decline in the population in the post-famine period.
This appreciation piece is based on an interview by Aidan Barry and Shaun Wrafter (Offaly History members) with Phil O’Reilly Snr. at his home in Harbour St. Tullamore on 10th June 2024.
You can listen to the full interview here at Offaly History on SoundCloud. Go to Phil O’Reilly on SoundCloud or to Voices on the http://www.offalyhistory.com website.
A lifetime spent in the quiet, noble service of a community leaves an indelible mark on the town that bred it. In the summer of 2024, when Shaun Wrafter, Offaly History sat down with Phil O’Reilly Snr in his beloved Harbour Street, the retired undertaker and former Offaly footballing legend looked back across his ninety years of life in Tullamore. With the news of his passing, Tullamore, County Offaly, and the wider GAA community mourn not just a giant of local history, but a man whose humble dedication, deep faith, and sporting courage touched generations.
From his earliest days kicking a ball along Harbour Street, Tullamore to the roaring, record-breaking crowds of Croke Park, and onward through over five decades of comforting grieving families as one of the town’s funeral directors, Phil O’Reilly Snr lived a life defined by decency, duty, and devotion. Phil Reilly was born in 1993 and grew up in Tullamore
Born in 1933, Phil was a son of Tullamore and a true product of Harbour Street. His father, Phil, hailed from Tullamore, while his mother, Nora, came from Ballyhaunis, County Mayo. The couple had married in New York, where Phil’s eldest sister, Patsy, was born in 1932 before the family returned to Ireland and settled into the property on Harbour Street.
At eight o’clock in the morning, my mother burst into my bedroom waving a telegram.
‘You have got a County Scholarship! You have to go to Dublin straight away!’
It was late October 1957. I had applied for a scholarship from Offaly County Council to study architecture in UCD but when the new term opened at the beginning of the month and I had no word I presumed that my Leaving Cert results simply weren’t good enough and had given up hope. Being an unemployed widow there was no way my mother could have found the money for fees and digs. A scholarship – of which there were only six- was my only hope.
At the last moment a student brighter than I had pulled out and I was next on the list. However, the offer had to be taken up that very day or else would be withdrawn. My mother thrust the telegram and three pounds into my hands and I raced to the station and caught the train to Dublin.
At Kingsbridge I got a taxi to the offices of the National University of Ireland in Merrion Square. My telegram from the Council was carefully scrutinised and to my great relief I was told that I was accepted but would have to be interviewed by the Professor of the School of Architecture who would have the final say. A call was made and I was told to race across to Earlsfort Terrace where Professor Desmond FitzGerald would interview me at one o’clock.
It was plainly obvious from the moment I entered his office that the Professor was unenthusiastic about my joining the course. I had already missed two weeks of projects and lectures and would never catch up, he said. Might it not be better if I used my scholarship to do an Arts degree. Anyway, why did I want to study architecture?
Then, as now, fashionable weddings get a lot of press attention. Michael F. Gorry was the great grandfather of Francis (Francie) Gorry whose family had the famous newsagency shop in Harbour Street, Tullamore for over 100 years. Michael F. Gorry was the first person to be buried in the new Catholic cemetery in Clonminch in 1893. The report of a wedding on 31 July 1891 was published in the Midland Tribune on 8 August and no doubt created a stir in Tullamore. The style of the report was that of the kind carried in the Birr Protestant and unionist King’s County Chronicle, a then hated rival of the Midland Tribune, and might have been related to Gorry’s being the agent for the Birr Chronicle in Tullamore. One James Joyce also used this style to describe fashionable bourgeois occasions is his Ulysses (published in 1922).
One of the saddest events in Tullamore history was the destruction of the 1906 Church of the Assumption by fire in the early hours of 31 October 1983. By morning all that remained was a burnt-out shell and the spire which survived. It is ironic that in the opening of Heritage Week 2026 Tullamore is also marking the 40th anniversary of the opening of the new and third church on the same site at Harbour and Chapel Street, Tullamore. Another example of the Phoenix at work in Tullamore over the past 250 years.
The new Catholic church, Tullamore completed for 15 August 1986.The interior of the 1906-83 church
The background to the fire was well documented in several publications and resulted from a break-in and carelessness in not reporting a small fire that had been started by the lighting of a candle near a confessional curtain after the church had been closed and locked at 8.30 p.m. By 2.00 a.m. the building was gutted and gone with it were all the improvements since the late 1960s including the great refurbished organ and the well varnished pitch pine. It was a great tragedy for the parish.
The detail from the west front of the Hague McNamara church of 1906. This picture probably early 1906.Chapel St and the church in 1977. Courtesy of Oliver Connolly.
The building was deemed too unsafe to permit investigation of the causes of the fire, and as a result important and never-to-be replaced architectural features were taken down. Whether the stone could have been salvaged was contested by at least one architectural historian. The question of building a second church in Tullamore, which had been on the agenda in some shape since the mid-1960s, was now solved by a decision to build a new and larger church on the existing site in keeping, in so far as this was possible, with the old church. Edward N. Smith and Partners, architects, were selected by the then parish priest, Fr Fallon, to design the new church (there was no competition).
Fr Fallon took charge of the operation to built the new church.The historic first mass in the new church was celebrated on Saturday 9 August at 10.00 am. It was a deeply emotional occasion for the parishioners and clergy. Parishioners bade farewell on the previous Sunday to the temporary mass centres of almost three years standing in the case of Vocational School, St Mary’s Hall and the Tullamore Harriers, and seven years in respect of the G.A.A. centre. Fr Fallon’s first words on the Saturday morning ‘My dear people of Tullamore, Welcome Home’
The architect’s brief was to re-build the church in such a way as to ‘retain or regain as much as possible of the character of the old church but in a modern idiom’. This was next to impossible to achieve. He reused much of the old stonework especially on the Chapel Street side and went for a contemporary interior. What was lost of the Gothic exterior and interior was replaced in the self-finished timber ceilings and laminated structural frames of the interior. Full restoration of the exterior was not possible on expense grounds in the 1980s.
Miss Fallon of Robbins Limited and a friend – all great church people of the 1900s to the 1980s
John Dunne (Sacristan) and Mrs Dunne at retirement. He opened the church at 7 30 Mon to Friday and at 6 a.m. on Good Fridays.
For many the most attractive feature of the new church was the warm and modern interior with its timber spans. John Flanagan & Sons Limited, the Tullamore-based building firm, was appointed builders and work began in October 1984 and was completed for the opening of the present and third church on the Harbour Street site in August 1986. For almost three years masses were said at the Tullamore GAA Centre, Tullamore Vocational School gym, Scoil Mhuire, Tullamore Harriers Pavilion and St Mary’s Hall. Weddings were generally in Durrow and a few were held in St Catherine’s Church of Ireland church.
William Ralph
Fundraising for the new building had started almost immediately after the fire and a sum of £700,000 was raised through donations, raffles and special events. The chairman of the Finance Committee was William Ralph, who was a corporate director of the Williams Group. The experience of Williams trained directors and managers would benefit not only Tullamore Parish but also Tullamore Credit Union and could be seen in the shrewd management of money. A sum of £2.85m was eventually paid by the state in settlement of the malicious damages claim and part of this amount had, in the meantime, been advanced by the insurer, Church & General. That sum combined with the donations earned for the parish over £600,000 in investment income. Ralph believed in working from cash flow and in trying to maintain capital and use interest to fund projects. It worked because some of the more expensive stonework features were not restored and as result the parish was left with about £1m which was placed in a Trust Fund for the ongoing maintenance of the new church. In the mid-1990s the High Court confirmed that the money could only be used for this specific purpose which accorded with the intention of the donors and could not be called on to fund broader charitable proposals. The Trust Fund has continued to benefit Tullamore parish in that way and is managed by local trustees with the benefit of professional advice.
Donation of an organ by the Lutheran church in Copenhagen
In 1994 a sum of £90,000 was paid from the Trust for the installation of the organ donated by the Lutheran cathedral church in Copenhagen. The organ was built by one of the world’s leading organ building firms, Th. Frobenius of Lyngby (Copenhagen), in 1965 for the great cathedral church of Denmark’s capital city. The organ obviously needed a new case to fit the gallery dimensions of Tullamore’s fine new church. This was designed and built by the Frobenius firm with the work carried out by a team of three Frobenius craftsmen. The net result was that Tullamore now has the largest mechanical action church organ in Ireland, and the sole example in the country of the Frobenius firm’s renowned skill and craftsmanship. The organ was inaugurated in a gala concert on 10 May, 1995. Tullamore’s requirements for an organ at that time and their request to Prof. Gerard Gillen, NUI Maynooth, to assist them in securing an instrument, brought about a remarkable series of coincidences which resulted in the organ’s installation in Tullamore in the latter months of 1994. A Tullamore International Summer Organ Series (TISOS) of concerts was inaugurated in 1999 and has continued since. This series would not be possible without the help of Professor Gillen.
Fr Fallon and his team of curates
While in a sense things worked out well Tullamore lost its Hague-McNamara designed church of 1906 and the strain of the decision-making over three years affected the health of Fr Fallon and he died just three years later, aged 70, in 1989.
During his time in Tullamore Fr Fallon had among his curates some very popular men. He had the benefit of John Charles O’Reilly until his transfer in 1981 and also of Edward Daly who was a curate in Tullamore from 1970 to 1979. Fr Daly was later transferred to Kilcormac as parish priest. Seamus Giles (later PP in Castletown, d. 2013) was a curate in the Tullamore parish from 1965 to 1974 and was popular with young people because of his easy way of connecting with the trends of the late 1960s and 1970s. Another man who had a lot of experience of Tullamore was Joe Gleeson who had been a curate for a short time in 1958 and again from 1966 to 1976. A native of Kilcormac parish he was transferred at about the same time as Fr Fallon was appointed to Tullamore. Fr Colm Savage was in the parish from 1972 to 1983 and worked closely with the Tullamore Vocational School.
Probably best known in the late 1970s and early 1980s was Michael Lynn. He had been in Peru for ten years and had a close affinity with the ordinary person, and the Travellers at the several halting sites. This was helped by his cycling about the town in a leisurely way, something that gave him more immediate contact with parishioners than is possible in a motor car. He was curate in the parish of Tullamore from 1975 to 1986. His commitment to the social dimension of the Church mission found another outlet as a member of the Education Committee of the Tullamore Credit Union. In this he was unusual as unlike in other places in Ireland this important local organisation had no other clerical activist since the days of Fr Fintan Cassidy as a founding director (1963-64). Fr Lynn celebrated twenty-five years as a priest in 1985 and told those present that in the large class from which he was ordained in June 1960 62 were still in the priesthood. ‘The man on the bike’ the Tullamore Tribune called him when he departed Tullamore to serve as PP in Duleek in 1988.
Fr Sean McGearty spent ten years in Tullamore from 1979 to 1989. He was on loan from Adelaide, Australia and during his time in Tullamore made a singular contribution to the development of family history in Ireland through his appreciation of the importance of the Catholic parish registers and the need to index and conserve them. He was the inspiration for the setting up of the Offaly Historical and Archaeological Society family history project which in the 1980s was the host for the country-wide development of the Irish Family History Society and the Irish Family History Foundation. He made a valuable photographic record of the course of building of the new church over the period 1984 to 1986. His colleague, Fr Tom Mullen, came to Tullamore in the same year as Fr McGearty and from late 1983 to 1985 led the fundraising drive for the new church. He was appointed as parish priest of Kilcormac in 1985. Fr Philip O’Connor served in the parish from 1984 to 1988 as did Fr David Hanratty from 1984 to 1985. In the year before Fr Fallon’s death, Fr Dermot Farrell, was appointed to the parish and remained for two years. His forte was in administration and he went on to serve as vice-president and president of Maynooth College and later as parish priest of Trim. He is now Archbishop of Dublin.
John Flanagan, the builder, looking at work on the old Ballyduff Catholic church of 1775.
