CK Heritage Blog
We were delighted in recent weeks to find an excuse to get outdoors when collaborating with the @Historicgraves team to finally survey the old graveyard at Kinsalebeg Church (otherwise know as Prospect Hall) which is the fourth and last remaining graveyard to be surveyed in this parish and it turned up some very interesting finds indeed.
We previously cast a ‘spotlight’ on the townland of D’Loughtane elsewhere on this site, and as detailed there the D’Loughtane Estate was the long-time seat of the Ronayne Family, reputedly from at least the year 1450 up to 1854 when the last of the D’Loughtane Ronaynes moved to Youghal, although their cousins remained in seat at nearby Ardsallagh House until 1963. The full history of this Ronayne family has been written about extensively and can be traced via some of the references below.
Cumann na mBan or the “Irishwomen’s Council” was founded in April of 1914 at Wynn’s Hotel, Dublin and was a Nationalist organisation which aligned closely with the Irish Volunteer movement. Initially much of their activities on a local level involved fundraising and providing first-aid training for their members, but their primary objective of “advancing the cause of Irish liberty” and to “assist in arming and equipping a body of Irish men for the defence of Ireland” would ring more and more true as Ireland approached the revolutionary events of Easter 1916 and latterly during the War of Independence.
The ESB Rural Electrification Scheme rolled into the Clashmore District in the Spring of 1958 covering the areas of Clashmore, Piltown, Aglish & Villierstown. It was stated in the local press that “the introduction of this scheme should mark the beginning of a new era of progress and prosperity for the people of the district. It will eliminate drudgery and make life easier for all and on the farm will make for efficiency and lower production costs…” and it was initially expected to cost approx. £120,000.
Alice Colfer was a committed Nationalist and from a Waterford perspective was an early pioneer of the Cumann na mBan movement in the city, along with the likes of Rosamond Jacob et al. She was also an ardent supporter of the Conradh na Gaeilge movement and officiated for the Waterford City branch of that organisation and culturally important sub-groups such as the Waterford Feis. But admittedly what really piqued our interest in Alice was her earlier association with the parish of Clashmore…
We recently came across the following Waterford maps courtesy of Twitter friends @TimeFinding – one from 1685 by William Petty and the other from 1746.
What caught our eye initially were the various townland designations show on both maps for the parish of Clashmore & Kinsalebeg (some of which are quite cryptic!), but the one that stands out has to be the different names given for the contemporary townland of D’Loughtane.
Ireland was still part of the British Empire in the first decade of the 20th century, but a wave of nationalistic spirit was ensuring that any remaining loyalties to the crown were ebbing away by the year. This was the historical backdrop which accompanied those Irish men who elected to enlist in the British Army for service before or during The Great War of 1914. No doubt this was not an easy decision, but with this said it was paid service and employment and any decent prospects were scarce in many areas of our country at the time.
Laurence was born in Clashmore, County Waterford and came to Newfoundland sometime between 1808 and 1810 and within 10 years had established at Water Street, St. Johns the business of Lawrence O’Brien and Company, a wholesale and retail trading company. O’Brien owned a wharf, warehouses and a retail store, and was also the owner of several trading ships, aswell as being involved in the seal fishery.
The history of Clashmore Distillery is a brief but colourful one and indeed this establishment stood alone in this county for the best part of 170 years until the recently established Blackwater Distillery produced it’s first spirit back in 2010.
Like most other rural areas of the country at the end of The Great Famine years, the parish of Clashmore & Kinsalebeg was also experiencing the after effects of the heavy toll felt after successive potato crop failures and the latent dereliction of the very poorest in society by many of the ruling classes of the time.