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St. Cronan
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| Founder of Roscrea in the 7th century.
A native of the Ely O’Carroll Territory, his father’s name
was Odhran and his mother came from west Clare. Cronan went to Connacht
where he founded some monasteries, and had close associations with
Clonmacnois. Came home to a remote area called Sean Ross where he
founded another monastery. The district being secluded, travellers
lost their way trying to find the hospitable Cronan. Saddened by this
he built a new monastery on the Slighe Dála and so grew the
town of Ros Cré. His life tells that Cronan died "in a
most reverend old age in his own city of Roscrea." 28th April
is his festival day. The life of St Cronan was written in the 12th/13th
century and survives in two recensions. |
| Senator William
J. O’Brien, O.B.E. |
Born at 21 Main Street, Roscrea, the
eldest of a family of four (the others being Mary, John and Martin),
he received his early education at Roscrea Boys’ N.S. (now the
Youth Club). The principal teacher at the time was the late Edward
McGrenehan. He then went to St. Flannan’s College, Ennis until
the death of his mother at an early age.
Having served his apprenticeship to the drapery trade at Pim Bros.
George’s St., Dublin, he then returned to Roscrea where he spent
some short time in the family business before emigrating to South
Africa. Qualifying as an accountant and conveyancer he became a member
of the City Council in 1897, Mayor of Pietermaritzburgh 1903 –
1905, Chairman of Greys Hospital Board 1906 and afterwards Chairman
of Natal University College. He was a member of the Witwatersrand
Gold Mining Industry from its inception. Elected to Parliament in
1918 he became General Smuts private secretary. In 1938 he became
a Senator. The O.B.E. was awarded to him for long and distinguished
service and he was made a Freeman of Pietermaritzburgh.
He visited Roscrea many times, his last visit being in 1952. W. T.
Cosgrave was a personal friend as were other members of the Irish
Government of the day. His house was named Dunkerrin in memory of
his mother whose maiden name was Ellen Fanning of Castleroan, Dunkerrin.
He kept up regular correspondence with his sister-in-law, Mrs. Margaret
O’Brien, until her death in 1953 and then with her nephew, P.J.
Lanigan until his (Mr. O’Brien’s) death in his 100th year. |
| Henry Howley |
Henry Howley, a member of the Church
of Ireland community, was born in Roscrea about 1775. Until 1798 he
worked in the town as a carpenter but in the Rising of that year he
was wounded and permanently lamed. Sometime afterwards he met Robert
Emmet and became his co-adjutor and storekeeper. He made the pikes
for the proposed Rising of 1803 and was to have brought up the coaches
by which Emmet hoped to gain entrance to Dublin Castle. Howley stopped
to interfere in a street brawl in which Col. Browne was shot. In the
confusion which followed the insurgents fled. Robert Emmet ascribed
the failure to seize the Castle to this incident. Henry Howley was
subsequently betrayed by a fellow-workman to Major Sirr. In a scuffle
to arrest him Howley shot Hanlon, the keeper of the tower and escaped
into Pool Street but was soon captured.
He followed Emmet into the dock and was condemned to death by Special
Commission on 27th September, 1803. Saunders News Letter of 28th September,
1803, tells us that "he confessed to having killed Colonel Browne
and met his fate with fortitude." |
| Amyas Griffith |
| Amyas Griffith, a miscellaneous writer,
was born in Roscrea in 1746. At the age of 16 he published a volume
of verse and in 1771 "The Swaddler", a comedy in three acts
(printed in Clonmel). He went to Belfast in 1780, where he became
a conspicuous figure in the city’s cultural life. "Many
called him the modern Aesop because his back and both of his legs
were badly misshapen. Yet these bodily deformities always provoked
him to jesting rather than rancour." He was dismissed from his
position as Surveyor of Belfast for his opposition to the Government
candidate at Carrickfergus in 1785. His portable printing press he
used to great effect in these elections. He died in Dublin in 1801. |
| Patten Smith –
Entrepreneur |
Patten Smith was born in 1760 and married
in 1782, Mary Birch of Roscrea. He had settled here by 1793 and embarked
on extensive ventures – a service of stage wagons between Limerick
and Dublin, as well as several boats on the Grand Canal between Mountmellick
and Dublin. Vol. 1, No. 1 of the Roscrea Southern Star in 1795 tells
us that he was giving the highest value for Rape Seed!
To finance his schemes he borrowed largely from the Birches and from
his wealthy nephew, Joshua Smith. His various businesses were prospering
and as was befitting for a man of the world he lived in Damer House
at a yearly rent of £200; but 1798 and the economic disasters
which followed the Act of Union in 1800 brought about his downfall
and he was crippled financially. |
| Count Patrick
O’Byrne |
Patrick O’Byrne was the second
son of Count John O’Byrne, K.M., J.P., of Corville (Sean Ross),
and Allardstown, Co. Louth, and of Eleanor, daughter of Count Hubner,
formerly Ambassador of Austria-Hungary to the Holy See and France.
He was born in the year 1870, and in 1897 married Bernadette, daughter
of Mr. Patrick Boland, Dublin. He had one son and three daughters.
Called to the Bar at King’s Inns in 1893, Count O’Byrne
took a prominent part in the fight for independence and after the
Treaty he took the anti-Treaty side.
He was Chairman of the North Tipperary Co. Council and the North Tipperary
Board of Health, a member of many local committees and a director
of Roscrea Bacon Factory Ltd.; he was one of the pioneers of the Gaelic
League and was the second republican Envoy to the Vatican. A Knight
of Malta, the Count was also a pioneer member and a trustee of Muintir
na Tíre, and a member of the International Chamber of Irish
Commerce. After selling Corville House to the Sisters of the Sacred
Hearts of Jesus and Mary in 1931, he lived in Monkstown. He died 20th
January, 1944. |
| George Thomas,
Rajah |
Adventurer, soldier, rajah, George
Thomas can lay claim to have been the most colourful personality ever
to emigrate from Roscrea. Born in the town in 1756, he joined the
British navy at Youghal but deserted at Madras in 1781 and went to
Delhi where he was appointed commander of the Begum’s army. With
extraordinary military skill he captured and held the territory of
Hariana, an area of over 3,000 square miles and occupied to the north
by his bitter enemies, the Sikhs.
Appropriately for an Irishman, Hariana means ‘The Green Land’
and the conquest happened in 1798. The new Rajah established his headquarters
at Hansi where he coined his own rupees. He built the fort of Georgarah
which was to play a vital part in his military endeavours.
In 1802, a combination of Sikhs and French forced him to capitulate
but he was allowed to leave with the honours of war. He was returning
to Ireland and Roscrea in August of that year when, unexpectedly,
he died from a fever, aged forty-six. Our Roscrea Rajah is buried
at Bahrampur. If he had remained in Ireland might not his military
genius have put another complexion on ’98. |
| Count Walter Butler |
| Walter Butler of Ballinakill Castle,
Roscrea, became a celebrated figure in European History in the first
quarter of the 17th century. As a soldier of fortune, he entered the
German Army and served with distinction in the 30 Years’ War.
When Wallenstein’s treachery was discovered in 1632, it was Butler
who saved the Empire and arranged his execution. The Emporer, Ferdinand
11, created him a Count of the Empire, bestowed on him the domain
of the Count of Friedberg and presented him with the Imperial Gold
Chain. Count Walter Butler, of Roscrea, died at Schorndorf in 1634. |
| Dom Eugene Boylan |
|
To adapt the old saying: some people are born Roscrea, while others
have Roscrea thrust upon them. Dom Eugene Boylan belonged to the
latter category.
Kevin Boylan was born in 1904 at Bray, Co. Wicklow. His early years
were spent in Derry. (His father was a bank official). When the
family moved to Dublin, Kevin did his secondary schooling at the
famous O’Connell Schools. Feeling that he had a vocation to
the diocesan priesthood, he entered Clonliffe College; but it was
not to be. Continuing his education at U.C.D., he majored in mathematical
physics. A Rockefeller travelling scholarship took him to the University
of Vienna for three years. Returning to Dublin, he did an M.Sc.,
and was appointed a lecturer in his subject. He had a unique blend
of the theoretical and the practical. So we find him at this period
working with Professor Nolan on the ionisation of the air at Glencree
(Dublin-Wicklow border), and with Professor Dowling, providing an
automatic system for turning on the fog-horns in Dublin Bay; this
by means of a photo-electric cell which kept the horns silent until
visibility dropped below a certain distance.
A distinguished scientific career seemed to lie ahead of him until
a Jesuit colleague in U.C.D., who knew him intimately, told him
he had a vocation to "Roscrea". Roscrea, in this context,
meant Mount St. Joseph Abbey, where Brother Eugene (as he now was)
entered as a novice in 1931.
Ordained priest in 1937, he switched the thrust of his outstanding
intellectual ability to his new sphere of activity. While teaching
physics and French in the school attached to the Abbey, he began
writing on spiritual topics. In the early nineteen forties he published
two books, one on prayer, another on spiritual living. These rapidly
became international best-sellers, being translated into most of
the European languages, and even into Chinese!
He became more and more known to the people of Roscrea through his
preaching in the Abbey church, his sincere compassion for those
who came to him in the confessional, and being ever ready to help
those who sought his advice.
Once again, when his way of life seemed set, he was sent in 1953
to Australia to assess possible sites for a new monastery there.
The foundation was duly established. He was recalled from Australia
by the Abbot General of the Order and appointed superior of Caldey
Abbey, a monastery on an island off the Welsh coast which needed
a complete economic overhaul if it was to survive. By 1959 this
Abbey was on a firm financial basis, mainly due to Dom Eugene’s
development of a perfume industry there. And so, it was back to
Roscrea once more.
In 1958 and again in 1960 he undertook extensive lecture and conference
tours in the United States, visiting most of the houses of his Order
there.
In July 1962, Dom Eugene was elected fourth Abbot of Mount St. Joseph.
He seemed to have reached his true vocation. But Providence willed
otherwise. In mid-December of 1963 when travelling north to attend
the funeral of Dr. McNeeley, Bishop of Raphoe (an old family friend
from his Derry days), he had an accident in his car. Dom Eugene
died three weeks later at Roscommon County hospital on 5th January,
1964.
Physicist (he had a number of papers published by the Royal Academy);
linguist (he learned sufficient Norwegian in six weeks to give a
speech at the ordination of the Bishop of Oslo); best-selling spiritual
writer (his books, sixty years later, are still in demand); sympathetic
counsellor and director to the many who came to see him – Wicklow,
Derry, Dublin, Viuenna, Australia, Wales, America - "home"
for Dom Eugene was always Roscrea. That was the place he lived longest
of anywhere. He often remarked that his vocation was not to the
Cistercian Order, but to Roscrea. And Roscrea, town and Abbey are
proud of him.
(Fr. Raphael Legge, OCSO)
|
| Anthony Hamilton
b.1646 |
Roscrea-born author of a French classic.
(see facts on Roscrea).
The Memoirs of the Count de Grammont have been published many times
since they first appeared in 1713. Copies of the various editions
are offered from time to time on the international market. For example
the 1889 edition was described as follows:
(GRAMMONT). HAMILTON, Anthony Count. Memoirs of the Count de Grammont
Memoirs of the Count de Grammont: containg the amorous history of
the English court under the reign of Charles II..illustrated with
17 etchings and 34 portraits....edited by Henry Vizetelly. London:
Vizetelly & Co. 1889 4 vols. large 8vo. Contemporary full brown
morocco. In addition to the published illustrations (51), this set
extra illustrated with a further 202 (of an original 211) engraved
illustrations (mostly portraits etc.) plus one ms. Exchequer Order
dated 1700 and signed by Sir Stephen Fox et al. Extremities lightly
rubbed. A very good set. Book # F20493 £ 250.00 (approx. 409.72
American Dollars). |
| Dan Lowrey, Music
Hall Entrepreneur |
Dan Lowrey was born in 1823. His father
worked as a weaver in Buckley’s woollen mills in Hillsborough.
These mills were forced to close down in 1829 and the Lowreys emigrated
to Leeds. Dan trained as a dyer, married at the age of 17 and by the
time he was in his early thirties was the owner of a tavern cum music
hall. In 1878 he bought Crampton Court, off Dame Street and opened
it in 1879 as Dan Lowrey’s Star of Erin Music Hall: ‘this
hall which is the brightest and airiest place of entertainment in
Dublin, is well deserving of a visit’. It became Dublin’s
most famous music hall in the last decades of the nineteenth century.
Dan Lowrey died at the age of 66 in 1889 and is buried in Glasnevin
cemetery. His Star of Erin Music Hall had its final curtain call in
1897. |
| Bishop Willie
Walsh |
Dr Willie Walsh, a native of Camblin,
Roscrea was ordained to the episcopate as bishop of Killaloe on October
2nd in Ennis.
The booklet for the Episcopal consecration provided the following
short biography of the new bishop:
‘William Walsh was born on the 16th January 1935, at Glenbeha,
Roscrea, Co. Tipperary, the youngest child of the late William and
Ellen Walsh. Educated at Corville National School, Roscrea BNS and
St. Flannan’s College, Ennis, he studied for the priesthood at
St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth and the Irish College, Rome where
he was ordained priest in Rome in 1959.
After ordination he completed his studies in canon law at the Lateran
University in Rome. On his return to Ireland he taught for a year
at Coláiste Einde, Galway and joined the staff of St. Flannan’s
College, Ennis in 1963 where he taught mathematics, science and religion.
He was Vice-President of the college for a short time in the late
1980’s. In 1988 he was appointed to serve as curate at Ennis
Cathedral and became administrator there in 1990. He has been pastorally
involved with the Catholic marriage Advisory Council since its foundation
in the Killaloe diocese and has worked with Marriage Tribunals at
diocesan, regional and national levels.
Dr Walsh has pursued a life-long interest in sport and has been involved
in coaching hurling teams at colleges, club and county grades.’ |
| Major General
James J. Quinn |
Jimmy Quinn was born in the Market
House (now Phelans), Main Street, Roscrea on the 16th September 1918,
the son of Mary Agnes and Dick who carried on the family retail and
public house business there. He was educated at the local BNS before
moving to Castleiney and Templemore CBS. By 1932 he was attending
O’Connell School, North Richmond Street, Dublin.
He joined the Defence Forces as a cadet in September 1938 and was
commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant on the 23rd October 1939, just before
the outbreak of World War Two, and served in various infantry battalions
until the end of the Emergency. After two appointments on Staffs,
he went to the Staff College at Camberley in England, and after graduating
from there, served for many years as an instructor in the Military
College, Curragh. A Colonel by 1959, he successively commanded the
6th Brigade, was the Defence Forces’ Director of Training and
the Officer Commanding the Curragh Camp, from 1968 to 1972 when he
became Commanding Officer of the Eastern Command. In July 1976 he
became Assistant Chief of Staff, and in December of the same year
he was promoted to Major General when he was appointed Commander of
the UN Defence Forces in Cyprus.
Colonel Quinn had served in the Congo in 1961/62 as Acting Chief of
Staff to Military Operations and in Cyprus in 1964 as Military Adviser
to the Force Commander.
The Cyprus appointment (1976-1981) was a prime responsibility for
the establishment and maintenance of peace between the Turkish Cypriot
and the Greek Cypriot groups on the island. At that time the international
United Nations force there consisted of almost 3,000 personnel, representing
22 nationalities. For his outstanding contribution to the peace-keeping
activities General Quinn was presented with a prestigious ‘People
of the Year Award’ in 1980, the citation reading that his high
degree of ‘professionalism, dedication and integrity’ contributed
significantly to the gradual return of peace in Cyprus. On his return
from active service on the island in 1981, he was awarded the Distinguished
Service Medal (first class) by the then Minister for Defence, Mr Tully,
at a ceremony in McKee Barracks in October 1981, for ‘carrying
out the difficult responsibilities entrusted to him with commendable
skill, courage, resourcefulness and dedication; for gaining the trust,
confidence and respect of all parties interested or involved in the
Cyprus problem, thereby permitting the effective fulfilment of the
mandate for the force and contributing generally to world peace.’
Major General Quinn retired from the Army in 1982, but died following
a short illness in June of the same year. He was buried with full
military honours in the family grave in St Cronan’s cemetery,
where the Quinns have been interred since 1848, in his native Roscrea,
an unique occasion in the history of the town. The entire General
Staff, led by the Chief of Staff, Lt. General Louis Hogan, attended
the funeral Mass.
Afterwards General Hogan in a tribute to James Quinn said that he
had known him for over forty years and had soldiered with him for
twenty. He said that he regarded him, ‘ as one of the outstanding
soldiers and a good leader both at home and abroad. His contribution
to our Defence Forces was immense.’
General Quinn is survived by his wife Mary who, with her niece,Grace
came to Roscrea in July 2001 for a ceremony in his honour. .
Roscrea Heritage Society, in association with Roscrea People was very
proud to have had the opportunity to honour one of the town’s
most distinguished men, by presenting a collection of military books
to the Library of the Irish Defence Forces, as a memorial to him,
Major General James J. Quinn. Further additions were added to this
collection in 2002. |
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