Street Wise Athlone - Abbey Road

This series of articles for the Westmeath Independent was run in conjunction with the Street Wise Athlone series on Athlone Community Radio

Athlone Miscellany with Gearoid O'Brien

Abbey Road is so named after the Franciscan abbey which also gives its name to the Abbey Graveyard. The Franciscans have been in Athlone since about 1235, while there is no clear evidence as to where the first Franciscan friary was located, tradition suggests it was in Northgate Street. The friars suffered many vicissitudes over the years. During the Confederate Wars they had to go into hiding but by 1680s they were looking forward, hopefully, to a new sense of freedom. An extensive new church and convent was under construction at Abbey Road. However, this too was a turbulent time in Irish history, the Williamite and Jacobite wars intervened and Athlone witnessed successive sieges in 1690 and 1691. The unfinished friary which had been abandoned at that time was destined to remain unfinished. The Banishment Act of 1697 saw the friars go into exile again. Some may have found themselves in Paris while others went into hiding locally.

After a period of lying low the Franciscans set about building a new church, on the site of their present church c1812. Thus, the Church on Abbey Road was abandoned entirely but the Abbey graveyard continued as the main graveyard for Athlone until the 1870s. There is fairly convincing evidence that the Abbey Graveyard was the site of an unrecorded early Christian settlement and that this may have been what attracted the Franciscans to it in the late 17th Century.

It is not quite clear when the name Abbey Road came into use but it is not identified as such on either the first Ordnance Survey map of 1838 or on the 1874 revised map. It took on a new significance in the opening decade of the 20th century with the building of St. Kieran’s Terrace with the consequent increase in traffic.

Abbey House

Beside the Abbey graveyard is Abbey House, a rather stark late Victorian house in a beautiful riverine setting. It was built by the Gleesons who owned the nearby Woollen Mills in Northgate Street. However, the enduring fame of Abbey House may well be as the home of Phyllis Kelly, daughter of a local solicitor, who lived in the house in the early 20th C. The family lived in King Street in 1901 but by 1911 had moved to Abbey House. In 1915 Phyllis Kelly met and fell in love with a young British officer, Eric Appleby, who was serving in the Barracks in Athlone. Eric’s letters to Phyllis are the subject of a wonderful book (and radio documentaries) – the book called ‘Love Letters from the Front’ was edited by the late Jean Kelly. It is available as a ‘Documentary on One’ from RTE and as a podcast from BBC Radio Ulster.

The Abbey Graveyard

Based on cartographic evidence, and the evidence of four Early Christian cross-inscribed slabs, found in the Abbey Graveyard (pictured) the Urban Archaeological Survey of County Westmeath, an unpublished report from 1985 prepared by John Bradley, Andy Halpin and Heather King suggests that the present Abbey Graveyard “almost certainly lies on the site of a pre-Norman church, whose existence is attested by the discovery of early grave slabs and traces of an enclosure. This is to be seen on the south side, where it is delimited by the lane at the south end of the graveyard, Abbey Road and the back of the houses in Lucas Lane”.

We know that the Franciscans commenced building the present (unfinished) church in the 1680s but what we don’t know was whether this had also been the site of their earliest church in Athlone. In 1815 the graveyard was enclosed by a stone wall which was paid for by public subscription according to a stone plaque incorporated into the wall of the mortuary chapel. Obviously, this work was undertaken in response to the criticism of James Hall who published a two-volume book “Tour through Ireland” in 1813 and complained about the state of things:

“Who, for instance, would think that at Athlone which contains about 4,000 inhabitants, there should be scarcely any fence about the place where they bury their dead. They who doubt this have only to come to Athlone and witness the fact. There being no fence between the burying ground and the road by the riverside, at Athlone. I observed a variety of human bones partly ground down by cart-wheels etc., and in the churchyard itself, numbers completely uncovered. Hence it is no uncommon thing to see boys, nay sometimes even girls, throwing human skulls at one another, by way of amusement. To see pigs, cows, horses, asses and all kinds of animals grazing in it at the same time, is no uncommon thing. I myself saw some of the cloven-footed tribe feeding in it unmolested. Thus, from my view of the church-yard of Athlone, I was led to conclude, like many of their brethren, that the inhabitants are not too religious”.

The Franciscan scholar, Fr Patrick Conlan, writing in 1987 said: “A person leaving Athlone by the North Gate about the year 1860 would go along a muddy track for about thirty or forty paces, crossing over a little stream, before coming up to dry ground where the road divided. On the right he could take the road to Coosan while the path on the left lead along the callows. Today the road system is still the same – at the end of Northgate Street one turns right for Coosan or left along Abbey Road – but the stream and marsh have vanished under the Council Yard and Athlone Apparel Co Ltd. Drawings of the North Gate done early in the last century [the 19th C] show a harbour on this latter site”.

The grave-slabs form part of the exhibition in Athlone Castle, one of them almost certainly commemorates Ailill Ua Dunchado, a king of Connacht, who died in 764. Another, known as the Evangelist Stone, has been described as the most exciting piece of stone carving from the Early Irish period outside of the high crosses.

The inscriptions on the surviving headstones are largely eighteenth and nineteenth century in date – many surnames still common in Athlone today are to be found there. A stroll through the graveyard reading the inscriptions can be a very rewarding way to pass time.

The proximity of Athlone Workhouse to Abbey Road resulted in the field beside the Abbey being used for mass burials during the cholera epidemic during Famine times. The field, like many other emergency Famine graveyards became known simply as The Cholera Field.

St Kieran’s Terrace

The building of St Kieran’s Terrace was the impetus for the development of Abbey Road which up until then had been little more than a country road. The chairman of Athlone Urban District Council, Mr Michael Hughes, laid the foundation stone on the 28th August 1905 and the building contractor for Phase 1 was Mr Joseph Concannon of Coosan. The first houses were ready for occupation by the Autumn of 1907. Mr Concannon employed almost fifty people on this project. These included eight masons, thirty-four men including carpenters, plasterers and general labourers and four carters.

The minutes of the monthly meeting of Athlone UDC in September 1907 records the names of those who were allotted houses numbers 1 -14 – for the record they were: No 1, John Dowling, No 2, John Gorman, No 3, Edward Gallagher, No 4, William Verdon, No 5, John Brady, No 6, John Gaffey, No 7, Michael Connor, No 8, Margaret Scally, No 9, Marie Kilroy, No 10, John Fox, No 11, John Tighe, No 12, William Farrell, No 13, John Pillion and No 14, Mrs Dunican.

Next article: Assumption Road

For previous articles in this series, see here