Street Wise – Coosan

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

Athlone Miscellany by Gearoid O'Brien

Coosan is a townland in the Barony of Brawny but it is also loosely used to cover a large suburb of Athlone stretching from just outside the town to Lough Ree at Coosan Point. It is, more or less, a peninsula which is bordered on three sides by Lough Ree and on one side by the town of Athlone.

The area consists of over 15,000 acres and several townlands including: part of Clonbrusk, Coosan, Hillquarter and Meehan[quarter] as well as Creaghduff and Creaghduff South.

The area around the ‘Castle Gap’, the crossroads close to Coosan National School, is known as Castlequarter but this is not an actual townland. People often wonder why there are three quarters in Coosan and not four. In this case a quarter is an old term for a measure of land. In south Roscommon we have the village of Lecarrow (literally leath ceathru or half a quarter). Clonbrusk is the closest of the Coosan townlands to the town and stretches over almost 230 acres.

The townland of Coosan, contrary to what you might think, does not stretch out to Coosan Point. It is closer to town and both Coosan NS and Coosan Cemetery (St Kieran’s Cemetery) are located in this townland. Coosan Castle, a tower-house of the Ó Braoins (the O'Breens of Brawny) was in this townland. In 1854 there were 23 houses in Coosan townland. Creaghduff and Creaghduff South are north of Coosan, and Coosan Point is actually in Creaghduff townland.

Creaghduff has an area of 342 acres and at the time of Griffith’s Valuations, there were 27 houses in this townland, while Creaghduff South was the sole property of the Hon. Charles Handcock who was building Creaghduff House at the time. Hillquarter takes in much of the Lower Coosan Road from just before Shancurragh almost to the turn for the Thatch, it cover almost 400 acres. Beyond Hillquarter the next townland is Meehan which in 1854 had just 24 houses.

Coosan is one area of Athlone that has changed greatly in the course of the past century with a huge growth in housing and a consequent growth in population. Happily, several family names that appeared in Griffith’s Valuations in 1854 still survive today in the area including: Benson, Gill, Concannon, Curley, Duffy, McCormack, Mulvehy (Mulvihill), Harkins, Sweeney, Kenny and Reilly.

As part of the Field Names of Westmeath Project, co-ordinated by Dr Aengus Finnegan in conjunction with Melanie McQuade the Heritage Officer for Westmeath, it is vitally important that people with information on the field-names of Coosan report local field names to fieldnames@aengusfinnegan.ie or to Melanie McQuade (heritage@westmeathcoco.ie). Especially in an area such as Coosan field names are quickly disappearing, remember you might be one of the last surviving locals with this information!

The Coosan Ferry Disaster

Coosan Point today is a well-serviced and well-developed amenity area much appreciated by the people of Athlone. One of the nearest of the Lough Ree islands to the mainland is Hare Island which is just off Coosan Point. Straight across from Coosan Point is Killinure where Peter Quigley runs a Marina. In the 19th century there was a ferry service between Coosan Point and Killinure, this considerably shortened the journey for people coming into Athlone from Glasson and Tubberclair.

The following is a newspaper account of the Coosan Ferry Disaster of March 1845: “A ferry boat plies across an arm of the lake between the point of Coursan and Killinure. Hardly a quarter of a mile between them. Eight lost. Quigley, the owner of the boat said it was full of leaks, and that they were stopped with yellow clay, sods or scraws as they were called, and stones. Twelve people, some of them returning from market, others of them labourers and stone cutters, who had come from a distance and were strangers, boarder her. These latter worked on the point in a quarry where the Shannon Commissioners had been raising stones. When they were a little way from the shore a man by the name of Crannel hailed them and they returned to pick him up. There were eight in the stern and four in the head. Crannel was lost leaving a wife and large family. Sullivan, the last man to leave the boat was saved. Had there been an experienced boatman in charge he would have put back to the Coursan shore. Two strokes of his oars would have taken the boat on to a shoal in six feet of water.

"Two men named Hinnegan used the most praiseworthy exertions and each of them saved a man. Quigley saved his own sister and his brother saved the other woman to whom he was directed after she disappeared by some flax which escaped from her basket. Mr Maunsell and his son both on Saturday and Sunday displayed the greatest activity in recovering the bodies. A subscription list started. Moran a stone-cutter was lost. Another stone-cutter, Murphy, whose son perished with him left a daughter here and a large family in Dublin. Kelly one of the labourers has left a family of six children”.

While the ferry was discontinued, we know that in 1909 when Clonbonny NS first became a two-teacher school, a seventeen-year-old girl from Killinure, Annie Quigley, was appointed as Junior Assistant Mistress to Miss Ghent and rowed her boat on a daily basis from Killinure to Coosan Point before mounting her bicycle and cycling out to Clonbonny. Later she married John Claffey of Fardrum and settled in the area, she retired from teaching in 1960 and is still fondly remembered in Clonbonny.

St Ciaran and Coosan

In the Annals of the Four Masters under the year 1080 we learn that: “Maelseachlainn, son of Conchobhar, came into Teathbha, where he made a great prey (called the Prey of Cuasan) both of cows and prisoners, which he carried off, and persons were killed through the miracles of Ciaran, for the men of Teathbha had plundered Cluain Mic Nois, with its oratory that year”. Under the year 1155 the Annals relates the story of a raid on Clonmacnoise by the people of Breaghmhaine (Brawney) when they carried off in their boats all the swine and hogs they could find.

The monks followed them to ‘Lios an Tsioscela’, demanding restitution but got no satisfaction. The late Fr William Quinn (1891-1970), a former Administrator of St. Mary’s parish, writing in the Journal of the Ardagh and Clonmacnoise Antiquarian Society Journal concluded that “tradition, rightly or wrongly, attributes this performance to the people of Coosan”.

When St. Ciaran left Aran where he had studied under St. Enda, he went first to Scattery Island and then made his way up the Shannon until he came to “the great ford of antiquity” which was later to become Athlone. Then as he made his way northwards towards Lough Ree, he was obviously attracted to Hare Island (or Inis Ainghin) where he set up a monastery. A version of the story, from The Book of Navan, suggests that he received the Island as a gift from King Diarmuid, while a life of Ciaran in The Book of Lismore claims that “A priest named Daniel, filled with God’s grace, presented Inis Ainghin, which he owned, in perpetuity to the Almighty and St. Ciaran”.

Having spent three years and three months on Hare Island we are told that St. Ciaran went downriver to found Clonmacnoise, one of the great monasteries of ancient Ireland and somewhere which will be featured in a later episode of Street Wise Athlone.

Next week: Brawny

To read the previous articles in this series, see here