ByRoute 9.1 Co. Kildare & Co. Laois
These pages describe ByRoute 9 between Newcastle Lyons in DUBLIN and Knock & Corbally (Co. Tipperary / North)
Lyons Hill (Co. Kildare / Northeast)
Lyons Hill (Cnoch Liamhna - “Hill of the Elm”) is a western suburb of DUBLIN.
The 13th Lock on the Grand Canal (Lyons Hill / Clonaughles) is said to be haunted, perhaps by ghosts from Clonaghlis graveyard nearby.(Photo by JP)
Cnoch Liamhna was the inauguration site for the Uí Dúnchada, one of three Uí Dúnlainge septs who more or less amicably swapped the kingship of Leinster between 750 AD and 1050. The family adapted to the late C12th arrival of the Normans, and continued to wield power as the FitzDermots, although the important manor of Lewan / Leuan / Lyons passed to the Tyrrell family in the early 1200s and the Aylmer family in 1271.
Lyons Castle was mentioned in the 1332 Book of Howth, not long after it was burned by the O’Tooles. It was used as a base by Sir William Brereton in his 1535 campaign against Silken Thomas, and sacked during the 1641 Irish Rebellion by government troops, who also destroyed the village. Michael Aylmer inherited the castle and demesne at the age of four in 1733, and was forced by debt to mortgage it to Dublin bankers, who eventually foreclosed.
Lyons church (c.1350) has intricate carvings and a stone commemorating the marriage of Richard Aylmer to Eleanor Tyrrell in 1548, as well as a later Lawless family mausoleum.
Construction of the Grand Canal began in 1756. The 13th Lock (Lyons Hill / Clonaughles) opened in 1763, and Barry’s Hotel , as the nearest overnight stop to Dublin, thrived for almost a century. Records show that this lock was reduced in size in 1783, but the canal at this point is still 20ft / 6.1m wide, in accordance with the ambitious design of the first engineer, Thomas Omer, compared with the 14ft / 4.3m width adopted when John Trail took over in 1768, reducing the proposed canal capacity from 170-ton barges to 40-ton barges.
The average speed of boats on the canal was 3mph; the introduction of Fly Boats in 1834 raised it to 9mph. The number of passengers peaked at 120,615 in 1846, the year the Dublin - Cork railway line was constructed. The Dublin – Galway raiway began operations in 1850, and in 1852 the rarely profitable passenger serice on the Grand Canal ended.
Lyons House & Demesne
Lyons House was built by the Dublin banker Sir Nicholas Lawless, 1st Baronet of Abington (1776) and 1st Baron Cloncurry (1789).
Valentine Lawless, 2nd Baron Cloncurry, was impressed by the French Revolution and as a Trinity College student became an active member of the United Irishmen. Imprisoned more than once, he is said to have financed both the 1798 Rebellion and his cousin Robert Emmet’s revolt of 1803, and was to have been a member of the revolutionary Irish government. He served as chairman of the Grand Canal Company five times and envisaged its extension to the Atlantic, thus “employing 30,00 spades instead of bayonets“. He constructed the Lyons Mill (later owned by the Shackleton family) and lockyard complex.
He had the house substantially rebuilt and refurbished between 1803 and 1810 in the French Directoire style (of which there are very few examples in Ireland) with three ship loads of classical art imported from Italy, including marble portico columns from the ruins of Nero’s “Golden House” in Rome and a statue of Venus excavated at Ostia. A fourth shipment was lost when it sank off Wicklow. Walls and ceilings were decorated by Gaspare Gabrielli-
The Italian stuccoist’s scaffold-height observations of in flagrante conduct provided vital evidence in Lord Cloncurry’s spectacular 1807 Criminal Conversation proceedings against Sir John Piers of Tristernagh, who had seduced the young Lady Elizabeth (née Morgan) “for a wager“; divorce followed in1811. (The wicked baronet’s subsequently 1815 Isle of Man marriage to actress Elizabeth Denny was recognized in an important 1849 House of Lords appeal case regarding succession).
Lyons House was the birthplace and childhood home of Emily Lawless (1845 – 1913), a popular poet and author of romantic and historical novels. Valentine Lawless, 4th Baron Cloncurry died in 1928, and the titles became extinct when his brother Frederick, 5th Baron Cloncurry, committed suicide from a side window in 1929.
John Betjeman, later the British Poet Laureate, published an early poem on the notorious Piers case in 1938 (in the Westmeath Examiner under the pseudonym Epsilon) and based his Ode to a Lake on his 1958 stay at Lyons.
The property, sold in 1962 as an agricultural campus to UCD (very poor conservationists), was purchased in 1990 by Michael Smurfit, and in 1996 resold to Ryanair founder Tony Ryan (d. 2007), who undertook extensive restoration and renovation works and is buried in the graveyard by the remnants of the old Clonaghlis parish church (pre-1206) on the estate.
With the accidental burning of the mill in 1903 and the reduction of the Grand Canal’s importance, the area went into decline and the canalside buildings were allowed to fall into disrepair.
Lyons Village is the renovated former lockyard complex, revitalised with the conversion of early C19th industrial buildings into fashionable apartments and the restoration of artisan dwellings. It is now an exclusive upmarket residential community with a good restaurant, La Serre.
Lyon’s Hill is
Oughter Ard & Castlewarden (Co. Kildare / Northeast)
Oughter Ard / Oughterard (Uachtar Árd – “the upper height”) is a well-maintained hilltop complex of medieval ecclesiastical ruins overlooking the site of the Battle of Gleann Máma, where Brian Boru defeated the combined armies of the kings of Leinster and Dublin, Máel Mórda and Sitric Silkenbeard, in 999 AD.
Oughter Ard (Photo by saintinexile)
A convent was founded at Oughterard c.600 AD by Saint Briga (not to be confused with Saint Bridget). It was burned by the Norsemen of Dublin in 995 AD and a hundred years later by the Manx king Godfred Crovan. The site formed part of the territory granted by Strongbow to Adam de Hereford, who bestowed the land of ‘Wochtred’ on St Thomas’ Abbey in Dublin; a 1303 Papal taxation roll listed it as ‘Outherard’.
Oughter Ard’s Round Tower is not mentioned in any records before 1792, when the 34ft-high stump was much as it appears today.
The ruined church is now believed to date from c.1350 and not 1609, as previously thought. It is not clear when it fell into disuse. It has a partially intact vaulted ceiling and a separate staircase leading to the roof. Access to the remaining interior is through one of the windows, as both doorways are blocked by funerary monuments.
The church and cemetery contain a number of interesting tombs and memorials, including the Wolfe mausoleum (1650), where Lord Kilwarden, the Chief Justice murdered by a Dublin street mob during Robert Emmet’s abortive rebellion, was interred in 1803, the same year Arthur Guinness was buried in the Read family plot beside his maternal grandfather William, a local farmer who used to sell home-brewed ale by the roadside to troops en route to the battles in the Williamite War. Also commemorated is James Phipps, “A Captain of Insurgents” who took part in the Battle of Ovidstown in the 1798 Rebellion before moving to America, where he died in 1826. There are several graves of the Ponsonbys of Bishopscourt, and a later one dedicated to William Kennedy of the same address, who was posthumously decorated for bravery in the Battle of the Bulge during WWII.
Oughterard Castle, a rectangular tower with four floors, is set into the side of a ridge with excellent views of the Wicklow Mountains. No documentary references to this castle are known before 1636, although it is clearly older; and was probably an important Norman manor. Like most other castles in the area, it was sacked by government troops during the 1641 Irish Rebellion.
On 1st February 1815 Daniel O’Connell famously fought a duel in an adjoining field with John D’Esterre, who died as a result of his wounds.
Castlewarden formed part of the territory granted by Strongbow to Adam de Hereford, who bestowed the land on St Thomas’ Abbey in Dublin; a C13th abbot was called Warinus, and the name Castlewarden is believed to have derived from Castellum Warin. The church was vacated by the end of the C16th and disappeared sometime over the next century. The castle, in good repair until the early C17th, was burned down by government troops during the 1641 Rebellion.
The 1983 discovery by archaeologists of a flint dated to 4800-3600BC provided the earliest evidence of human habitation in the region.
Castlewarden House is now the home of Castlewarden Golf Club, whose 18-hole course encompasses an ancient rectagular enclosure, a medieval earthworks and a motte & bailey, all listed National Monuments.
Bishopscourt
Bishopscourt, a historic estate once owned by the Bishops of Kildare, passed via John Alen, Archbishop of Dublin and Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and the Butlers of Ormond to John Margetson, who died in 1690 fighting on the winning side at the Siege of Limerick. His daughter married Brabazon Ponsonby, 2nd Viscount Duncannon and later 1st Earl of Bessborough, and their descendants went on to become one of the most ennobled families in the British Isles, with members playing significant roles in Irish, British and European history.
Bishops Court House (1790), a classical Georgian country mansion, was designed by Richard Morrison for John Ponsonby, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons from 1753 to 1761, and head of one of the most powerful political dynasties in C18th Ireland. (Image - Archiseek)
Frederick Ponsonby sold the property in 1838 to John Henry Scott, 3rd Earl of Clonmell, whose sons John Henry Reginald and Henry were born locally (at Birt House, Naas); both became British army officers (Henry fought in the 1874 Ashanti War) and inherited the title in turn, but died at Bishops Court without issue.
In 1914 Bishops Court was acquired by Edward Kennedy of Baronrath, then the most famous racehorse breeder in Ireland as owner of The Tetrarch. In 1938 the house passed to his daughter Patricia Kennedy and her husband, Dermot, The McGillycuddy of the Reeks, a solicitor and manager of Punchestown Racecourse. Their son Donough lives in South Africa, where he runs The Standing Council of Irish Chiefs & Chieftains.
Bishops Court House is now home to the Farrell family.
Tipperstown was called after the local Tipper family of landlords, whose two castles were burned by government troops during the 1641 Irish Rebellion. One, Reeves (Rives) Tower House (c.1300), is still a remarkably well-preserved ruin.
Ardclough (Co. Kildare / Northeast)
Ardclough is a small village that has given its name to a large surrounding area, including Lyon’s Hill and Oughter Ard, at least for postal address purposes. The original townland of Ardclough was rendered inaccessible by the construction of the Grand Canal, which reached here in 1763.
The Ardclough Sedition Case was a cause celebre in 1917 when, as a result of complaints from Unionists, a local National School teacher was threatened with prosecution by the Dublin Castle authorities for anti-British bias in history lessons, teaching “Nationalist” poems by Emily Lawless and “seditious” songs by Thomas Davis and Peader Kearney, and expressing the hope that her pupils would grow up to fight for the Irish Republic. No proceedings were in fact initiated.
Ardclough is best known in racing circles for “the four horses of the Ardcloughalypse” – The Tetrarch (b.1911, regarded as probably the finest two year old in Irish racing history, confirmed in 1919 as the most succesful sire in the world), Captain Christy (1974 Cheltenham Gold Cup winner), Star Appeal (1975 Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe winner) and Kicking King (2005 Cheltenham Gold Cup winner).
The Grand Canal at Baronrath, with Ponsonby Bridge in the distance. (Photo by JP)
Baronrath Bridge on the Grand Canal is named for the local district of Baronrath, strongly associated historically with the Wolfe family in general and Theobald Wolfe Tone in particular.
On 22nd June 1975 Christy Phelan saved the lives of 200 people but was himself murdered by unidentified assailants when he successfully delayed the detonation of a bomb placed on the main railway line near Baronrath bridge to derail a passing Intercity train. The inconclusively investigated incident is widely thought to have been one of several “deniable” British Intelligence operations carried out in conjunction with Loyalist paramilitaries to force the Irish government to adopt strong measures against the IRA.
Whitechurch was named for the White Friars who established a monastery on the site in 1300. The townland was also known as Tullaghtipper / Tullatipper. The remains of a castle are to be found on the church grounds.
Puddlehall is a well-preserved C13th moated house, cited by UCD Professor Sean O Riordain as one of the finest examples of its kind in Ireland.
Whitechurch is close to Straffan on ByRoute 10.
Sherlockstown Common and the canalside community of Sherlockstown itself are named for the Sherlock family, who built Sherlock Castle in the C14th and five centuries later were still resident in Sherlock House, described as “a handsome modern mansion” by Lewis in 1837. They also “owned” the nearby village of Prospect.
Sallins (Co. Kildare / Northeast)
Sallins (Na Solláin -”The Willows”) (pop. 4000), a village that in recent years has expanded rapidly into a small town, is a commuter satellite community of DUBLIN. It is scenically situated on the Grand Canal, fed by the nearby River Morell, a tributary of the River Liffey. The compact harbour once bustled with boats loading and unloading for Odlums Mills, powerhouse of the local economy. The meat factory on the north bank stands on the site of an old canal hotel. A couple of local pubs serve good bar food.
Canal barges and cruisers moor in Sallins, some serving as permanent residences. (Photo - Kildare IWAI)
Sallins Railway Station
Sallins Railway Station (1848), reopened in 1994 as Sallins & Naas suburban rail station, was the scene of the Sallins Train Robbery on March 31st 1976, when about IR£200,000 was stolen from the Cork to Dublin mail train.
Four IRSP (Irish Republican Socialist Party) members were arrested; one, Nicky Kelly, jumped bail and left the country. He was tried in absentia with two of the other accused, who were convicted and jailed by the Special Criminal Court but subsequently acquitted on appeal.
Kelly returned to Ireland shortly afterwards, only to be incarcerated in the maximum-security Portlaoise prison, where he spent the next four years proclaiming his innocence, including a period on hunger strike. Walls all over the country were daubed with demands to “Free Nicky Kelly” (”in every packet of Cornflakes” was added by one wag).
He was eventually released on “humanitarian grounds” in 1984, given a presidential pardon in 1992 and paid £750,000 in compensation.
Sallins is between Naas on ByRoute 7 and Clane on ByRoute 10.
Landenstown House (1740), a smallish Palladian mansion on a sizeable estate, was built for the Digby family, a junior branch of the powerful Digbys of Geasehill (Offaly) and C18th landlords of the Aran Islands; Simon Digby MP was one of the early directors of the Grand Canal company, hence the nearby Digby Bridge. The property was bought in trust for €8.3m in 2005.
The Leinster Aqueduct, built by Richard Evans in 1783, is where the Grand Canal crosses the River Liffey. A full appreciation of the major engineering feat involved in its construction can be gained by walking through the riverside pedestrian underpass. Photo by Chris55)
The nearby Big Pot / Boolan / Skillet structure on the north side of the canal is a bizarre and complex overflow device, unique in Ireland.
Caragh / Carragh (pop. 1500) is a village on the edge of the Bog of Allen. Site of the oldest (and probably the narrowest!) bridge on the River Liffey, it is otherwise remarkable only for its huge Roman Catholic church.
Mondello Park, Ireland’s principal car and motorbike racing circuit, is located noisily nearby in Donore.
