Ardclough

Location

Ardclough is located at 53°17′53″N 6°34′07″W. just below two detached foothills of the Wicklow Mountains, Lyons Hill and Oughterard on some of the most fertile soils in Ireland. The River Liffey passes within a one kilometre radius. The main transport arteries to the south and south west of Ireland pass through, the main railway line to Cork and Tralee, the canal to Shannonbridge, and the N7 which passes nearby.

While the original townland of Ardclough was situated west of the canal in land that is now inaccessible, and contained the site on the opposite bank of the canal of the original (1810) parish church of Lyons and a group of quarries there, the place now referred to Ardclough approximates more closely to the townlands of Tipperstown and Wheatfield, where housing was built in 1876 and 1989. The development of 54 houses on a nearby site was proposed, but has yet to begin. Construction on a new 16-classroom national school began near the original site of Tipperstown House in January 2011. A new graveyard is also planned on a site south east of the current centre of the village.

Geology

The soil is principally a rich loam, varying from 10 to 16 inches (410 mm) in depth, and resting on a hard and compact substratum of floetz limestone. The water table is unusually high. The low group of nearby hills, which includes Lyons and Oughterard in Co Kildare and Windmill Hill, Athgoe, and Rusty Hill in Co Dublin, are composed of clay-slate, grauwacke, grauwaeke-slate, and granite. The grauwacke consists of small and finely rounded and angular grains of quartz, numerous minute scales of mica, small fragments of clay-slate, and sometimes portions of felspar. The grauwacke consists of small and finely rounded and angular grains of quartz, numerous minute scales of mica, small fragments of clay-slate, and sometimes portions of felspar and red sandstone.

Etymology

The name was first recorded as 'Aclagh' on Alexander Taylor's 1783 map. It was the site of the masshouse (later old Ardclough church), school and the three largest of seven local quarries, on the opposite bank of the canal. From 1837 onward it was recorded as 'Ardclogh' and later 'Ardclough'. The name likely comes from Ard Cloch, meaning "high stone or stone building".

Habitat

The area provides a combination of hill, wood and water habitats. More than 35 species of birds have been identified and coarse fishing for pike, perch, roach and rudd is popular along the canal bank.

Royal site

The earliest evidence of human habitation at Ardclough was the discovery of a flint dated to 4800–3600BC, at Castlewarden below Oughter Ard Hill, rare for a dry-land location from the time. Lyons Hill was the inauguration site and base for 10 Uí Dúnchada kings of Leinster. The Battle of Glen Mama, where Brian Boru defeated Máel Mórda king of Leinster and Sitric Silkbeard King of Dublin in 999, is believed to have taken place on the Dublin side of Oughterard Hill. The area was accorded its own place-legend in the Dindsenchas, Liamuin. Lyons (53°17′52″N 6°32′50″W.) subsequently became home to the Aylmer, Tyrrell and Lawless families.

Historic buildings

There are five medieval churches and three castles in the area. Most important is Oughter Ard (53°16′40″N 6°33′55″W), a seventh-century monastery associated with saints Briga (feast day January 21) and Derchairthinn (feast day March 8) and site of a round tower. Recent research has estimated that the ruined church there dates to 1350, not 1609 as previously believed. It was the site of a Royal Manor. Whitechurch (53°17′15″N 6°36′14″W), (Ecclesia Alba, named for the Carmelite order) was granted 1320, and enfifed in 1508. A single headstone is the only reminder of the church of Castledillon (53°18′30″N 6°35′22″W), (1000), once a parish of its own. The graveyard beside another disappeared church at Clonaghlis (53°17′59″N 6°33′14″W), (pre 1206) is still in use and is associated with female saints Fedhlim and Mughain. Castlewarden (c1200) church (53°15′57″N 6°32′42″W.) has disappeared.

A mass house built below Oughter Ard hill in 1714 became the site of the first modern Catholic church in 1810 and a school in 1839. Lyons parish was united with Oughterard in 1541 and with Kill in 1693. The centre of the parish moved to Kill in 1823. The former Lyons parish church (built 1810, refurbished 1896) was deconsecrated in 1985 and is now a private house. It was replaced by new church in Tipperstown, designed by Paul O'Daly. A marble font, brought from Rome by Valentine Lawless and presented to the church, was removed to Lyons House (53°17′52″N 6°32′50″W.) for safe keeping but remains the property of the parish.

A well-preserved moated site at Puddlehall (53°17′26″N 6°36′04″W), dates to the 13th century and was cited by University College Dublin Professor Sean O Riordain as one of the finest examples of a moated house in Ireland. Lyons (53°17′51″N 6°32′08″W.), Reeves (53°18′28″N 6°34′01″W.) and Oughter Ard tower houses date to the 14th century. The large houses of Bishopscourt (53°15′54″N 6°34′42″W.) (constructed 1790) and Lyons (53°17′52″N 6°32′50″W.) (constructed 1804-10) provided an economic focus of the community in the 19th century, as did the Grand Canal (reached Ardclough 1763) in the vicinity of the 13th lock.

Grand canal

When work on the Grand Canal begun in 1756 Ardclough’s was one of the first sections to be dug. The canal reached Ardclough in 1763, when the 13th lock, a 137 feet (42 m) double lock built with Pozzuolona mortar, was opened, following to the ambitious design of the canal’s original engineer, Thomas Omer. After Omer's plans proved too expensive a new engineer, John Trail, took over construction of the canal in 1768, the proposed canal capacity was reduced from 170 ton barges to 40 ton barges. Canal records show that “ Lyons or Clonaughles lock” was reduced in size in 1783, but the canal through the thirteenth lock serves as a reminder of Omer’s original plan, 20 feet (6.1 m) wide, compared with the 14 feet (4.3 m) width adopted by Trail.

Ardclough Bridge was named in original plans for the Bruton family of Clonaghlis but constructed with a name plate bearing the name of the Henry family of Straffan. From 1777 a local river, the Morrel was proposed as water feeder for the canal, construction resumed and the first passenger boats were towed to Sallins in February 1779.

Local landowner The 2nd Baron Cloncurry was a canal enthusiast, constructing the Lyons mill and lockyard village complex in the 1820s and serving as chairman of the Grand Canal Company five times during his lifetime. The canal was an important, if slow, passenger thoroughfare feeding passenger’s to John Barry’s hotel at Lyons. When in 1834 Flyboats increased the average speed for passenger boats from 3 mph (4.8 km/h) to 9 mph (14 km/h) Ireland’s first railway was already under construction.

The canal peaked at 120,615 passengers in 1846, the year construction started on the Dublin-Cork railway line. When a Dublin-Galway railway line was opened in 1850 the closure of the rarely profitable passenger service followed in 1852. Cargo traffic continued to use the canal for another 108 years, peaking at 379.045 tons in 1865 when an average of 90 barges a day passed through Ardclough. The canal was motorised 1911–24 and closed to cargo in 1960, but is still a popular thoroughfare for leisure boats. The tracks of the ropes of the horse drawn barges can still be traced at Ardclough canal bridge. A folk belief prevailed that the canal was haunted at the thirteenth lock because it had been dug through a graveyard, a possible reference to nearby Clonaghlis graveyard.

Notable events

The Great Southern & Western Railway (constructed 1844) and Straffan Station (used until 1947) opened communications to Dublin for cattle and horse dealers. A railway accident on October 5, 1853, the third worst in Irish rail history, killed 18 people including four children in the townland of Clownings. It occurred in heavy fog when a goods train ran into the back of a stalled passenger train at a point 974 yards south of the former Straffan Station. The goods train smashed the first class carriage, which was driven a quarter of a mile through station. The tragedy was the subject of a poem by Donegal-born poet William Allingham. It was the third worst accident in rail history to that date.

In the Ardclough Sedition Case in October 1917, Nora J Murray, a nationalist poet and writer, the headmistress of Ardclough National School was accused by local Irish Unionist Bertram Hugh Barton of 'sedition in time of war' under the Defence of the Realm Act. He complained about her teaching of Irish history, illegal at the time. in a complaint made in the name of one of Barton's tenants, Kathleen Bourke, an activist in the Women's Unionist Association. After a local defence fund was mounted by the INTO and the local community, the charged was not pursued by the Dublin Castle regime but Murray she was forced out of the area and the house where she lodged was later burned by the British Army.

The Barnewell homestead at Lyons was the headquarters of anti-treaty forces in north Kildare during the Irish Civil War. On June 22, 1975 Whitechurch resident Christy Phelan was killed when he engaged a group of men planting a bomb on the railway line near Baronrath. The bomb was designed to derail the train headed for the Republican Wolfe Tone commemoration at Bodenstown. His selfless intervention prevented greater loss of life. This is one of a number of British undercover operations carried out against civilian targets in the Republic during the Troubles, currently under investigation by the Barron Commission.

The biggest train robbery to date in the history of Ireland took place at Kearneystown on March 31, 1976 when £150,000 was taken from the Dublin-Cork mail train.

Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847) fought a duel with John d’Esterre at Oughterard in 1815 (February 1).

Economy

Limestone quarries (sinkhole recorded 1804) made Ardclough townland located at 53°17′33″N 6°34′23″W. on the canal bank the focus of economic activity from the 1800s until the death of owner Patrick Sullivan in 1879 (peak activity 1850s). This townland was also chosen as the location for Lyons parish church (1811) and St Anne's National School (1834). Boston Lime Company reduced the price to six shillings per load in 1875 but a footnote in the 1891 census returns attributes the decline in population from 75 to 21 in Ardclough townland to the closure of quarries. Stone was brought by light railway to the nearby quays and by canal barge to Sullivan’s lime kiln. Ardclough limestone used on construction of Naas jail and hospital. The census reports of the mid-19th century indicate how the small townland of Ardclough came to give its name to the adjoining district, but by 1901 there were only six people living there.

A cluster of warehouses and workshops at Lyons lockyard village located on the canal at 53°17′58″N 6°33′25″W. was largely constructed in the 1820s, featuring a mill (leased to William Palmer 1839 and Joseph Shackleton, second cousin of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, 1853, converted to roller mill 1887), hotel (leased by Patrick Barry 1840-60), police station (active 1820-73 ) and boatyard. This complex employed over 100 people at their peak but declined when the focus shifted away from the canal, the decline in fortunes of the Lawless family and most dramatically as a consequence of the accidental burning of the mill in 1903. In September 2006 the buildings were restored as themed residences and a restaurant.

Ardclough Relocates

When the GAA club (1936), community hall (1940, reconstructed 2004) and school (1950) were built on a crossroads beneath Henry Bridge located at 53°17′53″N 6°51′39″W. it shifted the focus of the community to a site in Tipperstown, which is regarded as the modern Ardclough. The population was boosted by houses built at Wheatfield (1940), Boston Hill (1949–51) and Tipperstown (Wheatfield Estate 1976, Lishandra Estate 1989). A new Catholic church designed by Paul O’Daly was sited nearby in 1985.

GAA

Ardclough GAA (community associated with Hazlehatch Irish Harpers 1887-8, active as Ardclough 1924-5, refounded 1936) is the smallest community to win a Kildare County Senior Football Championship, defeating an Army team that featured All Ireland and inter-provincial players in the replayed final of 1949. The hurling club was founded in 1948. One of the most successful in Kildare, it has won 12 Kildare County Senior Hurling Championships - in 1968, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1985, 2004, and 2006. In 2006 they went on to become Leinster Intermediate club champions, losing to the eventual All Ireland champions in extra time in the quarter final, and were awarded Kildare GAA club of the year. Five Ardclough players were selected on the Kildare hurling team of the millennium: Richie Cullen, Tommy Christian, Bobby Burke, Johnny Walsh and Mick Dwane. The 2008 Kildare senior hurling panel included six Ardclough players.

Ardclough Camogie club (founded 1962 by Mick Houlihan, revived 1983 by Phyllis Finneran) won a Kildare senior championship in 1968. Bridget Cushen was selected on the Kildare camogie team of the century.

Equestrianism

Notable Ardclough horses in both flat and national hunt (once described as "the four horses of the Ardcloughalypse") include The Tetrarch (1911, regarded as probably the finest two-year-old in Irish racing history), Captain Christy (winner Cheltenham Gold Cup, 1974), Star Appeal (winner of the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, 1975) and Kicking King (winner Cheltenham Gold Cup, 2005). Horse breeder Edward Cub Kennedy came from Baronrath, while father-and-son trainers Pat Taaffe and Tom Taaffe came from Alasty. As a jockey Pat Taaffe (1930–92) rode two winners of the English Grand National, Quare Times in 1955 and Gay Trip in 1970 and was Irish National Hunt champion six times.

Other sports

David Ritchie who lived at Oughterard laid out Ireland's first golf course. Ardclough had a soccer club briefly in 1941-3. Basil Phipps launched his motorcycle racing career in 1947 and hosted a number of racing events at his home in Clonaghlis. Fionn Carr was top try-scorer for Connacht during the Magners League 2008/09 campaign and later signed for Leinster.

Clubs

Ardclough had a brass band which performed at Bodenstown in 1914 and at the 1949 Kildare County Senior Football final. There was a branch of the LDF/FCA (8 November 1941), Fianna Fáil (1931), Labour (1943), Fine Gael (1943) and Macra na Feirme (1955). There are active branches of the Irish Countrywomen's Association (active 1941-42 and revived 1974, with Maura Costello (1924-2011) as Chairwoman) and Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (branch established in 1966 with Paddy Corry (1916-1971) as Chairman).

Old School Project

With the completion and anticipated opening of a new primary school at Tipperstown, the community plans to take in hand the old school and conserve its place at the heart of the community as a public use facility.

Lived in Ardclough

Born in Ardclough

Buried in Ardclough