Streetwise: Athlone’s Market Square

This series of articles for the Westmeath Independent is run in conjunction with the Street Wise Athlone series on Athlone Community Radio which is broadcast on Wednesdays during Athlone Today at 2.30pm and repeated on Thursday mornings at 10am on The Brekkie Show

Athlone Miscellany by Gearoid O'Brien

Athlone has been a market town from the time of the Normans at least. According to the ‘Calendar of Documents relating to Ireland, 1171-1251’, Athlone was granted permission to hold an annual eight-day fair in 1221 starting on Ascension Day. From 1227 there is also a mention of markets.

Dr Harman Murtagh summarises it very well in his Athlone fascicle of the Irish Historic Towns Atlas, an invaluable companion for any local historian – I must say my copy gets consulted several times a week. Here we learn that under the Charter of 1606 Athlone was granted two annual three-day fairs, starting on Ascension Day and St Bartholomew’s Day (24 August). In 1619 the January fair was granted – a three-day fair starting on the Monday after the epiphany. This January fair survived until comparatively recent times. By the 1830s Lewis’s Topographic Dictionary was referring to four annual three-day fairs. When I was a child school children got a day off for the January Fair.

A lease was granted to John Rawson in 1566, of a plot of land, in what is now Custume Place, to build a Tholsel or Market House, which survived until the late 1830s. Athlone had a wide variety of market places but for the purposes of this article I will be concentrating on The Market Square, which is sometimes now referred to as St Peter’s Square. A weekly market, held on Saturdays, was licensed in Athlone in 1619 and continues, albeit in a very reduced fashion until the present day which shows 400 years of tradition.

The Market Square

When the Shannon Navigation works were completed in 1844 there were several significant changes to the town and one of these was the need to relocate the market place from behind the castle in Main Street to the present Market Square. Prior to the building of the present bridge the Market House was located in what is now called Custume Place and the traffic which crossed the old bridge (which ran from Bridge Street across to Main Street) passed the markets which were then located in what is now a car-park behind the Castle.

The Square we now know as the Market Square was located in a quiet back-water until such time as the present bridge was built. It was variously known as The Parade or the Old Parade and was presumably used as such by troops in the nearby military barracks. Of course, until the 1930s and the building of the Church of Ss Peter & Paul, the wall of the military barracks stretched from the present Garda Barracks right down to the junction with Elliott Road (the Accommodation Road) and the main entrance gate to the military barracks was where the gate to the Post Office yard is today.

Until the mid-nineteenth century a row of houses, known as Parade Street swept around by the castle down to the river while there were another 16 or so houses with their back yards ending at the curtain wall of the castle. Indeed, there are some early accounts of residents burrowing into the walls of the castle to make ‘coal holes.’ It is difficult for us to comprehend just how much things have changed in the vicinity of the castle. From the evidence of 18th Century leases etc we know that there were malt-houses, tan-yards, bark stores, a bark-kiln and mill as well a proliferation of small houses and cabins in this area. Some houses had stables attached and at least one had a small cow-house another mentions the landlord “reserving free passage for a barrow from the back door of William Clark’s new dwelling house to the Shannon”.

Fr John Conmee’s Description

Fr J.S. Conmee S.J. (1847-1910) is best remembered today for his appearances in the works of James Joyce as the kindly rector of Clongowes Wood. Fr Conmee was a native of Glanduff, Kiltoom, and the author of a charming pamphlet, first published by the Catholic Truth Society of Ireland, in 1900. The pamphlet entitled ‘Old Times in the Barony’ deals with the Barony of Athlone which extends some seven miles into south Roscommon and to the changes in the lives of the simple peasants in the latter half of the 19th century.

His observation of the ‘vehicular procession that wended its easy going way to [the market in] Luainford” is priceless, ‘Luainford’ being Conmee’s lightly veiled version of Athlone:

“What a display of ‘dray’ and ‘kish’ and ‘crate’ – those rustic argosies freighted with the simple merchandise of the homestead and the field. Sometimes it would be a farmer seated with praise-worthy self-denial on the narrow shaft of his cart, hard by the horse’s tail, who drove along a high crate, which was little less than a menagerie of domestic livestock. Over the top would leer the loutish visage and lolling tongue of a calf – through the bars would peer the bewildered face of a sheep – while a substratum of little pigs – ‘bonnuvs’ in the local speech – would make their presence known by squealing protests against the joltings of the road which huddled them so unceremoniously together. Or again, it would be the open dray, in the midst of which Barny would recognise the good woman of the household, wrapped in an ample cloak, and surrounded by the fruits of many a month of patient industry – the neatly covered crocks of butter, the different baskets that contained the barn-door fowl in every stage of development, from the new laid egg to the ‘clockin’ hen – the produce of the spinning wheel and the knitting needle – and certain verdant bundles of cabbage ‘plants’ for the growth of which the Barony enjoyed a distinguished reputation among horticultural cognoscenti even as far as Banagher and Mullingar”.

My Memories of the Markets

As a child in the 1960s I have great memories of the busy markets which were held in the Square on a Saturday when everything from kid goats to live eels, and from eggs to potatoes and vegetables were offered for sale. One of my favourite stalls was Rae’s Nursery – Mr Ray used drive down his van from Mulhuddert, County Dublin, with a wide range of bedding plants. I often bought Bachelors Buttons or Sweet-Williams or Petunias from him and being young and enthusiastic he would always throw a few extra in for good measure. I used to be fascinated by the range of colours – the scarlet Salvias, the orange Marigolds, the blue Lobelias.

The farmers, many of them from south Roscommon, sold their vegetables from the boots of their cars. The range of vegetables was limited to the Irish staples – carrots and parsnips, cabbage, onions and swede turnips being the most plentiful. Potatoes were generally unwashed and Golden Wonders and Kerr’s Pinks seemed to be the varieties of choice for most housewives.

I remember the turkeys being sold live in the Square in the days before Christmas, and at any time of the year chickens and ducks would be offered for sale. I also have memories of kid-goats being offered for sale and live eels in vats beside the old public toilets. In the late afternoon when the market was over the Square would always be strewn with the outer leaves of cabbages and the general detritus of a good day’s business.

Next week: Main Street.

THE FIRST ARTICLE IN THIS SERIES CAN BE READ HERE