Street Wise Athlone – Ballymahon Road

Athlone Miscellany with Gearoid O'Brien

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

The Ballymahon Road is shown on the first Ordnance Survey map of 1838 but it is unnamed, however, by the time of the next OS map in 1874 it is designated as the Ballymahon Road. For our purposes it stretches from the top of Gleeson Street to the junction with the road to Cornamagh, but, of course, it actually goes on to Ballymahon via Glasson and Tang!

In the Historic Towns Atlas of Athlone, Dr Harman Murtagh, divides this road into Ballymahon Road (south) and Ballymahon Road (north) and I think that division is quite useful. I will deal first with Ballymahon Road (south) – say from Gleeson Street to Roslevin. Gleeson Street is the short street, linking Garden Vale to Mardyke Street. The two most significant buildings on it today are the Sheraton Hotel and the Marist Brothers' residence now called Champagnet House. Champagnet House incorporates a two-storey Georgian House once owned by the Meecham family, which was originally called Hill House. In 1863 Dr Edward Gleeson, founder of Athlone Woollen Mills lived here, he later moved to Harmony Hall in Benown, Glasson. By the time that the OS map of 1874 was produced the street was already named Gleeson Street in his honour, but apparently it was not until 1935 that they put up a street sign identifying it as Gleeson Street. The Marist Brothers were invited to Athlone by Bishop Bartholmew Woodlock and he acquired Hill House and its extensive gardens which stretched back to St Mary’s Church, which itself was built on an orchard on Meecham’s land. The Marist Brothers built their schools on St Mary’s Place and they later leased Hill House in Gleeson Street, to Francis and Rose Cox who ran it as Cox’s Hotel until they retired in the 1930s. When the Marist Brothers took back the house, they added a third storey and extended the original building.

The Coming of the Railway

Two significant features on the Ballymahon Road were related to the coming of the railways. One is the railway bridge which crosses over road close to Roslevin and the other was the crossing, officially known as ‘The Mooring’s Crossing’ but locally referred to as ‘The Whitegates’.

The railway bridge which crosses the Ballymahon Road was obviously completed by 1859 as the Great Southern & Western Railway Station was opened that autumn. The station operated until 1927 when it was closed to passenger services and designated as a goods station for Athlone. However, it was re-opened in January 1985 with the closure of the old Midland Great Western Railway Station on the Connaught side of town.

The earliest reference I could find to the Moorings level crossing was in a brief account of a court case in The Westmeath Independent in September 1851, the year the Midland Great Western line was extended from Athlone to Galway. “Mr W. Kelly, appeared on the part of the MGWR Company, whose caretaker of the gates which cross the Ballymahon Road near the town, preferred a complaint against three men for obstructing him in the execution of his duty – and also committing an assault. The complainant stated that he refused to open the gate for the horse and cart of the defendants as the train was coming along the line, whereupon they pushed open the gates, and assaulted him when he tried to prevent them. The Bench inflicted the penalty of 4s fine upon each of the defendants, or in default of payment, one month’s imprisonment”.

Originally there was a gate-keeper’s lodge at this crossing but as a child I remember the gate-keeper, Mr Fox, in his little shed just inside the white-gates. As we walked to school in the Fairgreen we were often stopped at the gates waiting for a train to go through. My early schooldays were just at the transition point between the steam trains and the new diesel engines. We loved to see and hear the steam train which we referred to as the Puffing Billy, but little did we know then that it got its name from the first steam locomotive to run on rails, this went into service in a colliery in Northumberland in 1813. It was built by William Hedley and was nick-named Puffing Billy in his honour.

Oldcourt or Roslevin

Between the railway bridge and the Mooring’s level crossing when I was a child was the large gateway into what was then Roslevin School but originally the grounds of Oldcourt,

once the home of the Potts family, an important land-owning family in this area. Oldcourt stood on about ten acres of land and was enclosed by a high wall. The original lodge to Oldcourt, now called ‘Lilliput’ overlooked the entrance gate.

Life In A Big House

A wonderful memoir by William Magan, called ‘An Irish Boyhood’ tells of his childhood in Oldcourt in the early years of the 20th century. The author gives us great insights into life in such large houses as were deemed “appropriate to the needs of a professional upper-class family - houses with three or four reception rooms, four to seven bedrooms, ample kitchen quarters, larder, pantry, dairy and so on; and accommodation for nurses, governesses, and up to three or four servants”.

For the young William Magan there were almost two different worlds – indoors and outdoors. Much of their life was spent indoors as they had a ‘schoolroom’ in the house and Magan gives a great account of a typical ‘school’ day and the subjects taught to them by Miss Hatton. He was less than flattering about their daily menus which included “boiled cod …[which] came in a solid lump, wrapped in black skin like the bituminised paper wrapping of bicycle tyres’, or ‘boiled sheep’s head and boiled calf’s head’ which came whole on a dih!

As children they had a fireplace in their bedroom and in winter they were bathed in front of the fire in a flat round bath and from their beds they could follow the comings and goings of trains at the nearby Midland Great Western Railway station even though they were scared because they believed the guard’s van on the trains to be ‘full of witches’.

Life outdoors revolved around the gardens, including the walled garden with its flowers and vegetables; the various outhouses that included a coach house, stables, cow house, pigsty, hen houses, wood store and coal hole among others. As children they were encouraged to ride by being put up bareback on a donkey which was it seems quite an experience. He often amused himself by perching beside the pillars of ‘Oldcourt’ and watching the ‘traffic’ on the Ballymahon Road – this was particularly exciting on Fair Days. He gives a great account of watching funerals process from town towards Cornamagh Cemetery with the black horse-drawn hearse, the black-clothed coachmen and the black coaches for the mourners drawn by more black horses – if it was a military funeral there was the added attraction of a band. I still find myself reading and re-reading ‘An Irish Boyhood’ which was published in 1996.

Newcourt, which is beyond the White Gates was also built by the Potts family, the beautiful ornate gates of Newcourt feature in John Broderick’s novel ‘The Waking of Willie Ryan’. John Broderick lived across the road in another fine house called ‘The Moorings.’

Next week: Clonmacnoise

To read previous articles in this series, see here