Street Wise Athlone – Moydrum

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

South Westmeath is not over endowed with big houses but the substantial ruin of Moydrum Castle, the former seat of Lord Castlemaine is surely the most impressive and most picturesque ruin in this area. Dramatic pictures of it have featured in various publications but its modern claim to fame is that it featured on the cover of the U2 album ‘Unforgettable Fire” which was released in 1984. Almost 40 years later visitors from as far afield as Japan include Moydrum as one of the places they must see when they visit Ireland.

We call it a castle, and it looks like a castle, but it might more properly be referred to as a castellated country house. What we see today is largely the ruins of an early nineteenth century house which also incorporates the fabric of an earlier house built c1750. When William Handcock was raised to the Peerage, he commissioned Sir Richard Morrison (1767-1849) to rebuild his county house to fit his newly acquired status. The house was built in the Gothic Revival style, featuring elements of a gate-tower, turrets and a raised battlemented parapet with the walls featuring extensive decorative elements including incised cross-loop motifs and cut-stone hood-mouldings above the window openings. Many of the features reflect the earlier Tudor-Gothic style of architecture.

The first Handcock to appear in Athlone was William Handcock who married Abigail Stanley in 1652 and went on to have seven sons and three daughters. Both himself and Gilbert Eccles received the bulk of confiscated land in the Barony of Brawny, thus kick-starting the main dynasty that controlled Athlone until the mid-nineteenth century. From the 1690s until the Act of Union Athlone was seldom without a Handcock as a serving M.P. The first William Handcock lived in the town of Athlone before developed his country estate, initially at Twyford and later at Moydrum. When he built in Moydrum he named his estate Willbrook. It later reverted to Moydrum. The social commentator, Sir Jonah Barrington, is quoted as dismissing William Handcock with the jibe: “Will Handcock (Athlone) an extraordinary instance, he made and sang songs against the Union in 1799 at a public dinner of the Opposition, and made and sang songs for it in 1800. He got a peerage”. However, it wasn’t as simple as that. Dr Harman Murtagh in “Athlone: history and settlement to 1800” reminds us that it wasn’t in the immediate aftermath of the Act of Union that William Handcock became a peer, but rather in 1812 when “he was rewarded for accommodating the government of the day with his parliamentary seat of Athlone”.

The Last Days of Moydrum

In June 1921 it was obvious that the hostilities between Ireland and Britain were drawing to a close. However, locally the war rumbled on. On 2nd July 1921 British crown forces in the course of their ongoing search for arms torched in both Coosan and Mountemple. The homes of three small farmers in Coosan were burned out and this was the catalyst for the burning of Moydrum Castle. The local brigade of the IRA under the command of Con Costello met swiftly and decided that there would have to be reprisals for this action. In the early hours of 3rd July a party of volunteers, variously put at between 20 and 40, arrived at Moydrum and forced an entry. They politely asked Lady Castlemaine and her three daughters to gather their belongings and leave the house. The servants were brought to safety and then having doused the house with both petrol and paraffin-oil, they proceeded to burn down Moydrum Castle. According to local tradition they even provided an armchair for Lady Castlemaine to view the fire from a safe distance. Lady Castlemaine refused to identify those who took part in the burning describing them as ‘gentlemen’. By morning the Castle was a smouldering ruin. There is a story told, perhaps an apocryphal one, of a Marist Brother in the course of a history lesson mentioning Queen Anne. He asked the class when did Queen Anne reign in England but was met by silence. “Can anyone tell me?” he asked again and one young boy put up his hand “Was it during the Troubles, Brother?”. “Why would you say that” asked the Brother, “well I heard my father say that Queen Anne chairs came into Coosan in 1921”.

The burning of Moydrum Castle saw an end to the Handcock dynasty. Lord Castlemaine never returned to live in Athlone but his daughter, the Honourable Mrs Duncan lived locally for over 40 years.

The Moydrum Broadcasting Station

By the early 1920s there were a number of radio ‘experimenters’ in Ireland but by 1923 following the setting up of the BBC more serious thought was being given to the idea of broadcasting. Athlone was seen as one of the most logical locations for a high-powered transmitter but other places including Birr, Templemore, Portumna and Roscrea were considered. On New Year’s Day 1926 “Dublin 2RN” was launched by Dr Douglas Hyde. The first station director was Seamus Clandillon, a native of Gort, Co Galway and the first musical director was Dr Vincent O’Brien, a man familiar to many for the role he played in the early career of John McCormack.

In December 1930 the government of the day announced that Athlone had been selected as the location for a high-powered transmitting station. A number of sites were considered before a decision was made to build it on part of the Moydrum estate. A major engineering feat was the erection of the twin masts which were over three hundred and twenty feet tall. The aerial was a length of wire slung between the two masts.

The famous Marconi company were asked to supply a sixty-kilowatt transmitter. When the programme arrived in Athlone from Dublin the signal was very weak, perhaps as low as on thousandth of a watt, but the Marconi transmitter had the capacity to magnify the signal fifty million times, to enable it to be broadcast around the country.

The Athlone station was basically a transmitting station although it had fully equipped studios, the vast majority of all programmes broadcast were relayed to it from the Henry Street studios in Dublin.

The 1932 Eucharistic Congress

Initially it was felt that the work involved in setting up the station would indicate that it would be ready to go into service sometime early in 1933. However, when Ireland was selected as the venue for the 1932 Eucharistic Congress it was decided to open the station on a temporary basis to enable the proceedings of the Congress to be broadcast. Despite many difficulties an ‘outside broadcast’ of the Congress was carried on the 413 medium wave-length from the 22nd to the 26th June, 1932. The two great highlights were (1) the relaying of a Papal message from the Vatican and (2) the rendition of ‘Panis Angelicus’ by the Athlone born tenor, John Count McCormack at the concluding ceremony of the Mass in the Phoenix Park. The attraction of the papal message was that it was the first time that a Pope’s voice had been heard on this island of saints and scholars.

The broadcasting in 1932 heralded an upsurge of interest in wireless in Ireland. “Radio Ath Luain or Radio Athlone” was officially opened in February 1933. Eamon de Valera, then President of the Executive Council, speaking from the Dublin Studio described the new station as “a new bridge of Athlone, a bridge linking the Irish in Ireland with the Irish in America”. The station continued to operate on the 413 metres wave-length until January 1934 when it changed to 513 metres. ‘Athlone’, ‘2RN’ and the phrase ‘Athlone Calling’ were known far and wide in the early days of Irish radio. Towards the end of 1937 the name Radio Eireann was adopted by the station but this did not achieve legal status until the Irish Broadcasting Bill of 1960. The Broadcasting Station at Moydrum is surely unique in having its original Marconi transmitter side by side with its later replacement, we should treasure this gem of broadcasting history on our doorstep.

Next article: Garrycastle

Previous articles in the series can be seen here