THE BIG READ: Nicknames for some of the older streets in Tullamore town

NOW where in Tullamore is Rapparee Alley, Little Italy, the Old Tan, Hollywood and West End? Many will have heard of Hollywood in Tullamore, but few will recall Little Italy or Rapparee Alley or even the associated name of Battle Rapp.

A current preoccupation of mine is with the street names of Tullamore town. Names such as Market Place (now O’Connor Square and before that Charleville Square) date back to the early 1700s when it became the new town’s market place. Likewise, Barrack Street must have followed soon after as the army barracks was built in 1716 on the site of the present Garda station and nearby housing. I remember the late Bro S.R. O’Giffney complaining about Tullamore being a ‘garrison town’ what with young Tullamore boys still calling Patrick Street Barrack Street in the late 1960s. Sin scéal eile.

The names of the streets of Tullamore were first collected for the Ordnance Survey mapping of Tullamore in 1838, 1885-90 and again in 1910. Many of the names were changed for the revised map of 1910 because the town council at the request of the Gaelic League had changed the names in 1905, and to appear on name plates on the streets in bilingual form. There were signboards before then, but none has survived save that carved into a stone at the corner of Henry Street and Charles Street – since 1905 O’Carroll Street and Harbour Street. But Harbour Street was in use much of the time in the nineteenth century regardless of the landlord’s agent naming it as Charles Street. A case where the functional name persisted.

In the Market Place street name we have the typical three tiers of (1) functional name, (2 ) the landlord’s name of Charleville Square and (3) in the Irish Ireland or cultural renaissance of the early 1900s the name O’Connor Square. Several of the town’s names since the big change in 1905 recall the founders of monasteries such as Columcille (then spelt Columbcille), St Brigid and St Patrick, and local Gaelic Irish families such as the O’Molloys, O’Connors and O’Carrolls.

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Another example of the three tiers of names in Tullamore from the functional, to the town’s landlord and after 1900 to the native Irish heritage would be Columcille Street. This is based on Tullamore being part of the original parish of Durrow with its Columban monastery, while the earlier William Street was after Charles William Bury, who owned Tullamore from 1764 to his death in 1835. The earliest name was Pound Street after the pound which was just south of what is now the Kilbeggan bridge in the early 1800s called Pound Bridge.

In the renaming of the streets by the town council in 1905 battles we won were preferred to those lost – such as Clontarf (1014) and Benburb (1646). These were introduced in place of Quarry View/Tinkers Row and Thomas Street.

Some names never change

In some streets the name has never changed such as High Street, Tanyard Lane and Water Lane. In regard to Water Lane part of the old street was incorporated in the distillery after 1870 and when reopened 130 years later in 2003 it was called Main Street. This was the first example of using marketing to name a Tullamore street.

The nicknames

But what about nicknames that had not the official sanction of the landlord or his agent; or post 1860 the elected Tullamore Town Commissioners, or from 1900 (until 2014) the members of Tullamore Urban District Council. These are places that were named by the wags on the street when Tullamore was a smaller place with a population of about 5,000 and when everybody knew their local community and their place in the town’s hierarchical order.

Examples here would be Tea Lane and Tinkers Row. Both were recorded in the 1821 census and from 1837 by the Ordnance Survey and somewhat ‘gentrified’ from the 1880s with the adoption of Quarry View for Tinkers Row and O’Connell Row for the east side of Tea Lane. Now the entire street is called O'Connell Street since 1905, but this name was little used and must have caused surprise to some people when used by Aldi for its address for its new store. And nearby is St Kyran’s Street now back in use and in the 1830s and 1840s called Gunnood’s Lane and later Lumper Lane (more about this another day).

Rapparee Alley – Tyrrell’s Road

The first surviving comment on a Tullamore street nickname was in 1837 when the street names were collected for the first government sponsored mapping of Tullamore. The surveyors noted that Rapparee Alley (now Tyrrell’s Road in Puttaghan) was a nickname. But was it? It did not then nor for another 80 years have an official name. In 1821 it was called Rap Alley and not until the 1888-90 OS map Tyrrellspass Road. For a while in the early 1900s it was known as ‘Battle Rap’ because of a row between neighbours that ended up in the district court, and by 1910 Tyrrell’s Road (with apostrophe), but it did not include Convent View.

The name Rapparee dates back to the 1690s and the armed bands wandering the country in the wake of the Williamite wars. But Tullamore hardly existed at this time and the name may have been applied in the late 1700s when ‘a cottage suburb’ was developing along what was the main road into Tullamore from the Dublin Galway Road via Tyrrellspass to Tullamore (and not via Kilbeggan). This road intersected with that from Daingean until the Grand Canal was completed to Tullamore in March 1798.

‘Little Italy’ – O’Brien Street

The new street in Spollanstown of 1914 was called ‘Little Italy’ in the period after it was built in 1914 probably because of the fine bungalows built by the council who had earlier completed Davitt Street and Convent View (the twelve two-storey houses for artisans the site of which appears to have been called the Old Tan) near Kilbeggan Bridge. O’Brien Street only received its official name in the 1920s and one suspects that Litte Italy while humorous was also out of a little jealousy at such fine houses in place of ‘cabins’ with no water or sewerage.

From Pensioners Row to O’ Molloy Street (Hollywood and West End)

Pensioners Row was renamed O’Molloy Street in 1905. The street was built on the Berry estate in about 1817 for army pensioners in the aftermath of the ending of hostilities with France and Wellington’s defeat of Napoleon in 1815. The completion of 146 new houses by the town council in the 1934-38 period coincided with the growth of the cinema culture based even then at Hollywood, California and I suspect names such as Hollywood and later West End were used in quips by local wags because the new houses were so grand and fine in contrast to the cottages of 1817 to the 1930s.

The nickname began to get greater currency from the 1940s with a few cases in the local district court that gained notoriety. More importantly local soccer teams had names such as Rovers and Hollywood playing in the Tullamore Soccer Club at Spollanstown. In a match in 1944 Shepherd and Kelly were very sound for Hollywood while Polo Cumberton also turned out ‘and aroused a great interest among the fans’ (OI, 8.4.1944)

I expect that Michael Flanagan will tell us more and we need to look at John McKenna’s history of the Tullamore Soccer Club (now out of print). If you have an interest in or a story about Tullamore’s street names call or write to Offaly History Centre or email us – info@offalyhistory.com.

Finally, your homework. Why do we still have a signboard with Offally Street?

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