THE LONG READ: Big house on site of Ploughing in Offaly was burned down by the IRA in 1922

The National Ploughing Championships are currently taking place on the grounds of Screggan Manor which was destroyed by an accidental fire in 1905 and rebuilt some years later, only to be burnt down again by the IRA in 1922.

Like most landlords and their wives, Captain Edward John Marriott Briscoe and his wife Diana (nee Wilson-Hartley), were a public couple and were invited to quite a lot of dinner parties in other people’s houses. The trouble was, Eddie didn’t always make it back to Screggan Manor. The marriage was in trouble.

The captain with an absolute minimum of discretion took out a front page advertisement in 1914. “I Edward John Marriott Briscoe, of Screggan Manor, Tullamore, hereby give notice that Mrs Diana Briscoe, at present residing at Screggan Manor, has no authority to pledge my credit,” he cautioned, “or to contract any debts on my behalf, or to procure any goods for me, or at my expense …”

In June of the following year matters came to a head in a Dublin court when the Tullamore merchant J A Lumley brought an action to recover over £65 for bread, wine and other household supplies. Captain Briscoe denied he ordered or agreed to buy the goods and maintained they were delivered to and on credit to his wife. Diana insisted that the goods were necessary for subsistence and were eaten partly by her and partly by her husband. Her legal representative stated that Diana had been very badly treated by her husband and claimed that, “he lived mainly in hotels,” and had actually initiated proceedings with a view of turning Diana out of Screggan Manor ‘without any conceivable cause whatsoever.’ Captian Briscoe’s lawyer stated that they had been living apart since 1913. However, Mr Justice Boyd had heard enough and suggested that, ‘some of the garments in this case need not be washed in public. The question is whether the poor baker is to be paid.’ The jury returned a verdict in favour of Mr Lumley against Captain Briscoe with costs. Judgement was also given for Diana with costs.

Divorce proceedings were soon set in motion and on February 19, 1921 forty-nine-year-old Captain Eddie Briscoe travelled over to New York to marry twenty-eight-year-old, Irene O’Neill from Bray, in Maddison Avenue Church. The rest in history. Or alimony. Or part of the history of alimony since there was great public interest in the Briscoe v Briscoe case in the Court of Appeal in Dublin in November 1921 when Eddie and Diana went head to head again.

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The break-down of the marriage was a shattering experience for Diana who ended her days in a private Asylum for ladies in Essex, no doubt the magnification of their marriage problems in the media had a profound impact on her mental health. But she still had allies in Tullamore and when she died in 1938 she left a bequest to Rev Cecil Craig of St Catherine’s Church of Ireland in gratitude for kindness. The Craigs of Tullamore were keen golfers and the Tullamore Golf Club had moved to Screggan courtesy of Captain Briscoe with a pavilion opening there in 1910. When the IRA attacked Screggan Manor in 1922 some raiders set fire to the Golf Pavilion and the golf course subsequently moved to Brookfield in Tullamore.

Upon their return from America, Eddie – now known by the honorific title of ‘Major Briscoe’ - and his new wife, Irene, moved into Screggan Manor, but after the second fire in 1922 they moved in with his mother, Anna Rebecca Briscoe, in Westmeath, and eventually settled permanently in Ross House a few miles up the road from Screggan Manor. Indeed Eddie had already lived in Ross House with his first wife, Diana, for a period after the accidental fire in Screggan manor in 1905 when they waited for the manor to be refurbished.

Irene’s father, William Purcell O’Neill, the eminent Engineer-in-chief of the Midland Great Railway moved into Ross House to live with his daughter when Eddie died in 1943. O’Neill met King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in a formal capacity as a representative of the Railway Company when the royals visited Ireland in 1903. On July 24 1903 the royal party drove from Viceregal Lodge to Ashtown and took a train to Maynooth and from there drove to Maynooth College. O’Neill’s three daughters, Naomi, Ruth and Irene, presented the royals with flowers. Irene presented them with a basket of exotic flowers and the Queen and Princess Victoria invited Mrs O’Neill and her three daughters to travel on with the royal party by train to Maynooth.

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Edward VII’s son, George V sent a telegram to Eddie’s mother, Anna Rebecca Briscoe in 1932 when she celebrated her 100^th birthday. Anna Rebecca (elder daughter of Reverend Sir William Marriott Smith-Marriott, 4^th Baronet) lived in Screggan Manor for a period before moving to another of the Briscoe family’s estates in Killucan in Westmeath. She visited Screggan and Ross regularly and was an accomplished artist painting many pictures of Tullamore and its environs, notably Screggan Manor; Ross House; Manor Lodge; Lynally Church and Sragh Castle (built by John Briscoe in 1588, an ancestor of her husband’s).

A portion of the Briscoe lands in Screggan, Ross and Bonneterin was sold to the Land Commission in the 1920s and other land to Mr John Grogan in 1926. There was an attempt to rebuild Screggan Manor on its original footprint in the past few years.