HISTORY: The Market House or Town House, Tullamore: its uses since 1789
the Offaly towns of Edenderry, Birr and Portarlington also had market houses
Now the most important feature in the town square and the town of Tullamore is the market house or town house. It is one of three buildings with a good quality limestone ashlar façade (on the ground floor, and rough limestone on the first floor).
The tympanum of the pediment contains the monogram of the Charleville. It should be mentioned that the Offaly towns of Edenderry, Birr and Portarlington also had market houses. That in Edenderry was erected by the 3rd marquess of Downshire at a cost of £5,000 in 1826–7. Tierney considered it the finest in his Central Leinster albeit in a disappointing square. That at Birr was built by 1641 in Market Place, but taken down probably by 1788 with its market functions spread over several locations in busy Castle Street.
The market house in Portarlington is c. 1750 (it incorporates a 1670s building – see a blog by Powell in the Offaly History series) and now in good shape. It was lately restored with the benefit of grants in excess of €1 million.
When the market house in Tullamore came on the market in 2012 it could have been bought for a third of that figure but the opportunity was missed to bring it into public ownership for use as a tourist office, galleries and meeting rooms.
Earlier opportunities were in 1960 for say £2,000, 1978 and 1987. It is regrettable that because of a lack of civic culture and foresight it was not bought for public use.
It was the same with the old Grand Central Cinema in the 1980s and the former post office with part of the extensive new carpark serving the town as a carpark but privately owned. Hindsight is a great thing, but so is initiative and planning for a better Tullamore.
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism preached in the market house in 1789
The market house was built by the town’s landlord Charles William Bury by 1789. John Wesley in his Journal for 22 April 1789 records ‘About noon I preached in the beautiful new court-house at Tullamore.’ As he preached, he noted that deep attention sat on the faces of rich and poor alike!
Wesley means the market house because the manor court spring and autumn sessions, usually held at a local inn, were held at the market house from October 1790. The market house was often called the town house, but aside from the holding of the manor court in the period 1790 to 1816 (its last recorded years) the building did not have local government functions. The town commissioners, first elected in 1860, did not have the use of the building. And neither did other groups outside the Anglican milieu.
However, it did serve as an office for the Charitable Loan Fund Society from 1820, meeting room for the Y.M.C.A. and a chapel of ease and meeting room for the Church of Ireland. It was referred to as the town house in the poster of 1833 calling for a public meeting to thank Lord Tullamoore for his exertions in regard to the transfer of the assizes from Daingean to Tullamore.
The building was owned by the earl of Charleville and was not leased out. It was sold in 1960-61 by the earl’s successor in title, the Charleville Estate Company for about £2000 for use as the Capri Café. Since 2014 it has reverted to cafe use. It now has additional signage not sympathetic to the square or the building.
Public uses since 1789
The market house has had public uses since it was built in 1789 with the consent of the town’s landlord. First, it was an open market for local agricultural products at ground level (70 x 22 ft) on which tolls were charged and a meeting room upstairs.
The first floor was probably used as a courtroom for quarter sessions from the 1790s until the completion of the new courthouse at Charleville Street/Cormac Street in 1835.
By 1820 that function in the square was modified with the provision of a new Corn Market (now the Market Square) off Harbour Street and Church Street and close to the Grand Canal harbour.
The meat shambles behind the market house was also moved to Church Street, to the site of the old Church of Ireland church. This was a major piece of town planning and was not emulated for 200 years.
From about 1823 the market house at first floor level was adapted for Sunday evening services for the Church of Ireland parishioners.
In the nineteenth century it was customary for a bellman to go round the town when the weather was bad, shouting out, for the information of the Protestants of the town. ‘Prayers in the Market House today.’
The town of Tullamore had no public lighting until 1860 so all was pitch black on the long winter’s evenings with no more than one lamp in Charleville Square to guide the town’s 5,000 citizens. Current plans (since 1985) have budgeted for a new connection from O’Connor Square to Church Street building on what was achieved in 1820.
The market house may have been designed by the architect John Pentland. Pentland was in Tullamore and was responsible for the laying out of building plots in Pound Street, later William Street and now Columcille Street in 1790.
First Tullamore Arts Centre in the 1950s
The ground floor of the market house was shared with the Y.M.C.A. just as St Mary’s Hall was, from the 1860s, used by the C.Y.M.S., the Catholic equivalent.
By the 1950s the ground floor of the market house was used occasionally for exhibitions including An Tóstal from 1953 and also for several art exhibitions and for vocational school classes.
In the 1950s traces of the furniture and activities of the old Tullamore Loan Fund Bank were still to be seen.
Art exhibitions were held in the town house from 1956 to 1960. Mrs Kennedy of Elmfield was the principal organiser and she had James White of the National Gallery to open the 1956 exhibition. He saw the town house building as a potential lecture hall and cultural centre. James White had lots of ideas and suggestions for Tullamore, but there was no one to take them up.
Lord Rosse made a similar point when he opened an exhibition for Mrs Kennedy at Elmfield in 1962 and referred to the fact that Sligo had just opened an arts centre. This art exhibition of 1956 may well have been the first such in Tullamore.
Sale of Market House in 1960-61
Charleville Estate Company sold the town house building in 1960 and it became a café at ground level known as the Café Capri and owned by Seamus Morris, and from about 1970 Devaney’s, followed by James Martin.
This use continued until 1978 when the building was substantially repaired and served as a bank until after 2010. The upper floor was still used for vocational school classes in the early 1970s before the new school was built at Riverside, Tullamore.
The Northern Bank purchased the Café Capri in 1978 for a sum reputed to be £50,000. The bank opened for business in Tullamore in May 1981 with an assurance that the town clock would be reinstated in due course on ‘the gondola’ over the building and the bell in a glass case in the interior. Five years later the bank announced it was closing its branch in Tullamore in 1987 as part of a branch network review.
In the same year the new Cork Trustee Bank branch was opened nearby at GV 8 on O’Connor Square E. Irish Nationwide purchased the market house building in 1987 and operated a branch from 1988 up to the bank crisis. Following the sale of Irish Nationwide to Permanent TSB application was made by the new purchasers for change of use back to café and restaurant in 2012.
The restaurant was opened with the Eddie Rocket franchise in 2014.