THE LONG READ: Tullamore or Tullamoore and where is the great hill

Sir John Moore of Croghan had a formal grant of the lands of Tullamore including Charleville under a patent of James I, probably about 1619–20 as part of the distribution of some of the lands of the O’Molloys of Fir Ceall under the plantation of James I.

This grant was enrolled or taken up in 1622. Sir John Moore received ‘the castle town and lands of Tullaghmore and one water mill’ together with the lands at Kilcruttin, Clonminch, Cloncollog, the Wood of Curraghboy, Doonollan and Monehowne (now part of Charleville Demesne, Ballyard (now Ballard) and lands known as Killenroe (later called Redwood and now part of Charleville Demesne and Brookfield).

John O’Donovan, the arbiter, settles the names in the 1830s

This recorded grant of 1622 and one fifty years earlier (1570) of the property of the Durrow monastic site provide evidence of the placenames in use in that period. However, we have to remember that these are the names written down by the new settlers, not familiar with the Irish language, and recording what they heard in an anglicised form. John O’Donovan, the Irish scholar, working for the Ordnance Survey from 1830 to 1861 was the final arbiter of what names should be engraved or printed on the OS maps. We have been following his diktats at least on official paper ever since as regard the ‘correct’ orthography for our townland names (over 60,000).

Exactly what Moore owned at Killinroe was to be the cause of much dispute later on in the seventeenth century. Moore had already acquired lands at Croghan, King’s County as part of the Elizabethan plantation or confiscation and his family acquired further lands in the county by purchase and grant over the period from the 1600s to the 1740s. So much so that when the minor, Charles William Bury, inherited the property from his great uncle, Charles Moore, earl of Charleville, via his father in 1764, it came to about 23,000 acres.

READ NEXT: Work at major flooding blackspot in Tullamore delayed until 2028

The ‘Big House’ at Redwood, later Charleville

John Moore died in April 1633 and was buried near his house in Croghan. He was succeeded by his son Thomas who had earlier married Margaret, daughter of Sir Ambrose Forth of Cabra Co. Dublin. In 1633 Thomas Moore leased to his brother-in-law, Sir Robert Forth of Tulbett, Co. Cavan, the castle, town and lands of Tullamore together with the lands of Ballyard, Killenroe, Clownagh [Cloonagh] and Mucklagh, estimated ‘at six ploughlands and a half’ for a term of eighty-one years at a rent of £100 per year. Moore also leased other lands in his possession for varying periods of time from fifty-one years to eighty-one years. The fact that he was willing to lease Tullamore for what was a long term suggests that either Moore put little value on Tullamore or that this part of his estate was of no importance at the time. Shortly afterwards Forth built a large house in what is now Charleville Demesne, but formerly known as Killenroe or Redwood. The name Charleville was introduced by the first earl, Charles Moore on his purchase in 1740. The old name was Killinroe Mor and Killinroe Beg. It is tempting to suggest that the modern townland of Brookfield was Killinroe Beg and Charleville demesne Killinroe Mor. But there were other names too that have been lost in the creation of the 1,500 acres Charleville Demesne and Brookfield.

What was Redwood like

In about the year 1641 Forth built a house where the farm buildings are situated today. The house was described by Charles William Bury (first earl of Charleville, second creation, 1764–1835) in a preamble to a description of his own Gothic castle towards the end of the eighteenth century:

Near where the Gothic Castle now stands was the original mansion house, built shortly after the year 1641, according to the fashion of that time, with many small and ill-connected apartments, but on the whole not destitute of much comfort and convenience. The interior divisions were uniformly constructed by strong partitions of oak, probably the growth of the soil, and very liberally supplied; with a ponderous and double roof, also of the same material, and covered with shingles of oak, of more ancient date, procured from the adjacent bogs...

Forth purchased other land in Killinroe not part of the Moore property and it was probably on this land that he built his house which he called Redwood (or Killinroe when translated from the Irish). In 1669 Forth sold to Thomas Moore part of the land which Moore’s grandfather, also Thomas, had leased to Forth in 1633. The 1669 lease give the lands as Tullaghmore, Cruitt and Cloine (Cloneen) but the exact area of the lands in Tullaghmore was in dispute. Moore laid claims to certain lands in Tullaghmore, but Forth stated that the lands had been purchased by his family and never owned by the Moores. The dispute was settled in 1704 by arbitration with Forth’s securing good title to the disputed land and paying compensation to Thomas Moore of £60. Charles Moore, the second Lord Tullamoore and first of earl of Charleville, bought out any remaining Forth interest in Redwood in 1740.

Parsonstown and Tullamoore

Now Birr was a more ‘settled town’ than Tullamore and here the grant was to Laurence Parsons in 1620 (d. 1628). Birr would soon be called Parsonstown and that name was in much use until changed by the town council in 1899. Tullamore was to be called Tullamoore and that name was used from as early as 1670. One wonders was it a branding exercise by one of the Moore family to get one over the Forths and did it mark the beginning of a town in Tullamore.

Writing in 1846, the Birr historian T.L. Cooke, in an amusing piece mentioned that ‘Tullamoore was the ancient name of this town; it is derived from the Irish, “Tullagh,” “Moore,” i.e. “the great rising ground” a name which the gentle, yet considerable ascent up the High Street from the river seem to render peculiarly applicable. The place was, with a great number of other lands, granted in the reign of James I. to Sir John Moore, of Croghan, from which circumstance, in after times the appellation of Tullamoore was occasionally substituted for the more ancient Irish one, although in the grant it is called Tullamoore [not that of 1622]. It differs from Parsonstown, for Birr was by patent erected into a manor by that name [in 1620. The innovation in the name Tullamoore is now however of long standing. Upon a small copper penny token, issued there in 1670, (176 years ago,) by Robert Worrell, a hosier or bootmaker, it is inscribed Tullamoore.’

INTERVIEW: Offaly based sculptor seeks the beauty hidden in wood

Tullamoore as the name of the county town

This seems to me to be the earliest occurrence of the name. I have not yet seen this coin or token, issued at a time of scarcity in coinage, but hope there may be a copy in the National Museum on in London. The few tokens issued for Tullamore in contrast to Birr and Ballyboy suggest that Tullamore was a small trading post. By 1720 that was to change with the new barracks and more so after 1785 when Charles William Bury came into his inheritance and the canal was completed to Tullamore in 1798. Bury was at this time drawing up plans for his gothic mansion and had a fine token issued in 1802 to pay the workmen and circulate currency. His son, the second earl (d. 1851), was very strong on using Tullamoore as the name of the town and tried to get the Ordnance Survey to see things his way but O’Donovan would not have it. Lord Tullamoore did get it on the datestone at the new county jail in 1826, and in the act of parliament of 1832 to have the assizes moved to a place called Tullamoore.

The name Tullamoore was still in use by the more ‘loyal’ of the Charleville tenants up to about 1870, but by 1907 the name Tullamore was in general currency. In Birr the use of Parsonstown lasted longer with some of the old families, such as the Mitchell solicitors, very reluctant to part with this ‘ancient usage’.

As to where this hill of Tullamore was the Craigs (both father and son were Tullamore rectors, 1869–1929) would naturally opt for Hop Hill, the site of St Catherine’s Church, in preference to the hilly ground where the windmills had been located, at the junction of Cormac Street and O’Moore Street, itself obscured by housing from the 1800s. The Jesuit Fr Ó Murthuile of Rahan) cited O’Donovan as translating Tullamore as ‘a gently sloping rise of ground’.