By Michael Byrne
Research by Angus Mitchell into the life and work of Alice Stopford Green (1847–1929), ‘the passionate historian’ as R.B. McDowell called her, brought Mitchell to Durrow, Tullamore, Co. Offaly, in March 2024 to explore a monastic site that Green had visited in the company of the solicitor, antiquarian and nationalist Francis Joseph Bigger (1863–1926) in September 1912. Green and Bigger would have shared cultural interests in the Celtic Revival. As the Dictionary of Irish Biography contributor Joseph McBrinn noted, Bigger saw his role as ‘promoting all things Irish including numerous processions, pageants, ceilidhs and feiseanna’.
Mrs Green has been the subject of two biographies and an entry in the DIB. She was a daughter of the archdeacon of Meath and married the English historian John Richard Green. On his death in 1883 she was left financially comfortable, and for almost 30 years from the late 1890s would question British imperialism and was passionately absorbed in Irish affairs. The achievement of Irish independence became her main objective.
Green and Bigger were invited to address a Gaelic Carnival held in Tullamore on 22 September 1912. On the same day Bigger presented a banner to the recently formed Tullamore Pipers’ Band. Mrs Green visited the monastic site at Durrow, the only one in Ireland founded by St Columcille, on the following day, and kept notes of what she experienced. The notes are now preserved in the National Library and formed the basis of her two letters to the press in early 1914 concerning the condition of the monastic site and public access. The letters were prompted by the ‘cosy’ arrangement to close the old abbey graveyard without any written guarantees as to access for the public from Mr Otway Toler, the young owner of the Durrow estate. The estate had come down to him from the notorious ‘hanging judge’ Lord Norbury (d. 1831). Besides being a Columban foundation, the monastic site at Durrow is associated with the Book of Durrow, now in Trinity College, Dublin, and the high cross and Early Christian slabs still in situ at Durrow. The present-day church dates from c. 1730 and is located within the demesne of Durrow close to Durrow Abbey, the home of the Norbury family. Beside the house are the remains of a Norman motte where Hugh de Lacy lost his head in 1186. The monastic site’s location in the Durrow demesne since the time of the Plantation and the Reformation in the sixteenth century was bound to lead to tensions between the landowner, the Protestant clergy who took over the monastic site and the native, predominantly Catholic, Irish who continued to resort to it as a place of burial.
Within a year of Mrs Green’s visit in 1912, proposals were laid before Tullamore Rural District Council for the closure of the old cemetery at Durrow on sanitary grounds. At first the RDC saw no need for the closure but accepted assurances from Fr Philip Callary, the parish priest of Tullamore and Durrow, and the young landowner, Otway Toler, as to the rights of the public for access to the high cross and burial-places of family members. However, when the sealed order of the Local Government Board was issued in late December 1913 it contained no assurances for the public. That lapse would cause increasing problems for access ‘as of right’ from the 1980s which were not resolved until the purchase by the State in 2003.
Mrs Green’s letters to the Athlone-based King’s County Independent in early 1914 recalled her visit to Durrow in 1912, but she toned down the sectarian animus against Toler exhibited in her notes. Her letters are of interest for the history of the monastic site of Durrow, the way in which it was revered by local people, the state of public access and Green’s suggestion that all such heritage sites should be vested in the State. Both the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland’s Representative Church Body were culpable in not ensuring proper arrangements for public access with the Toler family. The 1730 Protestant church in the demesne of Durrow was replaced by a new church a mile away, and on the public road, in 1881 (it is now well cared for as a private residence) as a gift from Otway Toler (d. 1884). At the time of the graveyard closure Fr Callary secured land adjoining the existing Roman Catholic cemetery for an extension, also as a gift from Otway Toler.
Mrs Green could see all this, but the rights of the people to public access had not been secured in a written statement in 1913. She saw the solution for the Durrow monastic site, and others like it, as State ownership in trust for the people of Ireland. However, it was almost a century before that happened in the case of Durrow, and then it was only under pressure owing to the proposal to build a large hotel and extensive housing near the monastic site. After years of obfuscation, the OPW acquired the monastic site, the abbey house and 70 acres of land in 2003 for €3.2 million. The minister at the time in charge of the OPW was Laois–Offaly TD Tom Parlon, and his wishes, with the support of Brian Cowen, ensured the purchase. Parlon lost office and his Dáil seat in 2007, while Brian Cowen retired from politics in 2011. Plans for the site wilted in the post-2008 period and the files in the OPW just grew larger.
Work began on the monastic site in late 2003 and it took eight years to restore the church, including the moving of the high cross inside the building and restoration of some of the pews. The work on the church was completed in 2012 and the high cross was again viewable by the public. The window of opportunity was short, however, and the ‘curse of Durrow’, manifest since 1186 when Hugh de Lacy lost his head, again reasserted itself with the outbreak of dry rot emanating from the base of some of the pews by about 2015. Since then the church has been closed and remains closed even on ‘Pattern Day’, the feast of St Columcille on 9 June. The care of national monuments and the access for the people that was so close to Mrs Green’s heart has not yet been achieved so far as Durrow is concerned.
In truth, the OPW may never have wanted Durrow monastic site in the first place. The abbey house was burned by the IRA in late April 1923 in the last such burning in County Offaly in the course of a wasteful civil war. The State paid full compensation to the Toler family and the house was rebuilt. It was a house in good order that the State purchased in 2003 and leased to a Peace Foundation in 2005. Suffice it to say that unhappy differences arose, and the public have not been advised as to the state of things. In the meantime, the delay has meant that the house has been empty now for 21 years and the cost of restoration will be enormous, and much greater than if a resolution of the difficulty had been prioritised. The old church has been closed since about 2016 because of the dry rot issue, and the public have no access to see the high cross that was accessible since about AD 850.
Sometimes the churchyard can be visited but there is no advertised access, and the lack of access to the interior of the church to see the high cross can lead only to annoyance and frustration. The State will ultimately pay for the house three times—in 1925 (after the Civil War); in 2003 by way of purchase; and again when restoration works are completed. Offaly County Council are keen to see progress but are not the owners and do not have the funds. Proposals that would draw on new funding, such as that set aside for the so-called ‘Just Transition’ after the closure of the bogs, have not as yet been put forward. If only Mrs Green were still with us, she might invite some of the commissioners of public works and ministers to her famed drawing-room chats at 90 St Stephen’s Green and get things sorted!
Michael Byrne is co-editor of the Offaly Heritage Journal and author of several books and articles on Offaly history.