Call for town in Tipperary to mark anniversary of Charles Bianconi's death
Immigrant Italian was known as 'the king of the roads'
Clonmel should be associated with the commemorations to mark the 150th anniversary of the death of Charles Bianconi, the immigrant Italian who put 19th century Ireland on wheels by establishing the country’s first regular public transport system.
That was the suggestion made by Cllr Niall Dennehy at a meeting of Clonmel Borough District.
Charles Bianconi (1786-1875) served as Mayor of Clonmel on two occasions, in 1845 and 1846.
Cllr Dennehy said he was affectionately remembered as “the king of the roads,” having established the country’s first affordable transport system with a network of horse-drawn coaches that travelled throughout the country.
“It is widely believed that Tipperary man Tony Ryan of Ryanair modelled its success on Bianconi strategies,” said Cllr Dennehy.
He said that the 150th anniversary of the death of the Italian-born entrepreneur is being celebrated in September in the parish of Boherlahan-Dualla, where he is buried in the Bianconi Chapel in Boherlahan, having died at Longfield House.
He said that Bianconi’s association with the Liberator Daniel O’Connell; with Edmund Ignatius Rice, founder of the Christian Brothers; and Frederick Douglass, the American civil rights activist, “aka the Black O’Connell,” should be exploited nationally and further afield.
Bianconi came from Costa Masnaga near Como, in northern Italy.
His first horse-drawn carriage had travelled from his headquarters at Hearns Hotel (which is now an IPAS centre) in Parnell Street, Clonmel on a ten-mile journey to Cahir in 1815.
Cllr Dennehy recently suggested that Clonmel, Cahir and Cashel should make a solid case bid to host the All-Ireland Fleadh Cheoil, which he said would bring 600,000 visitors and €60 million to the locality.
He said that with all of Clonmel’s twinning/sister cities (which include Costa Masnaga and Gangi in Sicily) and with those of Cahir and Cashel, along with the the Comhaltas Ceolteori Eireann global diaspora, “the tourism potential for the region has to be enormous”.
Cllr John FitzGerald said that Cllr Dennehy’s proposal had a lot of merit and was worthy of further exploration.
Mayor Pat English and Cllr Siobhán Ambrose also supported the proposal.