THE BIG READ: A Victorian creation in Offaly designed for an underclass in society
Ardan Road cemetery in Tullamore was known as the as the ‘paupers’ burial ground and primarily served the workhouse from the early 1850s until its closure about 1949
The Ardan Road, Tullamore burial ground was opened in 1852 and was intended to serve the poorest class of the nearby Tullamore workhouse. This approach road to Tullamore was a zone of poverty and not built on at all up to the early 1900s.
The men, women and children buried here were those who had no one to claim them for burial in their home town or village. So Ardan Road cemetery was opened in the aftermath of the Famine and it was reported by the local rector that over 1,000 people were buried in the later Famine years in Kilcruttin, beside what is now the town park. Over 200 were buried in Kilcruttin in just one year – that of 1851 when numbers in the workhouse had fallen considerably and also the death rate.
Ardan Road cemetery was known as the as the ‘paupers’ burial ground and primarily served the workhouse from the early 1850s until its closure about 1949.
After 1921 workhouse nomenclature was abolished and for twenty years the former workhouse and fever hospital served as the county hospital and as a home for the elderly colloquially known as The County Home.
Ardan Road cemetery was not a Famine burial ground. Burials from the 1850s would have included many children who up to the 1920s were born in the workhouse and died there. As we now know (and have known since the 1920s) the death rate among workhouse babies was significantly higher than those cared for at home. Medical care up to the 1950s was largely dependent on the local ratepayers and it is no surprise that there was always a reluctance from boards of guardians and town commissioners to take on new burdens and additional expense.
It was the local rector of Tullamore, the Rev. E. F. Berry, who wrote in 1852 to the responsible local authority, the board of guardians of the Tullamore Poor Law Union (the records are now in Offaly Archives), advising of the difficulties with Kilcruttin. A second letter was written, also in 1852, to the Board by Francis Berry, the agent for the earl of Charleville (the local landlord). The provision of new ground from the landlord was not legally possible until 1851, following on from the death of the second earl who had been unwell for several years.
The Rev. E. F. Berry wrote to the Board of Guardians:-
I have been inspecting the graveyard of Kilcruttin where the greater number of persons who die in the Tullamore Poorhouse are buried and I find that it is now so full that no more bodies can be interred without greatly endangering the healthfulness of the neighbourhood. In one corner more than a thousand paupers have been buried within the last four years, and according to Patrick Gorman’s return to me two hundred have been laid there within the past year. Under those circumstances I trust that the Board of Guardians will, as soon as possible, obtain a burial ground for interment of all paupers who die in the Poorhouse, as I trust as I must very soon, close Kilcruttin churchyard and prevent any more interments.” E. F. Berry, Glebe House, Tullamore. 30th January, 1852.
The Charleville agent, Francis Berry, sent good news to the board of guardians in 1852. Berry advised that:
‘Lord Charleville had been informed that the churchyard at Kilcruttin cannot without great danger to the inhabitants of Tullamore, receive any more. Under these circumstances his Lordship has been looking out for proper places where the dead can be buried decently. He has fixed on one for the parish generally about a mile from the town on the Killeigh road and given it to the minister and church wardens at a nominal rent [now Clonminch Church of Ireland burial ground consecrated as such in 1878].
But this will not at all answer for the Poorhouse in consequence of its distance, and that the bodies should be brought through the town he thinks objectionable. He understands that the Board of Guardians were in treaty with the tenant in possession of land on the Kilbeggan Road and only a short distance from the Poorhouse, for a small plot of land for a burial ground for the exclusive use of the Poorhouse. There is a lease of this land in existence of one old life; with his tenant’s right he cannot interfere but his lordship has directed me to inform the Board of Guardians that after the expiration of the present lease he will give this bit of land (he understands about one acre) to the Board for 6d. a year and make them the longest lease he can of this acre of land. He cannot make a lease longer than three lives but you will, I am sure, be of opinion that this is of no consequence for after one corpse gets Christian burial in this land you would not get a man for the fee simple of the whole townland to till it for agricultural purposes. Francis Berry, agent to the Earl of Charleville, 30th January 1852.
The opening of the new cemetery at Ardan, exclusively for the poorhouse, meant that the passage of coffins through the streets of the town was disposed of after, what may have appeared to some, the unseemly traffic of the Famine years.
Catholics were buried in the new Durrow church from 1832 and at Clonminch RC cemetery from 1893. The older Clonminch graveyard on the Killeigh Road was not intended for the exclusive use of Protestants but was effectively so in the Ireland of that time and since. The old pre-Reformation graveyards at Durrow and Kilbride remained open to local families of mixed religions up to about 1914.
Ardan was extended in 1914, and in 1918 the then parish priest, Fr Philip Callary, had the memorial near the entrance gate, erected in memory of the poor who were buried there. The second memorial in this cemetery records the deaths of travelling family members in 1941 and in the 1970s.
Pressure to close Ardan but where to go with burials from St Vincent’s
There was pressure from the county council to close this burial ground in the late 1930s. The county medical officer noted in 1939 that he ‘had occasion to report in February to the Board of Health the condition of the Board's burial ground at Ardan, which is situated on a limestone strata. The depth for burials varies from three to four and a half feet. I recommended the discontinuance of burials here. The Board are looking for a suitable alternative site, and are finding some difficulty in securing same.’ When Dr Moran was appointed parish priest in 1949 whatever logjam had existed about making land available at Clonminch RC cemetery was quietly resolved.
The cemetery has been managed by local government since the 1850s but it was only in about 1915 that the wall to the front was added. The land adjoining was for many years known as ‘the priests’ field’ and was sold by the parish priest in the late 1960s to the urban council for a nominal sum to provide sites for housing. Works were carried out in the 1990s by the local authority to make a park out of this burial ground but this did not progress to seating and swings and was mainly works in ease of maintenance.
The tradition of a cemetery day began in Tullamore in 1963 under the leadership of Fr T.F. Gillooly and up to 4,000 attended by 1965. It is appropriate that the poor, for so long forgotten at Ardan, should now be remembered after more than 75 years since its closure and 175 years since burials first began in 1852.
Why not a memorial to the Famine dead in Kilcruttin