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No Mean Village
By Liam O’ Ceallaigh
“Bailieborough is a very mean village in the same barony”
(Clonkee).
Sir Charles Coote in his Statistical Survey of Co. Cavan
prepared for the Royal Dublin Society, 1801.
“I know of no town more neglected or which has better
capabilities than Bailyborough.” (lbid.)
The story of Bailieborough goes back to the early years
of the 17th century. In 1610 William Bailie, a native
of Ayrshire, was given a grant of 1000 acres in the
proportion of Toneregie, now Tandragee, in the Barony
of Clankee in Co. Cavan. Under the terms of the grant
he was required to enclose a demesne of 350 acres. On
this he was to build a bawn and within the bawn to erect
a strong house or castle. He was also required to settle
upon his estate a number of families of English or Scottish
extraction. He was further required to establish fairs
and markets, and also to establish courts for the administration
of the law etc.
In the Pynnar (Survey of 1619) we are told that William
Bailie had taken possession of his lands in Cavan and
that his castle was in the course of erection. It was
also reported that a number of Scottish families had
been settled on the estate. At a commission held in
Castle Aubigny (Shercock) in 1629 to enquire into the
progress being made by Bailie and the other grantees
in the area in carrying out of the conditions set out
in the terms of their several grants it was found that
William Bailie had his castle completed and was living
therein together with his wife and family, and that
28 British families had been settled on his estate.
William Bailie had two sons, William and Robert. William
was educated in Trinity College, Dublin, and was later
ordained a minister. He served as rector in a number
of parishes in Co. Cavan. In 1644 he received the degree
of D.D. and two years later he was made bishop of Clonfert.
His brother, Robert, entered the army. In 1640 he was
reported as having command of a troop of Scottish soldiers
in Cavan.
During the rising of 1641 Bailie’s Castle was attacked
and captured by a body of Irish soldiers under Colonel
Hugh O’Reilly. They held the castle and its inmates
for a month and then departed carrying off a large number
of cattle and horses.
William Bailie, senior, died about 1648 and his son,
William inherited the castle and estate. The bishop
had one daughter, Anne, who married James Hamilton,
third son of John Hamilton of Coroneary Castle, and
on the bishop’s death in 1666, Bailieborough Castle
and estate passed into the hands of the Hamiltons. James
Hamilton’s son Henry, succeeded his father. He was M.P.
for Cavan, and during the Jacobite war he took the side
of King William and was killed at the siege of Limerick.
His successor was his son, another James Hamilton, of
whom more later.
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During the years
that the Bailies lived in Bailieborough Castle, a small
hamlet or village grew up in Lower Drumbannon, near
where the Castle River emerges from the Castle Lake.
The houses were likely built of timber or mudwall and
roofed with thatch. Later in the century, the Hamiltons
demolished the village and had it rebuilt in Upper Drumbannon,
overlooking the Town Lake. It is likely that this was
the village that Sir Charles Coote wrote of in his survey
in 1801.
In 1720, James Hamilton was granted a charter for the
holding of fairs and markets on stated dates “in Newtown,
alias Bailieborough” but he seems to have had a change
of mind, for in 1724, he sold his castle and estate
at Bailieborough and went to live on his estate at Hamilton’s
Bawn in Co. Armagh.
The new owner of the Bailieborough estate was Major
Charles Stewart of whom we know very little. His son,
William Stewart, was High Sheriff of Co. Cavan, and
later M.P. for the county. On his death, his son, another
Charles Steward, a Dublin lawyer, succeeded him. He,
in turn, became M.P. for Cavan. He had the reputation
of being a good landlord. He was killed in a street
accident in Dublin in 1795, and his estate passed into
the hands of his nephew, Thomas Charles Stewart Corry
of Rockcorry, Co. Monaghan. Mr. Corry was a minor when
he inherited the Bailieborough estate. He never took
much interest in the estate. In 1814 he sold out to
Colonel William Young of Loughgall, Co. Armagh.
Colonel Young was a man of considerable wealth, and
he wasn’t very long in residence in Bailieborough Castle
when he decided to plan and develop a new town at Bailieborough.
He began by laying out the present Main Street to its
present width. Previous to that time what is now the
Main Street, was merely a continuation of what we now
refer to as the Institute Road. In 1817 he arranged
for the building of the Courthouse in its present position
and in the following year arranged for the erection
of the new Market House at the top of the main street,
to replace an old market House which had stood at the
centre of the Main Street between the present post office
and the Northern Bank.
Soon the modern town of Bailieborough began to take
shape as new houses were built on each side of the newly
laid out Main Street. A number of these houses still
show the date of their erection over their doors. Colonel
Young was knighted in 1828, and died in 1835. He was
succeeded by his eldest son Sir John Young, whose wife
was a daughter of the Marquis of Headfort. During Sir
John’s political career he held many positions of importance
under the various English governments. At one period
he was Chief Secretary for Ireland, and at a later period,
Governor of Canada. He later received a baronetcy and
took the title of Baron Lisgar. He retired from active
politics in 1870, and died in 1876. During his retirement
he practically rebuilt Bailieborough Castle. Lady Lisgar
died in 1895, and after her death the estate went into
Chancery. It was later sold to the tenants under the
Ashbourne Act. |
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The Castle was
sold to Sir Stanley Cochrane, who later sold it to his
nephew, the late Mr. W.L.B. Cochrane, a well known Bailieborough
solicitor. In 1910 the major portion of the demesne
was sold to the Forestry Section of the old Department
of Agriculture. In 1915 the castle and about 100 acres
of the demesne were sold to the Marist Brothers form
Athlone who required it as a Juniorate for their Order.
Three years later the castle was accidentally destroyed
by fire. Portion of the Castle was rebuilt in 1920,
and the work of the Juniorate was carried on in the
new building until 1936 when the Brothers decided to
close the Juniorate and return to Athlone. They sold
the land and buildings to the Forestry Division of the
Department of Lands and a few years later the remains
of the once beautiful castle were sold for demolition
purposes, and today nothing remains but a heap of rubble
covered with briars and undergrowth.
During the period from 1830 to the end of the century
many important buildings were built in and around Bailieborough.
St. Anne’s Church was built in 1835, when the Rev. Philip
O’Reilly was P.P. of Killan. The Parochial House was
built shortly afterwards. The new church replaced an
old building known to the older generation of Bailieborough
people as “the thatched chapel”. The present church
of Ireland was also built in 1835, though it wasn’t
opened for public services until 1848. Like St. Anne’s
it also replaced an older church which had been built
about 1760.
Following the passage of the Local Government Act and
the Poor Law Act through the British Parliament in the
eighteen thirties the old workhouse was built between
the years 1839 and 1843, on a site close to the Town
Lake. It was originally intended to provide accommodation
for about 600 inmates, but it is on record that during
the Famine years it often had to accommodate up to 1,500
hungry and fever stricken inmates within its walls.
It served Bailieborough as a local hospital up to 1920,
but it always bore the stigma of the Workhouse.
Trinity Presbyterian church, on the Virginia Road, was
built in 1887 to replace an older Church which had been
built in the townland of Urcher in 1770. The Methodist
Church was built in Adelaide Road in 1835. The Northern
Bank on the Main Street was built in 1874, and the Bank
of Ireland or the Hibernian Bank, as it was then called,
was built in 1927.
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In a report, written by the Rev. John Gumley, the rector
of Bailieborough, in 1814, it was stated that there
were then two schools in the town, one for Catholics
and the other for Protestants, and each had about 50
scholars, all of whom were taught reading, writing and
arithmetic. It is likely that both these schools were
absorbed into the National School system following the
enactment of the Education Act of 1831.
Bailieborough Central Model School was built in 1848
on a site donated by Sir John Young as he then was.
The two schools mentioned above were closed and the
pupils, Protestant and Catholic, were transferred to
the new Model School. At the same time the building
known as the Model House, and also a head master’s residence,
were built on a site on the Kells Road. Attached to
the Model House was a farm of 48 acres. The Model House
was originally built as an Agricultural Training School,
and six or eight students were boarded there and were
given instruction in the theory and practice of Agriculture
under the direction of a qualified instructor. In addition
to the students of agriculture, a group of pupil teachers
were boarded in the Model House.
These were young men who intended to become teachers
and did their studies and practice teaching under the
guidance of the Headmaster. The Agricultural School
closed down in the early seventies and later when the
new Training Colleges were established in Dublin and
other centres, the Model House was closed down and afterwards
became the residence of the Principal and the farm was
taken over by the landlord, Baron Lisgar.
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In 1875 a school
for poor children was opened in a house in Thomas Street,
but was closed down after 10 years. It was usually referred
to as the Ragged School. St. Anne’s Boys’ and Girls’
School were built in 1886, and they continued in existence
until 1958, when new schools were built on an adjoining
site.
After the Vocational Educational Act became Law in 1930
a Vocational School was established in a portion of
the Old Workhouse building. Three years later this school
was transferred to the Model House on the Kells Road.
In 1965 a new Vocational School was built on the same
site. Lourdesville, a secondary school for girls and
run by the Presentation Sisters, was opened in 1964.
Boys were admitted to this school at a later date. In
the early seventies, when it became obvious that the
two existing schools were inadequate for the growing
young population without extension or replacement, the
Department of Education proposed a Community School
to replace both. Following protracted negotiation
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