Week 24 - "Handed Down"
When my mother in law, Kathleen, knew she was dying, she spoke to all members of the family individually and gave each of them a keepsake. She knew that I loved this
box, and she gave it to me.
Known in the family as the “Priest’s box”, this is the portable
writing desk of Father Kieran Kilroe, Kathleen’s great uncle, who was the
Parish Priest at St Mary’s Athlone, Ireland from 1845 until his death in 1865.
Born in about 1799 in Shannonbridge, the village closest to
the magnificent monastic ruin that is Clonmacnoise, Kieran was obviously a
clever boy, destined to be educated into the priesthood. He began at Clonfad, across the Shannon from
his home, where a lay teacher of the old Hedge School*1 tradition taught Latin,
then at about 18, he travelled to France to enrol at clerical college in
Bayeux. *2
Kieran stayed in France for 7 years after his ordination in
1820, becoming Professor at a college in the South, but then he returned to
Ireland to a curacy at Mohill, in County Leitrim. In
1834, he moved to Athlone, becoming its Parish Priest in 1845.
One of his great achievements in Athlone was the building of the present St Mary’s Church (1857-62), a beautiful gothic revival church designed by the architect John Bourke, a prominent church architect of the period. The Irish National Inventory of Architectural Heritage says that “the white marble 'stations of the cross', by George Collie and the white granite Renaissance-style monument to builder of the church, Canon Kieran Kilroe, are noteworthy features to the interior. The cast-iron railings to the exterior and the fine gate piers complete the composition.”.
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| Memorial to Kieran Kilroe in St Mary's, Athlone |
The principal beneficiary of Kieran’s will was his brother William
Kilroe, who still lived in Shannonbridge and was regarded as a scholarly and
learned man, and, like all the family, a staunch Nationalist. He lived to be 90 years old and we think that
he probably passed the Priest Box to his grand-niece, Katie Kilroe and that she
passed it on to her niece, Kathleen. It travelled from Ireland to Australia in the 1960s..
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| Brass name plate on the top of the box: "Rev. K K" |
1*Hedge schools
were small informal illegal schools, particularly in 18th- and 19th-century
Ireland, designed to secretly provide the rudiments of primary education to
children of 'non-conforming' faiths (ie Catholic and Presbyterian). Under the
penal laws only schools for those of the Anglican faith were allowed
Historians generally agree that they provided a kind of
schooling, occasionally at a high level, for up to 400,000 students by the
mid-1820s. J. R. R. Adams says the hedge schools testified “to the strong
desire of ordinary Irish people to see their children receive some sort of
education.” Antonia McManus argues that there “can be little doubt that Irish
parents set a high value on a hedge school education and made enormous
sacrifices to secure it for their children....[the hedge schoolteacher was] one
of their own”.[2]
While the "hedge school" label suggests the classes
took place outdoors (next to a hedgerow) classes were normally held in a house
or barn. Subjects included primarily the reading, writing and grammar of the
Irish and English languages, and maths, (the fundamental “three R’s").
In some schools the Irish bardic tradition, Latin, history and home
economics were also taught.
While all Catholic schools were forbidden under the Penal
Laws from 1723 to 1782, no hedge teachers were known to be prosecuted. Indeed,
official records were made of hedge schools by census makers. The Penal Laws
targeted education by the Catholic religious orders, whose wealthier
establishments were sometimes confiscated. The laws aimed to force Irish
Catholics of the middle classes and gentry to convert to Anglicanism if
they wanted a good education in Ireland. (Wikipedia)
2* Because of the penal laws, many young Catholics were educated
in France at this time- including the great leader, Daniel O’Connell.
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