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POLLAGH COUNTY OFFALY – WHERE MY FAMILY CAME FROM.

Pollagh (Irish: Pollach, meaning ‘land full of holes or pits’), also spelled Pullough, is a village in County Offaly, Ireland, located in the midlands of Ireland. It is a rural village on the Grand Canal and lies between Ferbane and Tullamore. Much of the surrounding area is bogland, and is used to produce fossil fuels such as peat turf.

The River Brosna flows close to the village. The Grand Canal was used for transporting peat and bricks produced in the area. Pollagh benefited from the canal in earlier years when it brought investment and employment from Bord na Móna, and it is now a tourist attraction. Pollagh is also known for its church, including its bog oak altar and stained glass windows, designed by the Harry Clarke studios.

Pollagh in Co. Offaly is where my branch of the Buckleys come from.

I was born in nearby Tullamore where my mother was from.

But I spent many of my childhood summers in Pollagh.

I have memories of the turf being cut dried and stacked.

My granny’s well produced bog water which was already the colour of weak tea when it came out of the well and made dark smokey tea.

I can remember helping my granny to bring cans of this tea, already milked and suggared  to the men cutting the turf along with sandwiches and home made currant bread.

My granny’s cottage had a tin roof and it was very comfortable lying in a warm bed listening to the heavy rain hitting the tin roof.

The bed sheets were not great as they were made of flour bags sewn together and it was very uncomfortable if you lay on a seam.

I used to help my granny churn the milk to make butter and buttermilk.

I remember hundreds of massive big frogs on the bog.

Incidentally, where have all the frogs gone? I never see one these days.

There was no running water and the bathroom was “up the bog” and the toilet tissue a dock leaf.

My granny’s house had no electricity on it for a long time and was lit by oil lamps.

The picture below is of my paternal great grandparents taken in 1959. They lived to be very old and I knew them well.

They both work at making bricks in their own brickyard. Here their daughter writes:

I was born and reared right beside where my grandfather, James Buckley, owned a brickyard. I live in the house next to the brickyard and all the chimneys and some of the walls were constructed with Pullough brick.  I would have heard my mother, Bridget McLoughlin, talk about the making of the bricks, and the hard work it entailed. When she was just eight years old the woman in question and her nine other brothers and sisters all worked alongside their father in the making of the bricks.

THE ORATORY FOR EASTER

80 replies on “POLLAGH COUNTY OFFALY – WHERE MY FAMILY CAME FROM.”

Quite a change of tempo, Pat. From the staple provocative blog topics to the quiet backwater, Pollagh.
What gives?😕

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Thank you for sharing your family story, photographs and your deep sense of place with us, Bishop Pat. Your grandparents were good hardworking people. It’s lovely for you to have their photograph at the traditional fireside.

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The midlands has some fascinating churches and all I have to do is stop the car. And at least in Pollagh, whoever reordered the sanctuary had some aesthetic sense and used local material. I see the Oratory has no kneelers. +Pat might be a bit harsh on us. Fine colouring and materials. Wood is underutilised in churches for tabernacles and altars. St Joseph’s Baltinglass has a fine example.
Electricity for my grandmother before electrification was a diesel engine in one of the sheds along with a bank of batteries. I wish I could have seen that engine, probably some sort of Cummins engine.

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Pat your family history is lovely and Offaly is a great spot.
What’s the news in Armagh these days, or have the randy fellas settled themselves for another while? You can always count on the usual characters 😂 oh when the priesthood was decent…

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Stop, slow down, think and wait. While there are serious corruptions within the Roman Catholic church, don’t be quick to seek the demise of Rome and throw the baby out with the bath water unless you’re sure you have it in you to pursue the true spiritual path, because once you step off that boat, you’ll find there is no way back and it’ll take everything in you to find the truth.
You may bounce around different denominations and find they just don’t fit, you may try other religions and find they each possess some truth but no religion possesses the fullness of truth, you may try atheism and find it’s actually nothing but empty promises and nihilistic thinking devoid of meaning, or you may try agnosticism and think what’s the point. Either way, try as you may, something will continue to scratch at you, you’ll always be searching for something until you realize that religion and spirituality are an ever present and hugely powerful, even if unacknowledged factor in each of our lives. We each have in us spiritual needs that are as real as hunger and the fear of death, as basic, profound and essential as the other archetypal patterns which govern how we try to live. They are at root a longing to find meaning and purpose in our lives.
There is a path, the true path of spirituality, which is trying to become more and more fully and truly who we essentially are, becoming conscious more and more of our unconscious motivations, fears and longings, embracing our innermost, last and incomparable uniqueness and coming to selfhood or self-realization, becoming more and more our own full self, having less of it repressed, split off, denied and projected. The emphasis of the spiritual path is on personal responsibility, on a direct experience of being with the One, being a part of Absolute or a vehicle which God’s grace and gifts can be communicated to others. There is always an acknowledgement of how much the devotee does not and cannot know of the Universal Principle, of an appropriate humility before the unknown and the unknowable, a healthy mentality shared with empirical science. To some extent, we all follow the spiritual path, usually unconsciously, but it is the conscious, chosen following of this path which is the true spiritual achievement.
The path is not for everyone, religion itself is a profound, psychological response to the unknown, both the inner self and outer worlds. For some people the structure of a church, a belief in a static, once-and-for-all truth which is given by others, by authorities external to the individual, rather than being and evolving truth dependent on the psyche of the individual searcher is an adequate psychic container. To wean someone away from total reliance on the judgements of others, from reliance on a God who tells them what to do in every aspect of their life, from food to money to family to television to sexual relationships, with the promise of salvation if all rules are obeyed – such an undertaking is only possible if the person has sufficient ego-strength to sustain themselves, to comfort themselves if they break a ‘rule’ and not fear eternal punishment, to create their own psychic structures outside the religious community. For some this is not possible, and to attempt a more fulfilling spiritual path is likely to lead to severe breakdown of the present psychic structures, with nothing to put in their place.
So don’t be quick to seek the demise of Rome and throw the baby out with the bath water unless you’re sure you have it in you to pursue the true spiritual path, because once you step off that boat, you’ll find there is no way back and it’ll take everything in you to find the truth. The grass isn’t always greener, or more accurately, it’ll take a lot of hard work, deep searching, personal suffering and personal responsibility to arrive at that truly greener grass, if you ever do.

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“Spirituality ?” A fancy name for our intelligent consciousness contemplating it’s own significance in the cycle of existence?
MMM

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And could intelligent consciousness be indicating that the significance of its existence is due to a creator?

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@10:48. Could it be that intelligent human consciouness, habituated over the aeons of evolutionary development of observing cause and effect, when contemplating our own and Earth’s origins held in similar fashion that there MUST have been some initial Creator and maintainer presiding over it all? It’s entirely logical mind you?🤔
MMM

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Summers working in the bog is a good grounding for any young fellow. The secularists was to ban the sale and distribution of turf. Telling those who cut and sell turf that they can no longer do so, is it like telling the French that they can’t drink wine or the Italians that they can’t eat pasta?
People just want a few sods of turf to keep the home fires burning for the winter.
The tea, sandwiches and currant bread was a welcome break.

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The ‘Greens’ would be complaining today about scarring the landscape, just as they do about fracking.

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If we could only take the best of the past and the best of the present and have Holy Wisdom to discern…. we’d not be far from the kingdom of heaven! Great reminiscences Pat. x

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It was built in the shape of a man’s trousers – with two legs – one for men and one for women so that the sexes could not see each other.

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I wonder how many youngsters grew up as mysogynists, with a very unhealthy view of sex. The RCC, with its fear of sex, did an awful lot of damage. It still is doing damage. Consider Kevin Dora’s telling people who voted yes in Ireland’s same-sex referendum that they needed to go to confession.

The RCC: still shitting on gays.

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I suppose the design was to keep the sexes from having impure thoughts about each other during Mass. Unbelievable. Such paranoia.
As this design of church building is probably a one-off in Ireland, it must have been down to a parish priest, one with very big sexual hang-ups. 😂

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9:33am. Kevin Doran & all the others should realise by now that after all the cover up of abuse of all kinds initiated by Catholic Church that they’ve long lost the respect of being taken seriously when these social control freaks come out publicly in telling people what to do in line with their own toxic agenda.

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I can remember when women sat on one side of church & men on the other in our local church and the priest said Mass with his back to the congregation. My devout Granny surprised us when she blurted out of the blue in the kitchen one evening: “All the trouble started when those priests stopped turning their arses to us – they should have left them turned in”. Perhaps she had a point now that so much has been revealed in more recent years.

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The separation of men and women, with women on the distaff or Our Lady left side and men on the St Joseph side to the right of the altar, has apostolic origins, but is not immensely practical where there are many larger families, well families with children. Little ones love roaming and leaving to the mam can be hard. It is inferior to how a mosque would have it for women would usually be only allowed a balcony while the men have the main hall.
An official source of sorts also confirms what +Pat says: https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/14915005/saint-marys-roman-catholic-church-pollagh-pollagh-offaly

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I’d love to see a bird’s eye view of that church building Pat. Do you have one?
It must be a great talking point for tourists in Pollagh when they are told the reason for the unusual design.

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It’s amazing the church doesn’t have two entrances: one each for men and women.
When you think about, the sexual hang-ups and pure mysogyny that lay behind this design of church building also misinfluenced Catholic education: all those single-sex schools.
The Catholic Church didn’t just preach the Gospel across the globe, it preached also a perverse human psychology. And it is still doing so in places like Africa. So, when asked if the RCC has been a force for good in the world, the answer, if honest, is going to be ‘a very mixed one indeed’.

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Pat, the pair of small candles on the altar look as if they are artificial. The vertical shape isn’t wax but plastic made to look like wax. Real wax, or even oil-based substances which burn down look authentic.

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I think 1:12 is mistaking them for a sort where you have a plastic tube and a candle that drops in the top, or a wick and oil in the more sophisticated ones.
I haven’t seen them for years because Maurice Couve de Murville banned them in the archdiocese. He’d have been better banning certain priests really.

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Try going to any mosque, men and women have seperate worship for the same reason. It’s not that unique to Catholicism very few catholic churches are built in that manner. I am very sceptical about Pat’s explanation for the church’s design. Very dubious.

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Do mosques in Ireland have minarets, and all those screaming calls to prayer? People should complain if they do. Noise pollution. Oh, wait! I suppose that would be Islamophobic!🙄

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Just like y’all start raving that it’s anti Catholic when anyone mentions your denominations history of torturing children.

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Retired Garda Ken Smollen is a good Christian man helping the often not so obviously vulnerable as they may be working etc. But unable to make ends meet – his discreet Food Appeal has been helping many people in Offaly, Laois & Westmeath areas living in food poverty due to high rent & living costs for several years now.
See: Ken Smollen Food Appeal.

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Garda Advice:
Do not attend graveyards alone & carry a camera phone at all times whilst in graveyard.
Always ensure handbags and other valuables are stored out of sight inside locked vehicle
Take photographs of grave of loved one to ensure Garda can assist if required with reports of theft, damage or interference.

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Once knew an aul fella who was doing a bit of work, on his own, in a cemetery. After a while, a young man approached and asked if the car parked outside the gates was his. He said it was, and the young man then demanded the car keys. The bastardo drove off in the poor guy’s car.

True story. Happened in St Mary Star of the Sea cemetery in Killyleagh, Co Down back in the 1970s.

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3:18pm cemeteries are sometimes used for drinking parties, drug taking & for hiding drugs these days. You’d be pushed to get any aul fella willing to work alone in a cemetery now.

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The design reminds me of Presbyterian churches. Had I not been told it was Catholic, I’d have thought it was a Presbyterian Church.

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Your dad was great man pat, very determined like you and your mam was a pillar of strength, they are proud of you and with you x

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I must research my family history. My family hail from Glapthorn village in Northamptonshire. My great grandad, an Anglican, was posted to Northern Ireland in the early 1920s. He would swim across the bay and meet my great-grandma, who lived at Dunree Fort, Buncrana. It was a British fort, but my great-grandma and her family were Catholics. My great-grandad converted to marry her, and they moved back to Northamptonshire, and we were all raised as Catholics. She died when I was 18, but I remember her stories about the black and tans, Fr Heggarty’s mass rock, banshees, and the Tally Wally ice cream parlour. I’ve never been to Buncrana but hope to visit soon.

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Pat, a very nice blog today about your family roots and heritage. The lives of your parents, grand parents and great grandparents were very inspirational and of a generation for whom true Christian living determined their values and principles. This generation of Catholics somehow grasped the central values of Christianity: integrity of moral codes: care for neighbour: charity to those less fortunate: devotion to God: they had a capacity to recognise God in the “bits and pieces” of everyday life. They had such an inner resilience and strength to face the adversaries of life. They carried out their family, community and “parish” commitments in all kinds of circumstances, rarely failing to do what was right, just and acceptable in the eyes of God. They are the true icons of moral and Christian values. Our forebears would be horrified with the church crises of today and with politics, consumerism and rampant individualism. I often reflect, like you, on my parents, grandparents and great grandparents…truly remarkable people. I hope the memories you share of your family roots – very humble – continue to inspire you. The only downside to your blog today is MMM…why does he have to continually repeat his mantras about his disdain for religious faith. Thankfully, you and I and thousands like us, retain the essence of our Christian faith. Thinking and reflecting on faith is an ongoing process, as a poet said, sometimes we begin again when we think we have finished!! MMM: perhaps if you reflected like Pat had done on your own humble beginnings, you might rediscover tolerance and respect for religious believers. Your assertion of atheism and libertarianism is the new unquestioned orthodoxy, as fundamentalist as what you condemn in Catholicism. Every blessing Pat!

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9.20 and Winston 9.30 and Mourneman: Mourneman sometimes confuses issues due to rhetorical effect. Alfred Whitehead who was not a religious believer, thought apologetics relatively unconvincing – everything is relative – and he inferred that there evidently is a way for the kingdom of God (whatever that might be, isn’t taught incidentally) to be internalised. He didn’t need to know what that was, to hypothesise that there could be one. He was a step by step thinker and we will all do well to emulate him. Work and currant bread used to be the antidote to bad irish religion, while in England, things were different again, for different people. Three of my grandparents changed religion twice. Religion was quiet and not in anyone’s face.

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Martin, perhaps you’ve not read my previous comments that atheism is NOT A “mantra of disdain for religious faith”, (your words). Or maybe you don’t understand it, ….or just don’t want to?
So I’ll make it simple.
Atheism is a questioning stance seeking intelligent responses concerning religious beliefs. At simplest, an atheist, personally seeing no evidence supporting religious beliefs and unconvinced by others assertions, questions religion’s many claims. The atheist’s stance tends to be largely motivated by awareness of the huge contradictions in religious beliefs together with an understanding of psychological, emotional and environmental factors inducing belief
And that Martin, is it.
No “mantra” proposed: just questions.
But then maybe you just don’t like questions?
MMM

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Dishonest post.

Anyone who has read your comments over the years knows that you, typically, go well beyond questioning ‘religion’s many claims’: you sneer and scoff not just at them, but at those who hold them.

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9.33: MMM, you’re being totally disingenuous. I completely understand the meaning of atheism and humanism. I have no difficulties with questioning and analysing belief systems – they are real and exist in every culture – but you all too frequently express disdain, ridicule, mockery and cynicism against all religious adherents, as you have done with very dismissive and derogatory language. I suggested before that you might read some of Jordan Peterson’s writings..And also Wikipedia or any philosophical journals will give you very in-depth knowledge and insights into religion, spirituality, atheism and various understanding about the relevance of a spiritual – as distinct from a religious – dimension to life. A truly religious believer will always be have a questioning, searching, open mind. Religious beliefs do not limit our emotional, mental or intellectual capacities. On the contrary a religious belief will always critique reality, as your atheism does. We arrive at different conclusions but that shouldn’t necessarily give us a right negate the other. I have reflected through much reading on these issues and I value my Religious beluefs, my spirituality, being a combination of Catholic spirituality, some mystical writers, poets and modern psychology. All too frequent you display an unnecessarily withering disdain for believers. Maybe you just don’t understand….If you got on with actually “doing” and “creating” something wirthwhile and lasting out of your atheistic convictions, I’d be more convinced about your proclamations. Your definition of an atheist is very neat and comfortably tidy and a wee bit self serving!! Sorry….By their fruits you shall know them….Incidentally a priest in Duluth has achieved the highest listernership to any podcast ever: his reflections on the Bible have gathered over two hundred million followers of all faiths and none, including many atheists…Interesting in the year 2022.

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Winston, of course I scoff at religious beliefs! They’re so outlandish and nonsensical, so why shouldn’t I, while at same time challenging those who hold them to defend them? And I try to avoid personalised criticisms of any individual, so if I’ve failed in that I’ll apologise, …..if you can tell me where and when.
Like you, believers never provide any comprehensible response, or provide any sensible evidence, in support of religious beliefs.
Like you, the same old tiresome ad hominem criticism. WODB. (Water of duck’s back!)
MMM

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11.25

So you’re admitting that your previous post was indeed dishonest. Good. This took courage, and more than your usual maturity. Credit when and where it is due.

A few days ago, however, you made yourself look very foolish indeed when you had to back down, by finally remaining silent, in a debate about logical fallacy with a commenter here. You were out of your depth, and it showed. But no one sneered; no one scoffed; no one sniggered.

Perhaps you could learn from us.

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Winston, perhaps if I just repeated my last comment of 11:25, maybe several times, the penny might drop for you? Just might mind you. Tho’ I doubt it, so I’ll just summarise it: “….never any sensible evidence for religious beliefs….”
And by the way, there’s a time and place for “remaining silent.”
There’s little to be gained “talking to the wall,”
Enjoy the rest of your Easter.
MMM

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11.10
Define ‘sensible’, MMM. I suspect somewhere in that highly personalised, bespoke definition would appear the word ‘cynic’ or ‘cynicism’. Or, at least, the connotation of either.
As the commenter who made you look very foolish a few days ago said also, you, like Pontius Pilate, lack the necessary spiritual intelligence to evaluate, grade, and assimilate evidence for religious beliefs. And it does require this sort of intelligence.
It is not quality of evidence that is at issue here: it’s your … attitude. But, presently, you lack the necessary self-insight to call this for what it is. (I think the commenter said these things as well, didn’t he?)
Historically, you have a prototype, Pontius Pilate. It might profit you, considerably, to study this man very closely, that you might avoid his intractable hubris, cynicism, cowardice, and, ultimately, his self-harming.
You may have the last word.

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If Treanor gives into Poppy, St Patrick’s parish is doomed. Very few people have a good word to say about the vicar foraine from north Belfast. They see through him and have done since he came in 2016. Time for this actor to be moved on . He has been a disaster for the reputation of St Patricks parish. The people deserve better than this English monarch toasting wannabee

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