Tallaght & the Underworld

 

Tallaght & the Underworld 

As the peal of church bells has been replaced by the sound of sirens and the pervading din of commercial traffic, it is easy to forget that we are only one generation removed from a world inhabited by spirits, holy and otherwise; one generation from a belief in ghosts, in the supernatural and the spirit world.  Since the introduction of electricity to Tallaght in 1933, what was once a prevailing belief in the spirit world has, for better or worse, declined.

 

The Exorcists

On the 18th of March 1935 ten Dominicans travelled from the Dominican Priory in Tallaght village to Holy Cross College (Clonliffe) in Drumcondra. There they were joined by two Jesuits from Milltown Park and an Augustinian from Orlagh, in Rathfarnham.  At the Quarter Tense Ordinations the Most Rev. Dr. Wall, Bishop of Thasos, welcomed all thirteen men with an ancient Rite, into the Minor Order of Exorcist and Acolyte.  Since at least the third century the Latin Church had formally ordained men to the Minor Order of Exorcist.  Text previously attributed to a fourth Council of Carthage in 398 (now identified as a collection called Statuta Ecclesiae Antiqua) prescribes in its seventh canon the rite of ordination of such an exorcist. 

Irish Independent, 18-03-1935

 

Rev. Dr. Wall gave each man a book containing the formulae of exorcism, saying, "Receive, and commit to memory, and possess the power of imposing hands on Energumens whether baptized or Catechumens”.  The ten Dominicans were:

 

R. Barry O.P

P. Forrest O.P

E. O’Leary O.P

D. Fitzmaurice O.P

M. Hand O.P

P. McArdle O.P

A. Moynihan O.P

C. Graham O.P.

L. Connolly O.P

G. Gardiner O.P.

The Dominican Exorcists returned, elevated in standing, to Tallaght later that evening.

 

There was, in all probability, nowhere in Ireland more in need of Exorcists, than a place called Taimhleacht- or Tallaght- Plague Grave.  The entire town is believed to have been built on a mass burial ground from pre-Christian times.  The evidence, once great, has over recent centuries been largely eroded. 

A belief in ghosts remained common in Tallaght right up to the 1950s.  As late as the 1990s older and earlier residents of Tallaght, people in their seventieth or eightieth decade of life, could still relate local tales of apparitions and visitations.  And they could pinpoint bends in a road, where ghosts were known to frequent.  Such beliefs were not confined to the peasantry or uneducated, as is sometimes suggested.  W. B. Yeats was a firm believer in, and communicator with, the spirit world.  Arguably Ireland’s greatest man of letters, Yeats was appointed to the Senate in 1922.  He had been an acquaintance and peer of Tallaght’s literary class, the Furlongs of Oldbawn Villa and the Tynans of Whitehall.  These were the educated, the privileged, the Catholic and the comfortable.

 

Some of Tallaght’s most notable ghosts or spirits share common characteristics with ghosts found all over Ireland and indeed, Europe.  But some are unique to the district of Tallaght.  Many of Tallaght’s old Haunted Houses are sadly, no more. Oldbawn House, Haarlem House, Allenton, Bawnvilla, Newtown House and Kilnamanagh House have all given way to relentless progress. They have given up their ghosts.  But what of Tallaght’s ‘new’ housing estates?  Spirits, like progress, never rest.  What housing estates in Tallaght are likely to be the most haunted and why? 

 

A Nightmare in Elmcastle

Elmcastle in Kilnamanagh was built and developed directly upon an ancient Christian burial ground. Elmcastle Walk once contained dozens of disturbed headstones and human remains which had been uncovered in the late 18th century. Further human remains were frequently unearthed here by agricultural operations, near Kilnamanagh house.  The last resting place of the dead was still being disturbed here as late as the 1960s.  It is interesting to note, in celtic mythology the Elm tree is associated with the ‘Underworld’. Elms were said to grow close to passageways that lead out of our earthly realm and into the Underworld.  And it was close to Kilnamanagh House that ancient tunnels or souterrains were recorded here in the 1780s.

In 1780 Gabriel Beranger, the artist who made an etch of Tallaght Palace, visited the neighbourhood of Kilnamanagh and has left us an account of what he found here- 

                “Hearing from some cottagers that there was, at a little distance (from Ballymount Castle) an enchanted cave, with subterraneous wards extending in various ways for some miles, which most men at different times had tried to explore, but never returned…piqued my curiosity and I begged to be shown the place.  I found a vault of  good masonry about 8 feet high and 6 broad: descending this a few steps, I found at the end a square opening which had to be entered on all fours.  I procured two candles,   and on offering a small reward got a boy to follow me.  For fear of mephitic vapours and suffocation I fastened a solid branch of tree to my cane, on which I stuck my candle, so that the light was about four feet before me.  I then entered on my hands and feet, holding the candle before, followed by the boy with a candle in his hand.  I went this way some yards, and then found two shafts- one leading to the right, the other to the left.  I took the first and advanced a good way, until I met with two more shafts and a very cadaverous smell.  Here, my boy begun to be afraid, and I thrust my candle as far as I could…but it always burned clear.  Considering that the boy would go no further and if I went alone, and my candle was to be extinguished, it would be hard to find my way back in the dark- I prudently returned the way I came, observing  the construction, which was of stone and in good preservation”.

Beranger’s phrase “which most men at different times had tried to explore, but never returned” is perhaps worth reflecting on.  There is no reason to believe that, at least some of these subterranean passages, these portals to the underworld, still remain unexplored, deep beneath the residential milieu of Elmcastle estate.

 

The Ghost of Springfield

What is now Maplewood in Springfield, back in January 1926, was the setting of an extraordinary sight.  It was the last official sighting of a ghost in Tallaght. The apparition was witnessed by none other than a Civic Guard- a most credible source. The guard had left the barracks at 2a.m, and had only gone about 100 yards.  The scene was neither eerie nor desolate, with no great trees to cast sinister shadows or cause the wind to moan through their branches.  Presenting the appearance of an “ordinary middle-aged country woman”, the Specter or Phantom glided along silently and mysteriously.  The guard bid the woman a goodnight to which she replied “Don’t stop me.  I am hurrying to the chapel”.  He went to talk to her, but she disappeared.  The guards nerves were good, but when he met the lady some nights later, he couldn’t speak.  The guard was new to the district.  On patrol several nights later he saw her again, but on this occasion she said nothing.  She halted and stood, silently beckoning him.  He asked his colleague, if he could see her, but the other guard could see nothing.

The second guard was interviewed.  He was a ‘cheerful, hardy, strong nerved old I.R.A. man’ and was described as “the last person in the world you would expect to see a ghost”.

              “I didn’t see it or hear it….(But) You know the way you realise something has passed close to you at night?  It wasn’t an animal.  I don’t know what it was!”  In a quiet matter of fact way he said “I have often seen that woman myself, but I didn’t know she was a ghost and paid no attention to her.  I saw my friend was agitated”, he said, “And  then I felt someone pass”.

The sighting of a ghost in Tallaght made national headlines. Not everyone in Tallaght welcomed the coverage.  Some said she ‘floated’ passed, while other said she walked.

One well to do but unnamed dairy farmer, bearing witness said:

                “About 4.30 in the morning some months ago I was going out with Carlo, (a well-bred    collie) when I saw what I thought was a woman coming out from some cottages at the side of the road and walking towards me.  She seemed to be floating along the ground rather than walking.  She wore the usual outdoor attire of a countrywoman. As far as  I could make out in the moonlight, it seemed to be a brown coat and costume. When she came near us, Carlo, who is usually a very plucky dog, whined with terror and ran away.  I was nervous myself and stood aside.  She passed me without a word, and I hurried on to the cows.  I found Carlo at 6 am, an hour and a half later, and he was still trembling violently”.

Irish Independent, 20-01-1926

A Russian Lady living in Dublin got a taxi to Tallaght and walked the road from Tallaght to Jobstown between 12 midnight and two in the morning, in the hope of interviewing the spirit.

Another man who had seen the lady, denied any belief in ghosts, but admitted he had been “going home a round-about way for some months”. 

From the statement “Don’t stop me.  I’m going to the chapel” we can gather she was ‘gliding’ from west to east, from latter-day Maplewood Drive down past Alderwood.  Irish folklore associates the passing of an Alder tree during a journey to be bad luck. These negative connotations were due to the fact that when cut, the timber changes from white to vivid red, reminiscent of blood.

 

Before exploring the darker corners of Tallaght’s past, we must first lay a few old stories to rest.

 

The Black Dog of Pussy’s Leap

For over a hundred years a great black satanic dog, is said to roam the lands around Pussy’s Leap or the weir at Firhouse. In size he is greater than any natural dog.  A muscular beast, he is said to drag a set of heavy chains.  In the 1970s an elderly resident of Firhouse related the following tale.

                “There was only one delivery of letters in the morning 40 years ago (1930s). If you  required the “night-letters” you had to call to the post office in Templeogue.  It was a moonlit winter evening about 9pm and I was walking home with the letters, accompanied by a servant maid from Cherryfield.  As my companion and I approached Pussy’s Leap a black dog crossed our path.  It got larger as it ran across, and gradually went out of sight, with the sound of chains.   I need not state here my fears but I manged to get home without losing consciousness.  For years after I was always afraid to pass the “Leap” at night.  The servant maid did not see the dog but heard the chains”.

The Black Dog tale is a common one indeed and variations of it can be heard in most localities.

 

The Phantom Coach of Newlands House

What is now the home of Newlands Golf Club was once the home of Lord Kilwarden, (Arthur Wolfe), the Chief Justice of Ireland who was dragged from his carriage and murdered by a mob on Thomas Street in Dublin, after Robert Emmet’s rebellion in 1803. Over the years some golfers have reported hearing the rumble of Kilwarden’s phantom carriage making its last journey down the gravel drive, as it did the fatal day he left home for the last time to meet his death in the city. 

While in this neighbourhood it is perhaps appropriate to remember one of the strangest, and smallest tombs ever erected near Tallaght. For many years, a quaint little sarcophagus, fashioned out of rough cut stone, stood just outside the walls of Newlands House on what is now the Belgard Road. Inscribed on the tomb were the words:

 

"His musick floats him to the skys (sic)

Dick chants his song and dies".

-August 1792

Beneath the text in bold relief, was a picture of a song-bird.  This was the tomb of Lady Kilwarden’s favourite canary.

 

The Smith and the Devil at Tallaght Forge

For school children coming home from school in the 1930, few places in a small county village could invoke the fires of hell, better than the Smithy’s Forge.  The flames and coals reddened by the bellows, the noisy clatter of hammer on anvil and smell of sulphur or borax could all feed a child’s imagination, particularly for young Catholic children where fear of hell and damnation was a daily reality.

In February 1962 a Tallaght resident, and the grandson of the village Blacksmith at the turn of the century, Mr. Kelly, related the following tale:

                “My Late grandfather was forever telling of ghosts and strange things that he encountered. His favourite was about the time he shod the devils horse.  He was a  Blacksmith by trade and his forge was only about 100 yards from his house. One Sunday night he heard a sharp knock on the door. Answering he found a strange man on the step who asked him would he shoe his horse.  My grandfather never worked on Sunday and so refused.   But the man kept insisting, as he had a long journey ahead. Because of this my grandfather consented. As soon as he had to horse shod, the man  got up on it, and it was then, to his horror, that my grandfather noticed his cloven feet. He was very shaken but the stranger did not seem to notice and handed him a five shilling piece, and galloped off down the Old Bawn Road, which incidentally is the road to the Hell Fire Club.  When my father looked down at the money in his hand he saw it was just a piece of glass. As he left the forge he was met by a friend of his who told him he had seen a strange man going down the road on horseback, with a strange light around his head”.

 

If the devil did pass down the Oldbawn Road on his way to the Hell-fire club, he would have passed Oldbawn House.  And there he might have met the ghost of Archdeacon Bulkeley, travelling in the opposite direction from Oldbawn to Tallaght Palace.

 

 

The Ghost of Oldbawn House

Perhaps Tallaght’s most famous ghost is the ghost of Oldbawn House.  Built in 1635 Oldbawn House was home to the Archdeacon William Bulkeley, the son of the Archbishop Lancelot Bulkeley.  He died in 1671

For several hundred years, it was believed that at twelve midnight every Christmas Eve, the Ghost of the Archdeacon returned to visit his old home. Arriving by carriage drawn by six headless horses, and driven by two headless horsemen, the Archdeacon, dressed in his robes of state would descend from the carriage and knock on the door of the old manor house before entering to inspect it.  Thence he would leave in the carriage, retreating in great haste down the Oldbawn road towards the Archbishop's Palace in Tallaght village.   Any person who set eyes on his carriage would die before the year was out; they would die within seven days.  For almost two hundred years, locals would avoid passing the ruins of Oldbawn House on Christmas Eve. The site is now home to Tymon Bawn Community Centre.

 

Many of the above are common stories, heard throughout Europe and grounded in well known folktales.  The following, however, are not.

 

The Wood in Millbrook Lawns

What is now The Wood, Millbook Lawns, was for over 100 years the site of a substantial Mill, known for much of its existence as Haarlem Mill.  If ghosts are the souls of the prematurely departed, the Wood in Millbrook Lawns is likely home to many.

In March 1835, between five and six o’ clock on a Sunday evening, Mary Leavy, a ten year old girl and labourer’s daughter, was sent to bring her brother’s dinner to Haarlem Mill.  While in the mill, a boy who had accompanied her, threw a rope around her body in play. The rope accidentally became entangled in one of the shafts of the great mill wheel.   As the rope was ripped from the boy’s hand, his arm was broken in two places and one of his thumbs was severed from the hand.  The girl was swiftly drawn up into the workings of the mill- the rope ever tightening around her delicate young body. The girl received multiple injuries which caused her immediate death. An assistant in the establishment, Thomas Shrill, happened to be going up the stairs of the mill just at the moment of the accident. The body of Mary Leavy, being whirled round by the shaft, came in contact with Mr Shrill, flinging him backwards at speed down the stairs.  So severe was his injuries “his life was despaired of”.  In one gruesome moment the life of both man and girl was taken in the most tragic of circumstances and the ability and future prospects of the boy was diminished entirely.  

Supernatural activity inside homes is said to be associated with violent or tragic events in the building's past, such as murder, accidental death or suicide.  If that is the case, The Wood in Millbrook Lawns may well qualify to be the most haunted street in Tallaght.  For if it is not haunted by the ghosts of Mary Leavy or Thomas Shrill, it may well be haunted by the cries of a two year old child.

In 1838, Catherine Tyrrell, the wife of a carter in the employment of Haarlem Mill, was sitting in a chair by the fire with a two year old child asleep on her lap. The cabin in which she lived was close to the mill.  Catherine, suffering from one of her frequent fits of epilepsy, inadvertently flung the child into the open fire.  The child, hitting it’s head on the grate became engulfed in flames and burnt to death while her mother lay prone on the ground beside her.  Mr. Tyrrell arrived home just in time to save his wife, but not his child.

Haarlem Mill and later Haarlem House was the scene of many such tragedies.  If on a winter’s night, you hear the cry of a babe or a girl at play, in The Wood of Millbrook Lawns, spare a thought for the soul of little Mary Leavy and baby Tyrrell.

 

 

The Ghosts of Willington and Kiltipper or Marlfield

 

Interviewing one of Tallaght’s oldest resident back in the late 1990s, Esther McCabe, a woman typical of her generation, relayed the following accounts,

                “The superstition was something desperate in those days. People wouldn't go outside the door on Friday the 13th or on All Saints' Night in case they would meet the souls getting released from purgatory, to roam around the earth forever. People just wouldn't be seen on All Saints Night.  My own father-in-law, whose father died when he was very young, was a very superstitious man.

 

                Shortly after he was married, he was down visiting his mother in a house in Walkinstown, and when he was coming home that night, just coming passed Willington cottages, plain as day, this old man started walking along beside him, right up into Tallaght where he was entering civilization. When he got to Tallaght he turned around and the old man just disappeared. So when he got home to his wife, my mother-in-law (Joanne Lawlor), he was so numb he couldn't speak. He just stood there, silent for the night, and she even had to undress him to put him to bed. When he got up the next morning he couldn't remember a thing about it. Years after,  when his mother had died, himself and the sister were down in the house in Whitehall and he saw this picture of a man hanging on the wall. It was the same man that had walked with him that night years before, so he said to his sister "Who is that man in the picture on the wall?", and didn't the sister turn around and say, 'Sure isn't that your father!" 

                A similar thing happened me years later, when I was still living up in Killinarden. I    remember, it was a Wednesday evening at around a quarter past six, neither dark nor light, and not a mortal sinner on the road, Kiltipper road. I never met anyone on that road, because there was only a house dotted here and there. When I was about half way down the road from Killinarden, didn't I see this big tall figure about two hundred yards ahead of me, jumping over a gate into a field on the right, and he wearing a big long over-coat down to the ground. When I got to the gate, the field was empty, not a sign of anyone, living or dead! So later that night when I got home, I told my husband what I had seen, and didn't he say 'Sure everyone knows that place is haunted, has been for years'. Now I don't know whether it was a ghost or what it was, but I know what I saw!”

 

The ghost of Kiltipper, well known for many years to those who believed, was likely to be the spirit of one of the Kearney’s, a father and two sons, hanged on the gallows, erected on the banks of the Dodder near Marlfield in 1815. 

 

 

When the Spirits are displeased

On the 13th June 1983 Ireland experienced a great electrical storm. It was one of the most spectacular meteorological events in living memory. The older residents of Tallaght covered their mirrors and drew their curtains.  The children of Tallaght hunkered down as ‘God was moving his furniture around”.  On that one day three individual houses in Tallaght were struck by lightning.  The houses were in Elmcastle Walk, Maplewood Drive and Oldbawn.

Elmcastle

Mrs.  Elizabeth Nolen was walking up her driveway in Elmcastle Walk in Kilnamanagh.  At just that moment fork lightning hit the chimney of her home, sending pieces of the chimney raining down on her head.

 

Maplewood Drive

Around the same time, the home of Gerald McMenamin, a house on Maplewood Drive, Springfield was also hit by lightning.  Fire gutted the top floor of the house.  No one was in the house when the lightning struck. 

 

Oldbawn

And another house, Egan’s, along the old Archdeacon’s way, in Oldbawn was also struck.

 

For over four thousand years the people of Tallaght have believed that there may be more under heaven and earth than can be understood by any one generation. They believed that when the spirits are awoken they will let their presence be felt.  Sitting in the old graveyard of Tallaght on a dark October evening, it is easy to believe that we are not alone.  The stories or cries of those who have gone before us can still be heard.  But only when we take the time to unearth them.

 

Requiescat in Pace et Tutum Manere

 

 

A.P

A Ramble About Tallaght