Harristown Station

07/05/2026

A fascinating-sounding talk by the ever-entertaining and highly-knowledgeable Liam Kenny this Saturday night at 8pm in the resource centre in Ballymore Eustace. See you there.

18/04/2026

1926 CENSUS YET AGAIN
A few more pages relating to the station and Harristown:
https://nationalarchives.ie/collections/search-the-1926-census/view-1926-pdf/?doc=Harristown_0687_0037_0001_0_00001.pdf
This is the household & building returns for Harristown townland (form B1 which would have been filled out by the enumerator rather than the householders). Harristown, once the democratic equal of Dublin and Belfast in being able to send two members to the 1691-1800 Irish parliament now had fifteen households and sixty one inhabitants in total, but what is most striking is that Harristown House was still unoccupied. However, in the lodge house (Delaneys as I would think of it), John McDowall was in situ and is described as gamekeeper to Dr. Graham of Harristown. Graham was an absentee in April 1926.

https://nationalarchives.ie/collections/search-the-1926-census/view-1926-pdf/?doc=Harristown_0687_0037_0012_0_00023.pdf
The Martin family from the signalman's cottage above the station. This was a large family squeezed into a tiny house, but most of the family had dispersed by 1926. The house is derelict but is still standing.

https://nationalarchives.ie/collections/search-the-1926-census/view-1926-pdf/?doc=Harristown_0687_0037_0008_0_00015.pdf
"Porter Murphy" cottage on the Mullacash road.

https://nationalarchives.ie/collections/search-the-1926-census/view-1926-pdf/?doc=Harristown_0687_0037_0006_0_00011.pdf
The Hannon family who were in Charlie Clarke's cottage by the bridge.

https://nationalarchives.ie/collections/search-the-1926-census/view-1926-pdf/?doc=Harristown_0687_0037_0004_0_00007.pdf
The Maxwell family - John the father was working as a ganger on the railway. I am not entirely sure of which house that were living in but I am wondering it was one of the two houses on the bend on the Mullacash road (Mick Rourke's) - thoughts welcome. Little Ted, three years old here, is buried in Coghlanstown cemetery - there is no registered death associated with him but I am surmising that he died in the subsequent few years.

The O'Haras and Allisons are also present in Harristown, both households had recent bereavements of a military nature, with Patrick Allison having been killed in the Graney crossroads ambush and Michael O'Hara having died from injuries received while fighting in World War I.

18/04/2026

1926 CENSUS AGAIN
https://nationalarchives.ie/collections/search-the-1926-census/view-1926-pdf/?doc=Harristown_0687_0037_0014_0_00027.pdf
To follow from the previous post, the 1926 census went live at midnight and thankfully all is largely going well with the technology, some discontinuity but no crashes. My main two observations on the data more generally are that handwriting seems to have deteriorated between 1911 and 1926(!, probably because literacy was increasing and enumerators were filling out less of the details), and secondly having the information on the employer (rather than just the occupation) is very interesting and will really help anyone trying to understand their ancestors. And indeed, an interesting picture in Harristown station.

Mary Anne Horgan had been widowed six weeks previously, and despite there being seven Horgans and three small bedrooms in the stationmaster's house, there are now two boarders, John and Robb Smyth. John Smyth is described as a railway clerk with the Great Southern Railway, a stand-in station master living in one of the rooms at the behest of the landlord, the railway company. Robb, likely a younger brother, is described as a clerk in the Midland & Leinster Bank in Naas. As the Horgans had a double bereavement to process, the intrusion was hardly easy.

Of the children, John Horgan junior was two years out of work as a railway porter, while Mary worked as a solicitors clerk with O'Connors (in Naas, I believe) and Josie, the same Josephine Gibbons that is interviewed in the Frank Taafe piece referenced in the previous post, was two months out of work (which would coincide with not having returned after her father's & brother's deaths in February). The other three are at school. There was just one solictors clerk income supporting the family, and the pressure to vacate coming from the railway company was undoubtedly growing. Before they eventually left, young William had time to put his schooling into practice and scratch "BH" on the brickwork outside the front door of the station master's house in Harristown - the etching is still there.

14/04/2026

1926 CENSUS
Because of complications associated with the Irish War of Independence, the UK government opted not to extend its recurring decennial census to the island of Ireland in 1921. Instead the Free State conducted a census in 1926, in parallel with a census of Northern Ireland conducted by the British government. Fortunately for the twenty-six counties, the household returns from the first Free State census survive - this is not the case for the six counties whose household returns were destroyed. Due to the 100-year rule in Ireland, official documents that may include details on living persons are not published and so, this coming Saturday 18 April, the 100-year anniversary of the 1926 census, the household returns from the 1926 Free State census will be made available on the National Archives website https://nationalarchives.ie/. Barring a technology glitch, this will be a kid-in-a-candy-store weekend for many.

18 April 1926 was an interesting day in Harristown Station and it will be curious to learn who was in situ in the railway accomodations. A station needs a station master, but John Horgan, station master from 1916 to 1926, had died of a heart attack on 28 February 1926 while out hunting in nearby Mullacash. His wife Mary Anne (who hailed from Athy) and the Horgan children found themselves occupying a house that needed to be vacated for the next station master. The Great Southern Railway's employment records have a gap so it is difficult to pinpoint when exactly John Hartnett of Limerick took over, but as late as 04 September 1926 the Kildare Observer printed the attached, suggesting that Mary Anne did not willingly vacate the premises. Two decades previously, Jane Phelan, wife to station master John Phelan would have received similar eviction notice from the GS&WR. The article here says "a house" rather than specifying the station house so, being kind to GSR, it is possible that she was given temporary accommodation for a limited period such that she could find something more permanent and that it was this house that she overheld, but my assumption is that it is the station house.

The Horgan family story is recounted in this article from Frank Taffe's Eye on the Past https://athyeyeonthepast.blogspot.com/1998/03/
- your attention is drawn to "Within another two weeks a letter was received by the young widow now left with seven children requiring her to vacate the Station Master’s house within seven days. Fortunately she was able to return to her native town of Athy to live with her unmarried brother Richard who was still residing in the O’Connor family home in Stanhope Street."

The census returns on Saturday should shed further light.

12/03/2026

IN MEMORY OF SEAMUS O’BRIEN

A sad day today in Harristown. The GS&WR train line cut the Humphreys farm in Harristown down the middle NS in the 1880s with the new road for station access cutting it across the middle EW. My grandmother was a Humphreys and an only child so the farm came into the family through this route - she and my Dad went to the CIE auction in 1961 and bought back the piece of land, now an embankment, and with it the station master’s house which had been derelict for over a decade. There was a tenant in the house for many years, but my parents eventually moved in when they got married in the early 70s. They took great care of it and, down through the years, welcomed many descendants of former station masters and other railway workers in for a cup of tea. He was immensely curious, loved nothing more than driving the roads locally, dog in the back of the car, chatting to anyone and everyone he’d encounter and being down the fields in Donode and Harristown. He was hugely interested in local history, local characters and old ways, and leaves us a wonderful legacy. We will miss you Dad. Thanks for everything and rest in peace.

The death has occurred of Seamus O'Brien of Naas, Kildare Ireland, on 12/03/2026. You can view the full death notice and add your condolences here.

11/02/2026

MILLS & BOON
This is the Griffith's Valuation entry (see https://askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/) for the townland of Mullaghboy, listing the tenancies and their valuations in 1853. Mullaghboy is a small townland bordered by the Liffey to the south and surrounded by Coghlanstown to the East and Harristown to the North and West. Gaganstown and Rochestown are to the south of the river - in 1853, there were no buildings in Rochestown. The freehold of the 147-acre townland of Mullaghboy was owned by 'the Master' John LaTouche of Harristown and land was valued on average at 14s. an acre (per annum). William Kennedy, who had 145 acres and a forge in Gaganstown and Rochestown (Annfield House) had 25 acres on the north of the river also. Houses in Mullaghboy were valued at £1-2 per annum. The rental charged by LaTouche may have differed to the valuations. The big outlier for buildings valuation was the £20 placed on Rochestown corn mill, which is listed as occupied by James Lawler - locally, I have only ever heard this referred to as Lawler's mill and it is in the townland of Mullaghboy - modern day Rochestown is fully south of the Liffey and the railway bridge joins these two townlands. Lawler also had some land, both in Mullaghboy and in Rochestown south of the river.

There is a map on the NLI website which was surveyed in 1707 by Francis Spring for the benefit of Benjamin Chetwood, husband of Ann Eustace, who inherited the Harristown lands when the estate of Sir Maurice Eustace was split in three. In this map, Mullaghboy is not named but the area north of the Liffey is referred to as "Harristowne and that part of Rochestown lying on ye north of the River Liffey", Mullaghboy being what the latter area would come to be known. Rochestown corn mill and the mill race are clearly visible in this map (North is to the left and South to the right). Interestingly there is a 73-acre townland Miltowne on the map, this placename has become disused, it is not referenced in the OSI 6-inch maps which were first surveyed in 1837, and broadly corresponds to that component of the modern walled demesne of Harristown that lies in Harristown townland - John LaTouche, grandfather to 'the Master' above, clearly preferred that his seat lay in Harristown (think Eustace and parliamentary borough) and not what might be implied by 'Milltown'.

08/02/2026

No history today … after the washout of a week, some fine evening colours in Harristown.

04/02/2026

Hard to get tired of images of the magnificent five-arch bridge over the River Liffey that joins the townland of Mullaghboy on the north to the townland of Rochestown to the south, just a mile south of Harristown Station. It is one of three bridges straddling the Liffey between Kilcullen and Ballymore Eustace, only one of which (that between Carnalway and Brannockstown) is readily accessible by land to the public. This bridge was built by the Great Southern & Western Railway between 1883 and 1884 and features a facade made from Ballyknockan granite. The bridge had just one rail track (same as the rest of the Sallins-Tullow line, exceptions being some passing facilities at some of the stations) and as a result is quite narrow. Six trains crossed daily during the line's heyday, three up and three down.

When the line was being built, the field in Mullaghboy adjacent to the bridge hosted a large number of navvy huts - as the Liffey Crossing is close to half-way between Naas and Dunlavin, this area served as a convenient base where the navvies could sleep and from where they could be transported on small railcars to their daily labour.

Looking at the 1910 25-inch OSI map, a stream can be seen running alongside the Liffey - this was a mill race for the old Rochestown corn mill, which is visible in the 1837 6-inch OSI map. A culvert under the embankment north of the river accomodated this. By 1910, the mill was no longer in use but its ruins are still there to this day and would have been visible passing by on the trains. A Rochestown House is marked on the 1910 map along with a few smaller cottages, which were presumably first built to house mill workers. A man called Jackie Wright lived in one of these cottages until the 1950s or 1960s.

This shot was taken by Mark Twomey from a paddle-board.

21/01/2026

Hanging on the wall at the foot of the stairs to the administrative offices of Heuston Station, there is an impressive display of old logo plates from some of the precursor companies to CIÉ. The Sallins-Tullow line was originally operated by Great Southern & Western Railway (GS&WR) which ran all of the principal lines south of the Dublin-Galway axis. Post-war financial difficulties led to the amalgamation of many of these companies into Great Southern Railway (GSR) in 1934, but this in turn was amalgamated along with the Dublin United Tramway Company into still-private CIÉ as a result of the 1944 Transport Act, which in turn became a semi-state as a result of the 1950 Transport Act. You will notice that poor Kilkenny had to give way to Galway’s coat of arms in the GSR logo, with Cork, Limerick and Dublin retained.

10/01/2026

HARRISTOWN, JOHN LA TOUCHE AND THE GREAT FAMINE
On 2 December 1846, (the 'Master') John La Touche published a letter to the UK Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, expressing dissatisfaction with certain relief measures that had been introduced for the labouring poor the preceding Summer. At his time of writing, La Touche was still relatively young, having been married in 1843, but had recently experienced considerable personal tragedy with the death of his father in1844 and the untimely death of his twin brother at the Curragh races in September of 1846, events which elevated him decisively to head of household. Besides having extensive holdings in Kildare, he also inherited interests in Tipperary and Leitrim, with total tenantry of about 1,000 and a substantial rent roll. Unlike his grandfather, father, uncles and granduncles, John did not himself seek influence through sitting in Parliament - his contribution as a political representative was limited to county roles such as the Grand Jury member, Justice of the Peace and Deputy Lieutenant. This would not be his first public letter addressed to the Prime Minister - he would later opine on the merits of secret ballot for parliamentary and local elections (eventually enacted in 1872), taking issue with the degree of landlord coercion and corruption that he had observed in voting practices.

By all accounts, La Touche was a responsible and caring landlord, famously imposing empathetic measures such as the simplest of meals on his own household during the famine. His letter to Russell took particular issue with the Public Works Act, whereby local landowners ultimately bore the financial burden of funding labour for the destitute in public works projects. La Touche, acknowledging that this measure was introduced before the full extent of potato failure was known, considered that relief committees were compelled to accept presentations for projects that were "utterly useless" and for which "no remuneration for the large sums expended on them" could be expected to be returned. La Touche argued the landlords in most baronies had done all in their power to relieve distress and were being forced to give money to unproductive labour and unprofitable and inequitable undertakings, and that it would be far better to deploy resources towards the draining and cultivation of waste land in the country. He went on to argue for publicly-funded assisted emigration, citing the success of his own private exploits - 'I have sent out every spring for the last 8 to 10 years many families to America, and without a single exception the accounts received from them are most satisfactory and encouraging'. My suspicion is that these assisted emigration cases related in the main to the Leitrim or Tipperary estates.

In Kildare, a September 1850 report in the Farmer's Gazette (a publication that was extremely well-disposed towards the La Touche estate) congratulates La Touche and his land steward Mr. Robertson on the successful putting of the former's money where his mouth was. The report made reference to the thorough draining (at a cost of £4 3s an acre) of the 130-acre townland of Stonebrook "composed principally of a bog and the site of an old lake". It goes on to state that "the results of this undertaking are highly satisfactory, but the effects during the course of operations, in giving employment during the late trying season of famine and destitution, and keeping the cottier tenantry of this truly humane proprietor off the rates".

However, another well-intentioned letter dated 19 November 1851 from La Touche to the editor of the Dublin Evening Mail highlighted the risks in putting one's head above the parapet - it drew criticism and accused La Touche of self-interest, abusing public officers administering the law under the most difficult of circumstances and of attempting to deter landed proprietors from improving property and employing people when this was most needed. The Board of Works to some extent had moved in a direction that was aligned with La Touche's 1846 letter to Russell and, assisted by Treasury loans as well as local rates, began focussing on drainage relief projects. La Touche's gripe, expressed in the 1851 letter, was not with this direction of travel but the lack of control that the landlords had in the projects and with mismanagement, inefficiency and the hapless ex*****on of the Board of Works. He cited being a victim of extortion, having been induced to put his name down for £500 in Leitrim and £100 in Tipperary with very poor results and at a cost of nearly £20 an acre, almost five times what La Touche had personally financed in Stonebrook and on land that "presented no difficulty to thorough drainage". I suspect that he had a point.