Lyons Hill

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Lyons
Liamhain
Location
Location of Lyons
centerMap highlighting Lyons
Statistics
Province: Leinster
County: County Kildare
Population (2002)

Lyons Hill, a restored village, former parish, church and town, now part of the community of Ardclough in north County Kildare. At a time when canal passenger boats travelled at 3mph Lyons was the nearest overnight stop to Dublin on the Grand Canal. On the hilltop is a trigonometrical point used by Ireland's Ordnance Survey. The name derives from the Irish language name for elm tree, Liamhan.

Contents

[edit] Modern Village

Lyons village was restored 1999-2007 from a deserted and depopulated state by the aviation pioneer Tony Ryan, and contains his mausoleum. The village consists of apartments based in the former canalside industrial heritage buildings dating to the 1820s, a small chapel, and Café la Serre and The Mill, two high profile restaurants run by Irish celebrity chef Richard Corrigan. Other artisans dwellings are to be restored in the third phase of the scheme, 2007-2011. It is beside the 13th lock on the Grand Canal and approached from a separate entrance to the entrance of Lyons House beside Kearneystown Bridge on the road from Newcastle to Ardclough.

[edit] Royal Seat

Lyons Hill was the inauguration site for members of one of three septs of the Uí Dúnlainge dynasty which rotated the kingship of Leinster between 750-1050. In that period 10 Uí Dúnchada Kings of Leinster (later the FitzDesmonds) established their base at Lyons. Their influence helped secure a placemyth for Cnoch Liamhna among 300 locations featured in Dinnshenchas Érenn, the poem Liamuin. The Toraíocht of Liamuin was based on the mythical pursuit of a beautiful daughter of King Dúbhthach Dubthaire. The Lyons kings were:

[edit] Manor and Parish

After the Norman invasion Lyons became an important manor, castle and parish. Anglicised names which occur in the calendar rolls are Lewan (Calendar of State papers) 1217, Leuan in 1223, 1224, 1225, 1228, 1230 and 1260, Lyons in 1272, Lyons (Ecclesiastical Tax 1322), Lyons in 1332 (listed as "burned by the O’Tooles" in the Book of Howth), as Lions (Calendar of Carew MS 1535 and 1537) and eventually as Lyons after 1541.Lyons church, now a mausoleum for the Lawless family, was constructed around 1350. It has intricate carvings and a stone commemorating the marriage of Richard Aylmer to Eleanor Tyrrell in 1548. Lyons parish was united with the parish of Oughterard in 1541 and with Kill in 1691, although it remained the headquarters of the Catholic parish until 1817. The oldest headstone in Lyons churchyard dates to 1693, dedicated to Edmond Moore and his son James. Royal manors were created in {{Oughterard_County_Kildare|Oughterard]] on an adjoining hill and Newcastle-Lyons, below the hill within the County Dublin boundary created in 1210. Newcastle-Lyons developed as a separate medieval town and was granted two seats in the Irish parliament in 1606.

[edit] Clonaghlis Church and Parish

Clonaghlis graveyard within the Lyons estate is also the seat of a former parish. The Calendar Rolls record that Peter de Laermerd granted the Church of Clonacles to St Thomas Abbey near Dublin in 1206 and that in 1336 John Plunkett sued Hugh de Blound of Rathregan County Meath, for the Manor of Cluinaghlys, in possession of his grandfather Walter Plunkett and passed down by his father Henry Plunkett. Nothing remains of the church but some scattered stones, and the oldest headstone in Clonaghlis graveyard, still in use by local people, dates to 1729. Aviation pioneer Tony Ryan was buried in the graveyard after his death in 2007.

Lyons Castle
Lyons Castle

[edit] Lyons Estate

Four families, FitzDesmond, Tyrrell, Aylmer and Lawless (Barons Cloncurry), have held possession of Lyons through most of its history. The original Lyons house and town was destroyed in 1641. Michael Aylmer inherited the estate at the age of four in 1733 and became indebted to banker Nicholas Lawless, eventually losing the house in 1796. First Nicholas Lawless (construction during 1786) and his son Valentine Lawless (construction 1804-10) combined to build a large country house in its own gardens, decorated in the Directoire style, of which there are few examples in Ireland, and with a private lake. Valentine Lawless, after 1799 the second Lord Cloncurry spent GBP200,000 on renovation included frescoes by Gaspare Gabrielli and three ship loads of classical art imported from Italy. A fourth shipment was lost when it sank off Wicklow. Treasures which were successfully imported include three columns from the ruins of the "Golden House" of Nero in Rome, used in the portico, and a statue of Venus excavated at Ostia.

[edit] Grand Canal

When work on the Grand Canal begun in 1756 Ardclough was one of the first sections to be dug. The canal reached Ardclough in 1763, when the 13th lock, a 137 feet double lock built with Pozzuolona mortar, was opened, following to the ambitious design of the canal’s original engineer, Thomas Omer. When a new engineer, John Trail took over construction of the canal in 1768, the proposed canal capacity was reduced from 170 ton barges to 40 ton barges.

[edit] Thirteenth Lock

Canal records show that “ Lyons or Clonaughles lock” was reduced in size in 1783, but the canal through the thirteenth lock serves as a reminder of Omer’s original plan, 20 feet wide, compared with the 14 feet width adopted by Trail. Ardclough bridge was named in original plans for the Bruton family of Clonaghlis but constructed with a name plate bearing the name of the Henry family of Straffan. From 1777 a local river, the Morrel was proposed as water feeder for the canal, construction resumed and the first passenger boats were towed to Sallins in February 1779.

[edit] Lock Yard

Local landowner Valentine Lawless was a canal enthusiast, constructing the Lyons mill and lockyard village complex in the 1820s and serving as chairman of the Grand Canal Company five times during his lifetime. The canal was an important, if slow, passenger thoroughfare feeding passenger’s to John Barry’s hotel at Lyons.

When in 1834 Flyboats increased the average speed for passenger boats from 3mph to 9mph Ireland’s first railway was already under construction. The canal peaked at 120,615 passengers in 1846, the year construction started on the Dublin-Cork railway line. When a Dublin-Galway railway line was opened in 1850 the closure of the rarely-profitable passenger service followed in 1852.

Cargo traffic continued to use the canal for another 108 years, peaking at 379.045 tons in 1865 when an average of 90 barges a day passed through Ardclough. The canal was motorised 1911-24 and closed to cargo in 1960, but is still a popular thoroughfare for leisure boats. The tracks of the ropes of the horse drawn barges can still be traced at Ardclough canal bridge.

[edit] Economic Life

With the accidental burning of the mill in 1903 and the decline of the estate after the Cloncurry title became extinct, the area went into decline. Lyons estate was sold to UCD as an agricultural campus in 1962. In 1990 it was purchased by Michael Smurfit and in 1996 resold. John Betjeman's ode to a Lake was based on his stay in Lyons in 1958. Writer Emily Lawless spent part of her childhood in the house.

[edit] Restoration

The fabric of the buildings in at the lockyard beside the 13th Lock date to the 1820s and represent a rare and important industrial heritage site. In the period after the burning of the mill and especially after the 1950s the buildings were allowed to fall into disrepair. Thanks to the interest of recent owner of Lyons House Ryanair founder Tony Ryan, Lyons lockyard village is in the process of being redeveloped and restored. The first phase was reopened as a restaurant and apartments in August 2006.

[edit] Bibliography

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