Shining a light on early town governance in New Ross
Published in Issue 1 (January/February 2020), News, Volume 28Enhancing user access to the town’s oldest municipal minutes.
By Gráinne Doran and Linda Doran
Above: An illustrated page from a 1687 list of New Ross’s mayor and officials. (Wexford County Archive)
Wexford County Archive is the official repository for the archives and records of local government in County Wexford, in addition to an extensive range of archival collections of private origin. The archive facilitates academic, local and family history research in its reading room.
In recent years, digital technologies have transformed how archives are accessed and used by the public. The traditional means of viewing archival material in the reading room has now been superseded by on-line access. In response to this, Wexford County Archive, as part of its annual digitisation programme, has prioritised the digital capture of its more popularly used holdings and has made them available on-line in an effort to enhance remote access.
Digitisation of archives works best when the materials are typescript, printed or at least written in a legible hand. Challenges can arise, however, when manuscript materials from the Tudor and Stuart periods are digitised and made available on-line in their original form.
Representing the earliest extant municipal archives in County Wexford, the first two minute books of New Ross Corporation (1658–1732) provide a unique insight into the functioning of local government of the period, in addition to land and property management and a glimpse of the characters and personalities who populated the town. The two volumes were digitised in 2016 but a decision was taken not to make them available on-line immediately, as they are written in Secretary hand, a style of handwriting that can present a significant challenge to decipher for the majority of potential users. Making them available on-line would only have appealed to a select few, mainly academics. One of the objectives of Wexford County Archive is to enhance access remotely but in a format that will be fully accessible to all end users. It was therefore decided to undertake a transcription project in the summer of 2017.
Each transcribed page has now been digitally stitched to its digitised counterpart and all transcriptions are fully searchable, thus making them available to all our user groups. The project has been made available on Wexford County Archive’s new website following a launch in New Ross in December 2019.
A single surviving fragment from the New Ross Corporation Minute Books for 1634–5 is held in Carlow Library and offers an interesting insight into local governance in seventeenth-century Ireland. This was a century of almost continual unrest, beginning with the Flight of the Earls and ending with the battles of the Boyne and Aughrim. Among the issues highlighted in the minutes is the cost, both financial and social, of defence for a small but strategically important town. The billeting of troops—how this was to be organised, who was to be exempted, the stabling of horses—takes up weeks of discussion. The payment for the damage caused by the troops and the cost of the care of those wounded were also of concern. There was clearly substantial resistance to the billeting of troops and a resentment of the disruption. The heads of households were required to arm themselves and freemen were appointed to acquire arms in the countryside. Sentry-boxes were installed on the quay and at the market.
Conditions for the granting of the freedom of the town provide a wonderful glimpse into the priorities of the authorities. Service in the militia was important and particular trades were encouraged—button-makers, apothecaries and shoemakers were made freeman. Sons of freemen and the husbands of daughters of freemen were also granted the privilege. The religious divisions of the period can be seen in the fact that both Roman Catholics and Quakers are sworn without the oath. The religious and political tensions are illustrated by the stipulation that the Folly House, a property close to the Market Gate of the town and therefore a strategic location, was not to be rented to Catholics. Instead, it was rented to a scholar to teach ‘poor boys of the town’.
Most of the entries, however, concern day-to-day life—keeping the streets clean, securing the water supply, renting out property, protecting the markets and keeping citizens safe. Repair of the conduit in ‘a manner to prevent the lead being stolen’, the gate closing times, when the bakehouses may be heated (not at night) and the control of ‘hucksters’ at the market—these were the affairs of greatest concern. The books show the efforts of the council to protect the citizens and ensure the smooth running of affairs at a time when their town was caught in the tailwinds of international matters.
Gráinne Doran is Wexford County Council Archivist; Linda Doran is editor of New Ross in the RIA’s Irish Historic Towns Atlas series.
Personal Histories
On this Day
April 24
- 1951 Enda Kenny, TD for Mayo West (1975–97) and Mayo (1997–2020), leader of Fine Gael (2002–17) and taoiseach (2011–17), born in Derrycoosh, Islandeady, near Castlebar, Co. Mayo.
- 1945
Above: The steamship Monmouth Coast—torpedoed by a German U-boat near Tory Island on 24 April 1945. (Paul Johnson Collection)
During the last week of the Second World War, the Monmouth Coast, an unescorted steamship en route from Sligo to Liverpool with a cargo of barytes ore from the mines of Ben Bulben, was torpedoed by a German U-boat some seven miles north-east of Tory Island. The captain and fifteen crewmen (including two Irishmen) lost their lives, but one managed to survive, thanks to two locals from Arranmore. Two days later, whilst beachcombing on the north-eastern coast of the island, they spotted a life-raft floating in a remote sandy inlet; they rowed out to it and lifted the tarpaulin, to discover a wide-eyed teenager, Derek Cragg (17) from Liverpool, the mess-room boy from the Monmouth Coast. He explained that the ship had gone down very quickly and that those of the crew who managed to leap clear were sucked down after it. He, too, was dragged down but somehow managed to make it back to the surface, where he spotted the life-raft and clambered on board. He was given every assistance by the islanders and safely repatriated, but had the north-easterly wind that drove him 25 miles blown him into the adjoining inlet, his raft would have been smashed to pieces. Over 30,000 Allied merchant seamen, of every nationality, lost their lives during the war. Despite our neutrality, Irish Shipping lost two ships. The Irish Pine was torpedoed off Greenland in November 1942 with the loss of all 33 on board, and the Irish Oak was sunk in the North Atlantic in May 1943, though her entire crew was rescued by a sister-ship, the Irish Plane.
- 1912 Justin McCarthy (82), Home Rule politician, leader of the anti-Parnellite faction (1891–6), historian and novelist, died.
- 1916 The Easter Rising began.Sir Ernest Shackleton and five of his crew set out on their epic 720-nautical-mile rescue mission in the James Caird, from Elephant Island to South Georgia.
- 1974 The Electricity Supply Board (ESB) announced that Carnsore Point, Co. Wexford, would be the site of its planned nuclear power station.
May 19
- 1935
Above: ‘Lawrence of Arabia’—his father was in fact Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath.
T.E.—Thomas Edward—Lawrence (46), the legendary ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, died as a result of a motorcycle accident in Dorset. For much of his adult life Lawrence was a troubled man. Though his key role in the British-inspired Arab revolt (1916) against Ottoman Turkish rule earned him international celebrity, he was torn by guilt over Britain’s post-war betrayal of the Arabs with the implementation at Versailles of the notorious Sykes–Picot Agreement. Then there was the issue of identity. At the tender age of ten he discovered that his parents were not married, meaning that he and his four brothers were illegitimate. Later he was to learn that ‘Mr Lawrence’, his father, was, in fact, Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath, who, though married with four daughters, had fled with their governess, Sarah Lawrence, first to Wales—where ‘Ned’ was born—and finally to London. He was eventually to find himself increasingly drawn to his father’s homeland. A close friend of George Bernard Shaw and his wife Charlotte—GBS had helped him to edit his major work, Seven pillars of wisdom (1926)—he mentioned his desire in his surviving letters to visit Ireland and often referred to the works of Seán O’Casey, James Joyce and J.M. Synge. Indeed, he hoped to write a biography of Sir Roger Casement. It seems that he never did try to make contact with his half-sisters. In 1954, almost twenty years after his death, some of his old friends visited the two surviving ones, who were living at 39 Northumberland Road, Dublin. They told them that they had followed their half-brother’s career with great interest but likewise had made no attempt to contact him.
- 1870 The Home Government Association of Ireland was founded by Isaac Butt with the aim of establishing a federal system for the United Kingdom, which would grant Ireland a parliament responsible for national affairs. Succeeded by the Home Rule League (1873).
- 1868 Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, son of Arthur Guinness (1725–1803), brewer and writer who restored St Patrick’s Cathedral (1860), died.