March 2025. Putting together family history.
Doolin: History and Memories
TU Dublin | Technological University Dublinhttps://arrow.tudublin.ie › cgi › viewcontent
by KM Griffin · 2020 · Cited by 1 — This book is dedicated to the many generations of Griffins / Griffys who have gone before us. In particular we remember Brendan Griffin, who left us in June …
Doolin: History and Memories
Kevin M. Griffin
Independent Scholar
Kevin A. Griffin
Technological University Dublin, kevin.griffin@tudublin.ie
Brendan J. Griffin
Independent Scholar
Copyright © 2020 Kevin M. Griffin & Kevin A. Griffin.
All rights reserved
Published in Ireland by:
Ballina Killaloe Print
Ballina
Killaloe
Co. Tipperary
kevin.a.griffin@gmail.com
ISBN
Print Version: 978-0-9539320-4-7
Digital Version: 978-0-9539320-3-0
Open Access digital version available online at
https://arrow.tudublin.ie/tfschhmtbook/51/
doi:10.21427/vbbp-kv37
Design and Typesetting Kevin M. Griffin & Kevin A. Griffin
Cover Photograph by Robert A. Griffin
============
From Index:
Major William Nugent Macnamara MP pg 7
H.V. Macnamara pg 8
Francis Macnamara pg 8
============
Big Houses pg 22
Aran View pg 22 My grandmother, Marcella Blake-Forster was born in Aran View. She lived at Ballykeale House, Kilfenora.
Aughavoher House pg 23
Ballinalacken House pg 23
Castle View pg 24
St Catherine’s pg 24
Doolin Castle / House pg 25 Francis Macnamara was first cousin of my grandmother Marcella Blake-Forster
=============
Quarries & Mines pg 78
‘Liscannor’ Stone pg 78
The Elizabeth McLea pg 84
Liscannor / Doonagore Stoneworkers pg 85
Self Taught Sculptor pg 86
Doonagore ‘Village’ pg 88
The Stonecutters Cottages pg 88
The Davorens pg 88
Other Quarries & Mines pg 91
Silver Mine pg 91
Phosphate Extraction pg 91 Marcella Blake-Forster married Michael Comyn KC (later Judge) who opened the phosphate mines at Doolin, Noughaval
Fluorspar Minepg 98
Memories of the Mines pg 98
Dinny Moloney Remembers pg 98
Lismurrahaun Gold? pg 10
==============#
Other Quarries & Mines
In addition to the production of the world-famous
Liscannor Stone, other valuable minerals and
metals have been extracted in the area. There
is historical evidence of a failed Silver Mine in
Doolin in the nineteenth century and the area
had a highly successful Phosphate mine and
an exploratory Fluorspar Mine in the mid 20th
century.
Phosphate‡
Extraction
The main mining and quarrying that people
remember is the phosphate extraction in the
Doolin and Noughaval areas. The initial
‡ While the locals in Doolin always called this phosphate,
a number of Geological Survey of Ireland reports refer to
phosphorite – ‘to cover any variety of richly phosphatic
sedimentary rock’.
=================
Marcella Blake-Forster lineage:
Major William Nugent Macnamara MP
A branch of the Macnamara¶
family was established
in north Clare following the Cromwellian Land
Settlement in the mid-seventeenth century, the
first arrival of the name being Teige Macnamara
who settled in Ballyvaughan in 1659. The
youngest of Teige’s seven sons was Bartholomew
¶ Following the guidance of Mac Mahon (2017) in his
wonderful paper on The Macnamaras of Doolin &
Ennistymon, we use the format Macnamara, with a
lower case ‘n’ as he suggests.
Macnamara, born 1685, and his eldest son was
William Macnamara, who settled in Doolin after
he married Catherine, daughter and heiress of
Francis Sarsfield of Doolin. Sarsfield had been
granted over 1,400 acres including Doolin in
1679/80. Thus, by the mid 1800s, the Macnamaras
had a large estate in the baronies of Burren and
Corcomroe, mainly in the parishes of Carran
(Burren), Killilagh, Kilmacrehy and Kilmanaheen
(Corcomroe). They also owned large parts of the
town of Ennistymon.
The great-grandson of Bartholomew, that is
Major William Nugent Macnamara (1775-1856)
of Doolin House (Castle) was remembered quite
fondly in my time as an interesting local character.
He was the local landlord in the mid 1800s and
was a very wealthy man, reputedly owning
10,000 acres of the best land in Clare. A Member
of Parliament for many years representing the
county, and also High Sheriff of the county, he
was very proactive and supportive of actions that
would improve the situation of his tenants. For
example, when a school was proposed for the
Doolin area, he was enthusiastically in favour of
supporting the education of his tenants’ children.
His generous offer of land or money – ‘whatever
amount needed will be ready now’ – must be
acknowledged at a time when few people could, or
were willing, to make such an offer. Mac Mahon
(2017:7) describes the Major as follows:
Throughout his long life he had the reputation
of an Irish Lochinvar [i.e. romantic hero], a
dashing cavalier, immensely popular with
his peers and tenants alike.
He was a close friend of Daniel O’Connell, and
when O’Connell found himself involved in a duel
with the army officer d’Eesterre, his measure of
confidence in Macnamara is shown in his choice
of the Major as his ‘second’ in the duel. Against
the odds, O’Connell won, fatally injuring his
opponent. This was said to have been due to the advice of the Major who in my time, was
remembered with pride in Doolin. His obituary in
The Clare Journal on 13 November, 1856, says
that he was known throughout North Clare as
‘the poor man’s magistrate’, and his funeral was
described as the largest ever seen in the county
and extended for two miles (Mac Mahon, 2017).
H.V. Macnamara
Henry Valentine Macnamara, known as ‘Henry
Vee’, grandson of William Nugent was appointed
High Sheriff of Clare in 1885. He was also an
interesting character, and inherited the estate from
his father ‘The Colonel’, an improving landlord
who had built much of present day Ennistymon
and enlarged his home – Ennistymon House
(now the Falls Hotel). Henry Vee is described by
his granddaughter Nicolette as ‘a fine figure of
a man … a diehard of the old regime [who was
full of] blustering high spirits’. He lived through
complicated times for landlords in Ireland. In
one episode, he was ambushed by the IRA (in
December 1919), near Leamaneh Castle. The
Republican volunteers were probably unprepared
for the response, whereby, Henry Vee and his party
put up a spirited defence and while Macnamara
was injured in the neck by gunfire, there were no
fatalities. In April 1922, he was sent an ultimatum
by the Executive Council of the IRA and on advice
he withdrew to London from Ennistymon House,
where he died three years later.
Francis Macnamara
Francis Macnamara
The next Macnamara heir was the eccentric and
bohemian poet Francis Macnamara, son of Henry
Vee. Throughout the later nineteenth and early
twentieth century he had used Doolin House
regularly with his family. His daughter Nicolette
wrote about life in Doolin with her colourful father
and his artistic friends in her autobiography called
Two Flamboyant Fathers, which she authored
under her married name Devas. Francis moved
in artistic circles and his other daughter Caitlin
married poet and writer Dylan Thomas. Francis
was friends with the likes of Lady Gregory and
W.B. Yeats and guests at Doolin House during
this time included the writer George Bernard
Shaw and regularly the painter Augustus John and
his family.
Before Francis inherited the Macnamara estate,
Doolin house had been burned down. This
occurred some time before the aforementioned
IRA ultimatum to his father. Years later, when
peace returned to Ireland, Francis, who was then
in the third of his three marriages, returned to settle
in Clare and retook possession of Ennistymon
House. He tried to turn it into a hotel in the
1930s, but his daughter Caitlin suggests that he
wasn’t really suitable for such an endeavour. He
later moved into in a more modest home on the
land and rented his family home to the O’Regan
family. Later, Francis moved to Dublin, where
he died in 1946. Francis had only one son and
three daughters. With the death of his son, John,
who had no children, the Ennistymon and Doolin
Macnamaras ‘became extinct in the male line’
(Mac Mahon 2017:15)
==================
Francis Macnamara, Irish poet, 1886 – 1946
Francis Macnamara by Augustus John: Over six feet tall, golden haired and blue bright eyes, he carried himself like a conqueror (Michael Holroyd in Augustus John’s biography)
Francis Macnamara was the hereditary owner of Doolin and Ennistymon in Co. Clare, Ireland, and son of H V Macnamara ( who died of wounds received in an ambush in the Burren in 1919). His mother Edith Cooper was an Australian heiress, the daughter of Sir Daniel Cooper of Woolhara, Ist Baronet, and First Speaker of the NSW parliament. Sir Daniel Cooper inherited the fortune made by his uncle, also Daniel Cooper, who was transported to Australia in 1816 following a conviction for armed robbery at Chester Assizes.
A protestant even though from a very ancient Clare family, Irish independence and the forfeiture of most of the family lands put paid to the Macnamara fortune, and his life was spent in relative poverty and unproductive idleness. He had three marriages, none of which lasted, and his life is chronicled in his daughter Nicolette Devas’s classic autobiography Two Flamboyant Fathers. He was an enthusiastic and highly experienced sailor and had his own Galway hooker the Mary Anne fitted out as a yacht, and sailed this regularly from the West of Ireland to England and beyond. He converted his home the Falls in Ennistymon into a hotel , but this venture was not a success and he sold it in 1943, finishing his years in Dublin. Francis had four children by his first wife: John, Nicolette, Caitlin, and Brigit. Caitlin married the poet Dylan Thomas, see below.
Books/poems/translations by Francis Macnamara
- Marionettes , a book of poems published in 1909
- The physiology of marriage, by Honore de Balzac, translated and with an introduction by Francis Macnamara, Casanova Press, 1925
- Wessex Review, quarterly appearing in the 1920s: edited and largely written by Francis Macnamara, often under pseudonyms ( see for instance Quarterly No. 2, Lady Day 1923)
- Poetry in various magazines, for instance the June 1914 edition of Poetry and Drama
see Sonnet written on the birth of his son John Macnamara
Books and other sources with information about Francis Macnamara
- Two Flamboyant Fathers, by Nicolette Devas,
- Form of Diary, anonymous but in fact by Erica Cotterill, Pushkin Press, 1939, which depicts Francis Macnamara as the character F. Francis Macnamara was her lover, and the book describes their often violent relationship
- Caitlin- life with Dylan Thomas, by Caitlin Thomas with George Tremlett, 1986
- Caitlin- the life of Caitlin Thomas, by Paul Ferris, 1993.
- The Seventh Child, by Romilly John ( a son of Augustus) , 1975: contains amusing descriptions of Francis as his teacher
- Yachting Monthly, article about the Mary Anne Galway hooker
- Augustus John, by Michael Holroyd, Vintage 1997, where Francis Macnamara’s long friendship with Augustus John is documented
- It isn’t this time of year at all, by Oliver St John Gogarty, 1954, republished Sphere books 1983, in which Gogarty makes disparaging but possibly true remarks about Francis Macnamara’s mother, as well as about Francis himself
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