By Ruth Illingworth

The county town of Westmeath has a history and heritage dating back more than eight centuries. The name ‘Mullingar’ comes from the Irish ‘An Muileann gCearr’, meaning ‘The Lefthandwise moving Mill’.

Mullingar is first mentioned in a twelfth century manuscript called the ‘The life of Saint Colman of Lynn’ which is preserved in the library of Rennes in France.

The town was founded by a Norman baron called William Petit in around 1186. He built a castle overlooking the River Brosna where the county buildings are now located.

Mullingar was a borough by 1210, a parish by 1205 and was first granted a fair in 1207. In 1227 an Augustinian Friary was established in Mullingar and a Dominican Friary was founded in 1237. There was also a building called the Frank House which belonged to the Knights Hospitalliers Order.

The parish church of All Saints, first mentioned in 1202, stood on the site of the present day All Saints Church. The population of early Mullingar comprised French, English, Welsh, Breton and Flemish immigrants, as well as native Irish. The town was governed by an official called the Portreeve or Sovereign. The Mullingar town seal which may date back as far as the thirteenth century, is now on display in the National Museum, along with a seal used by the Dominican Friary and scallop shells worn by Augustinian pilgrim from the town who had visited Santiago de Compostela. As well as the castle and religious houses, the town also had a hospital, a number of fortified tower houses, several mills, three or four streets and a large amount of common grazing land.

Long wars in other disasters led to the decline of the town in the later middle ages. Plague killed half the population in 1348-49 and Mullingar was burnt by the Irish in 1464. By the 1440’s the papacy was appealing to pilgrims to give sums towards the upkeep of the religious houses The Dominican and Augustinian monasteries were closed in 1539-1540 at the time of the reformation.

In 1542 the county of Westmeath was created by King Henry VIII and Mullingar became the county town, with the Dominican Friary serving as the first county jail. A town wall may have been build after 1583 but it did not prevent the town from being burnt and looted in 1597 and 1598 during the nine years war. Although the Irish church passed into Protestant hands in the 1580’s the majority of Mullingar families remained Roman Catholic. A Capuchin Friary was built in 1636 although it did not survive the Cromwellian era.

The Dominicans returned to Mullingar in the 1620’s and established a convent which was one of the largest in Ireland. Alumni from Mullingar Dominican Convent served as bishops in Ireland or lectured in universities and Irish colleges across Europe. In 1661 the manor of Mullingar was granted by King Charles II to a Scottish soldier called Sir. Arthur Forbes. He was later made Earl of Granard and his family owned Mullingar for almost 200 years. Mullingar in the seventeenth century was an important assize and garrison town. A new jail and courthouse were built in the 1680’s. At the time of the Williamite War in 1690-91, the Roman Catholic population of Mullingar was temporarily expelled to make way for William of Orange’s army. Thousands of soldiers from all over Ireland and Europe assembled in Mullingar to prepare for the final assault against the Jacobites and a new town wall was built.

Eighteen century Mullingar was a fairly prosperous market town with a large number of shops and inns and brewing and malting establishments. The livestock, wool and linen fairs attracted buyers from all over Ireland and beyond, while the weekly market saw a brick trade ingrain, butter and other agricultural commodities. The town was extensively damaged in a fire in 1747, with more that 100 houses being burned, but it was soon rebuilt in stone and slate. Despite the penal laws, a wealthy Roman Catholic middle class survived in Mullingar. In 1730, they were able to fund the building of a new parish church and parochial house where the Parish Community centre is now. This substantial building was described as being “the finest of its type between Dublin and Galway”. The parish records for Mullingar date back to 1735 and are among the oldest surviving in Ireland. A county infirmary was also opened in 1771 and the building is still standing — now the County Library Headquarters. The nineteenth century saw Mullingar become an important transport hub with the arrival of the Royal Canal in 1806 and the Railway in 1848.

Improved transport links with the rest of the county enhanced. Mullingar’s prosperity and the railway station became one of the town’s most important sources of employment. The station house built in 1856-57 is considered one of Ireland’s finest surviving examples of Victorian railway architecture. During the nineteenth century, Mullingar expanded beyond it medieval core with residential suburbs emerging on the Eastern and Southern sides of the town and a Catholic Institutional quarter developing on the North side of Mullingar. New schools were opened by the Presentation, Loreto and Christian Brothers orders and in 1836, Mullingar’s first Cathedral was opened. Other institutional buildings in Mullingar in the 1800’s included a workhouse, an asylum, a police barracks, a post office, several imposing (and now listed) bank buildings, a Protestant parochial hall, a Masonic hall, a Catholic parochial hall and a Protestant National School. The Church of Ireland was rebuilt in 1814 and Presbyterian and Methodist Chapels also opened.

The Market House was rebuilt in 1867 and remains one of Mullingar’s landmark buildings. A large new army barracks was built during the Napoleonic wars. During the great famine, hundreds died in Mullingar poor law union and emigration from the area soared. The ‘Famine Graveyard’ along the canal supply is a reminder of that terrible time in Mullingar’s history. In 1858, the town of Mullingar was bought by Colonel Fulke Greville for €125,000. In 1861. Greville leased a right of way to the War Office for ten million years — the longest lease in history.

In 1900 and 1901, James Joyce visited Mullingar when his father was appointed to sort out the local electoral rolls. Joyce never forgot the town and Mullingar features in nearly all his books. In 1913 Douglas Hyde came to Mullingar to open the new County Hall, now Mullingar Arts Centre. Westmeath County Council was set up in 1899 and the county Buildings opened on the site of the former County Jail in 1913. During the First World War, scores of local men served in the armed forces and many were killed or seriously injured. Others saw the war as “Ireland’ Opportunity”.

During the 1916-21 troubles, many local men and women supported the independence struggle. After the Treaty, the British army withdrew from Mullingar in February 1922. During the interwar years, a number of important building projects enhanced the town including a G.A.A. stadium, a new county hospital and Ireland’s first pencil factory. The most significant building, however was the Cathedral of Christ the King, which was consecrated in 1939 and is Mullingar’s landmark building. With the outbreak of World War two, the army barracks reopened and in 1943 became the home of the ~ Field Artillery Regiment. Mullingar remains an important military base and soldiers from the town have served with distinction on U.N. Missions across the world since 1960. In 1951, Comhaltas CeoltóirI Eireann was founded in Mullingar and the first All-Ireland Fleadh was held in the town that year. In 1953 when Mount Everest was first climbed, one of the very first people to be told the news, before the press were informed, was Colonel Charles Howard Bury of Belvedere House. He had led the first reconnaissance of the mountain in 1921 and became world famous as a result. The late twentieth century saw Mullingar grow dramatically. The population increased fourfold between 1951 and 2006 and is now at some 20,000, the highest in the town history.

New factories, schools, roads, churches and housing estates transformed the local landscape. As the twenty-first century began and Mullingar entered it ninth century, a town founded by immigrants was more diverse that ever, with more than fifty nationalities living in Mullingar. The Methodist Chapel had closed in 1965 but forty years later Mullingar’s faith communities included Baptists and Pentecostalists, Mormons and Jehovahs Witnesses, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs.

Amidst all this change, Mullingar remains a town with as rich and varied a history and heritage as any in Ireland. The next 800 years should be an equally varied and interesting time for what may soon be the city of Mullingar. © Eirmarket Limited 2009