Exploring the Heritage of Johnnie Mack's Mud House in Tullaroe,
County Clare
by Paddy
Waldron (genealogist and local historian)
Saturday 16 August 2025 3:00pm
Teach Ceoil, Grace Street, Kilrush, County Clare
WWW version:
YouTube version:
Introduction
John McNamara (1885-1981) was the last survivor of a family of seven
who lived in one of the last inhabited partly mud-built houses in
County Clare.
The house fell into ruin after the death of the man known locally as
Johnnie Mack, a bachelor farmer, who had lived alone for the last
quarter century of his long life.
In 2025, this rare surviving example of pre-Famine Irish vernacular
architecture stood at a critical crossroads, both literally and
metaphorically.
What is the trade-off between road safety and vernacular
architecture? Blake's Corner and Tullaroe?
Archaeologist Dave Pollock was appointed to record details of the
house and supervise the road safety works, including partial
demolition of the ruin.
The archaeological work to explore the foundations of the house and
its history was partly funded by Clare County Council and The
Heritage Council.
The heritage of this, or any, house comprises several aspects,
including:
- the landscape in which it is located;
- the genealogy of the families who have lived in the
house and emigrated from it;
- the vernacular materials from which it is constructed;
and
- the oral history of the house and of its residents as retained
in local memory.
The talk will draw heavily on Dave Pollock's work and on interviews
with Johnnie Mack's nearest neighbours, Tommy Heaphy and Liam
O'Sullivan.
Landscape
- Tullaroe, or part of it, was formerly known as Farrenvullen.
- On Clare Libraries maps from 1659 to 1842.
- The east-west road is not on Pelham's 1787 map.
- The Tullaroe road eventually connected two of Clare's oldest
churches at Kilfearagh and Kilnagalliagh and led on to Cammoge,
the Ferry, Kilrush, and the whole Shannon Estuary.
- The building is aligned with this straight east-west road
rather than the underlying network of fields, and is unlikely to
predate the construction of the road (sometime after 1787).
- Kilkee, Blackweir Bridge, the Blackweir-to-Querrin road and
the Wild Atlantic Way came later.
- Traffic on the old road must now `Yield Right of Way' to
traffic on the new road.
- The house (on the 1840 Ordnance Survey map) predates the
north-south road (not on the 1840 Ordnance Survey map).
- askaboutireland map
link
Families
The earliest surviving complete lists of occupiers in Tullaroe
are the Tithe Applotment Book for
Moyarta parish (17 Nov 1827) and Griffith's Valuation
(20 Aug 1855), when we find the following surnames:
| 1827 |
1855 |
|
Beahan |
|
Behan [Brilihan] |
|
Borough |
| Burns |
|
| Carmody |
|
| Carney |
|
| Conway |
|
| Corbett |
Corbett |
| Costolloe |
Costelloe |
|
Cummins |
| Downs |
Downes |
| Enright |
|
| Eyres |
|
| Fahy |
|
| Gorman |
|
| Griffin |
Griffin |
|
Halpin |
|
Houlihan |
| Keating |
Keating |
| Kelly |
|
| Magner |
Magner |
| McGrath |
McGrath |
|
McInerny |
|
McNamara |
| Mulvihill |
|
|
O'Brien |
|
O'Donnell |
| Scanlan |
Scanlon |
| Shaughnessy |
Shaughnessy |
|
Studdert |
| Trane |
Troy |
| Walsh |
|
- The immediate lessors of most of Tullaroe in 1855 were:
- Rndl. Borough (Wm.) (in Chancery) (1808-1877, of Querrin
House); and
- his uncle Randal Borough (c1783-1856, of Cappagh Lodge).
Among Captain Arthur Kennedy's Reports and Returns
Relating to Evictions in the Kilrush Union (1847-1849) is a
list of 39 families comprising 174 individuals ejected and Houses
thrown down on the Lands of Tullyroe and Shinaganah,
Sub-divisions of Querin, by the Messrs. Burroughs [sic].
In Griffith's Valuation in 1855:
- John McNamara, lived on the SW corner of the cross, renting
from "uncle Randal".
- John McNamara may have married into Carmodys
- John Macnamara and Bridget Carmody of Tullaroe had a
daughter baptised in Carrigaholt parish in 1858.
- John Behan had two holdings, one under each Borough, under
"nephew Randal" on the NE corner of the cross and under "uncle
Randal" on the SE corner of the cross.
- the Behan house was on the NE corner
- John Behan may have married into an Eyres farm
- Was he related to the Denis Behan, whose family of 4 males
and 2 females was ejected during the Famine?
- There was no Behan or variant in either Tullaroe or
Shanganagh in 1827 - where did the Behans come from?
- The Behans of Doonaha used to visit Johnnie Mack, and
understood that they were related.
- Family tradition is that Pat Behen of Doonaha, who died in
1915 aged 79, may have come from the Workhouse after the
Famine to work for the Connors family in Doonaha, and
eventually married the daughter of the house.
- Could he have been one of the evicted family of Denis Behan?
- Could DNA comparisons confirm the relationship between the
two Behan families?
- Like their McNamara neighbours, John Beahan and Bridget Ears
also had a daughter baptised in Carrigaholt parish in 1858
- Mrs. Catherine Walsh, daughter of John Behen and ____ Ayers,
died in Crawford County, Iowa, in 1911.
- So Johnnie Mack's Cross, previously Behan's Cross, was
probably originally Eyres' Cross
- Later updates are in Valuation Office
Cancelled Books
- Research is complicated by several redrawings of farm
boundaries and renumberings of holdings in Tullaroe.
- The structure on the SE corner shown on the underlying 1840
map appears to have been uninhabited in 1855 and to have had
no rateable value.
- Had it been left vacant after the Famine evictions?
- Could some of the repairs identified by the archaeological
survey have been to fix up the work of wreckers and levellers
during the Famine?
- Dave Pollock thinks not:
the repairs on the building ... are [mostly]
repairing cracks that must have developed over time, from
shrinkage and settling. There's no sign of deliberate
damage ...
- My initial guess (quoted elsewhere) that the Eyres family
lived on the SE corner now appears to be without foundation.
- John McNamara, the 1855 occupier, died in 1874, succeeded by
his wife Bridget, who was succeeded on the SW corner in 1891 by
John Behan (jr.)
- John Behan acquired additional plots in 1864 and died in 1881,
succeeded by his son John (jr.) in his newer holdings and by his
son-in-law Patrick McNamara from Craggaknock in his original
holdings.
- In 1894 or 1895, it was first recognised that the building on
the NE corner was no longer in use as a house and the McNamaras
were occupying a house with rateable annual valuation of 1 pound
on the SE corner.
- John Behan jr. was succeeded on the SW corner by Burton
O'Donnell by 1901, moved back in with his brother-in-law and
died in 1919.
- Burton O'Donnell was succeeded after a couple of years by his
brother William O'Donnell.
- William O'Donnell's greatgrandson Liam O'Sullivan now lives in
a modern house on the SW corner.
- Johnnie Mack always told Liam that his aunt's shop was
originally on the SW corner.
In the 1901 census, there
were two McNamara households in Tullaroe:
- Two Patrick McNamaras, one from Creegh (1865) and the other
from Craggaknock (c1881) both married into farms in Tullaroe.
- To avoid confusion, for example in the House and Building
Return for the 1911 Census of Ireland (house 28 and house
19), they were generally known as Patk McNamara (O'Shaughnessy)
and Pat McNamara (Behan) respectively..
- Both died in 1933, on 1 Feb and 18 Dec respectively
- Neither appears to have been closely related to the McNamaras
who had been in Tullaroe from 1855 to 1891.
- In 1901, eleven people lived
in the three rooms, including: McNamara parents; seven children;
and two of the wife’s siblings, John and Eliza Behan, who ran a
shop across the road.
- By the 1911 census, two of
the seven McNamara children had gone to Chicago, where they were
married with children of their own.
- Census enumerators had difficulty in distinguishing which
houses were built of "stone, brick or concrete" and which of
"mud, wood or other perishable material".
- Patsy McNamara from Craggaknock had the reputation of being an
(unqualified) veterinary expert and neglected his own farm while
helping other farmers with their animals.
The Tullaroe Diaspora
Eyres/Ears/Ayers
- Others of the surname in the vicinity included Richard Eyres
(50) and Jane Eyres (5), commemorated on the Cammoge Ferry Disaster
Memorial, the former thought to still have descendants in
the area.
- Lawrence Ayres (of Querrin in 1862, d. aged 86 in 1905) may
have been Thomas's son.
- John Eyres had a thrice-married son, also Thomas, (b. Abt
1833/8) who resided in Tullaroe at the time of his second
marriage in 1868.
Beahan/Behen/Behan
John Behan and Bridget Ears had at least eight children (and a
total of well over 350 descendants up to the present time):
- Mrs. Mary McGrath (m. 1862, registered her father's death in
1881, d. 1885 Querrin), mother of Mrs. Bridget Clohessy, who has
many descendants in the area
- Mrs. Catherine Walsh (d. 1911 Iowa)
- Michael (apparently his father's intended heir, m. 1871 Mary
Scanlan, and had three children born in Tullaroe)
- Mary d.1877.
- There is no obvious record of Michael after his wife's death
in 1877, when she was described as married, not widowed.
- He possibly emigrated to Iowa with his three children, who
certainly all went to Iowa.
- But Johnnie Mack claimed to have an uncle in Australia.
- Mrs. Margaret Keane (m. 1869, of Shanganagh)
- Patrick (d. 1934
Nebraska, bur. Iowa), with many descendants there
- his wife Elizabeth Keane is said to have been born in Querin
and emigrated with her parents John Keane and Abigail
O'Donnell
- some of his descendants may be watching on YouTube
- Mrs. Bridget McNamara (no civil marriage record, d. 1916)
- John (d. 1919 Tullaroe, unmarried)
- Eliza (d. 1937 Tullaroe, unmarried)
McNamara
Patrick McNamara and Bridget Behan had 7 children:
- Mrs Mary Ann Garrett (m. 1909 Chicago, d. 1968), with many
descendants there
- Eliza (d. 1941, unmarried)
- Michael (d. 1949 Chicago), with many descendants there
- Lucy (d. 1955 County Hospital, unmarried)
- Johnnie (d. 1981, unmarried)
- Delia (d. Bef 1955?, unmarried)
- Patrick (d. Bef 1955, unmarried)
Construction
Different parts of the house were built of different materials:
- the oldest part of the house at the western end was built of
mud, probably well before 1840;
- the centre part was built of clay bonded stonework, topped
with a course of mud;
- the extension at the eastern end was built of mortared
stonework, probably in the late 19th century;
- a thick coat or skin of 20th century concrete was added
outside the western mud wall gable, extending around the
southwest corner onto the south-facing front wall.
Historical Recognition and Significance
- Since shortly after Johnnie's death in 1981, various local
historians, such as the late Mary Teresa Hynes, Paddy Nolan, Pat
Flynn, Sonia Schormann and Paddy Waldron sr., began to draw
attention to the unique architectural features of the house.
- Around Nov 2001, Dick Cronin (then Conservation Officer, Clare
County Council) visited the house and wrote that "it is likely
that the cob or mud will soon return to the earth. It is not the
policy of Clare Co. Council to enter, on the Record of Protected
Structures, buildings in such poor condition as their protection
and repair would not be practical." However, he suggested "that
the house be properly surveyed, photographed and recorded and
perhaps even replicated in Bunratty Folk Park as an example of
the type of house which made up more than 60% of dwellings in
Clare during the mid 19th century."
- Many tour groups have visited over the years, including a
large international group on 9 May 2013, during the lead-up to
the National Famine Commemoration in Kilrush.
- Many of the victims of the Great Famine lived in mud-built,
thatch-roofed houses, which were easily tumbled by eviction
parties, and, if left standing, soon became derelict, and,
given the materials of which they were constructed, eventually
rotted back into the ground.
- The 1849/50 Illustrated London News sketches of the
long-vanished villages of Killard, Moveen
and Tullig appear to show a mixture
of mud-built and stone-built dwellings.
- Tour participants were usually intrigued to see before their
own eyes how the many mud houses left abandoned at the end of
the Great Hunger have sunk back into the landscape, leaving
little or no trace.
- Any such houses which remain are of enormous historical,
archaeological, cultural and emotional interest and
significance, and deserve to be studied and preserved.
Timeline
Nov 2024: Clare County Council proposed
immediate demolition before completion of sale: no planning
permission required
7 Nov 2024: Tweet, as a result of
which John O'Malley of West Clare Municipal District decided to
pause works pending surveys
13 Nov 2024: initial vegetation clearance and preliminary study by
Risteard UaCróinín for Clare County Council and National Monuments
Service.
Feb 2025: Speed limits on L____ roads reduced.
Apr 2025: further vegetation clearance
23 Apr 2025: press release
8 May 2025: event in Myles Creek, Kilkee
19 May 2025: Dave Pollock along with his son Alex, a team of local
volunteers and a crew of Clare County Council staff under Joe
Linnane spent a week clearing out the interior of the house.
20 May 2025: TG4 visited
22 May 2025: TG4 report broadcast
28 May 2025: laser scan carried out by Jeff Hott and mud samples
taken by Dave Pollock
25 Jun 2025: partial demolition took place
Aug 2025: Google Maps became aware of reduced
speed limits.
A conservation plan for the remaining structure has yet to be
finalised.
Memories
Links
Acknowledgements
- Congella Mcguire, Tori McMorran, John O'Malley, Joe Linnane,
Dick Cronin, etc., Clare County Council
- The Heritage Council
- Robbie Brown, Paul O'Brien, Kilrush and District Historical
Society
- Aileen Wynne, Clare Roots Society
- Lily de Sylva, Kilrush Heritage Quarter
- Sarah McCutcheon, Limerick City and County Council
- Barry O'Reilly, National Monuments Service
- Michael Talty, Maureen Comber, Clare County Library
- Paula Carroll, Cuimhneamh an Chláir
- John O'Brien, Hastings Farmhouse Restoration Project
- Michael McNamara
- etc.