The past and future of Johnnie Mack's mud house in Tullaroe,
County Clare
Thursday 8 May 2025 8:00pm
Myles Creek, O'Curry
Street, Kilkee, 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 disrepair 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 stands at a critical crossroads, both literally and
metaphorically.
This evening of reminiscing about the history of the McNamara family
and their home, and planning for its future, was organised by
Congella Mcguire (Heritage Office, Clare County Council) and local
historians.
What is the trade-off between road safety and vernacular
architecture? Blake's Cross and Tullaroe?
Speakers
Places
- Tullaroe, or part of it, was formerly known as Farrenvullen.
- On Clare Libraries maps from 1659 to 1842
- 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.
- 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
People
The earliest surviving 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).
- John McNamara, living on the SW corner of the cross in 1855,
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 in 1855
- John Behan may have married into Eyres
- 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
- complicated by several redrawings of farm boundaries and
renumberings of holdings in Tullaroe
- the structure on the south-east corner shown on the
underlying 1840 map appears to have been uninhabited and to
have had no rateable value.
- John McNamara died in 1874, succeeded by his wife Bridget, who
was succeeded 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 north-east 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 south-east corner.
- John Behan jr. was succeeded by O'Donnells by 1901, moved back
in with his brother-in-law and died in 1919.
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, 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".
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.
- Mrs. Margaret Keane (m. 1869, of Shanganagh)
- Patrick J. (d. 1934, bur. Iowa), with many descendants there
- 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)
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.
- In 2001, Dick Cronin (then Conservation Officer, Clare County
Council) 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.
- Tour participants are 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.
Links