Milltown celebrates its history with photo exhibition for Heritage Week

The Heritage Group in Milltown usually do a walk around the area for Heritage Week, which took place in mid-August.

This year, however, they held a photo exhibition of items found in the area and photos of places of interest in the locality.
Shown were three items found around Milltown which can be viewed in the National Museum.

An axe head, which dates back 3,000 years, was found by local man Kit Dowling while walking along the banks of the canal. He presented it to the National Museum.

The Wheelam Sword, dating back around 900 to 1,000 years, was again found on the banks of the canal, near the Hanged Man’s Arch.

A bog body was found in Barronstown Bog in 1953, when the Dooley brothers from Loughbrown were cutting turf. It is believed that the body was that of a man aged between 25 and 30 years old, and could date back to between 200 and 400 AD. The body was covered in a cloak made from ox skin with gut stitching. The skeleton and the cloak are on display in the museum.

Milltown gets its name from Baile an Mhuilinn (the town of the mill), and ruins of the mill, which dates back to at least 1305, are still standing on the banks of the canal.

Betty O’Shea, in her talk on the area, explained that the famous Moll Anthony is buried in Milltown graveyard. She was a bean feasa who was born in 1807 and died in 1878. She lived on the Hill of Grange and had the gift of being able to cure people with special herbs. It is understood that a film is due to be made about this famouslady, who was believed to have supernatural powers.

Milltown Church celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2017. To the right of that structure is an old church dating back to penal times.

On display at the church gate is a famine pot, which is a stark reminder of the dark days of the Famine of 1844 to 1847, when over one million people died in Ireland due to the failure of the potato crop.

Beside the famine pot is a plaque to two local men who lost their lives in World War I, Thomas Walsh from Sunnyside and Michael Fenneral from Barronstown.

This year in Milltown, a lovely garden was established in honour of the 1916 Rising, and Bridget Loughlin, heritage officer with Kildare County Council, officially unveiled a plaque at the Fen View estate where seven trees were planted in honour of the signatories of the Rising.

PICTURES: AISHLING CONWAY