IRELAND'S WHISKEY HERITAGE

IRELAND’S WHISKEY inheritance

UISCE BEATHA: THE WATER OF LIFE

Ireland lays claim to the earliest documented mention of whisky. In 1405, the Annals of Clonmacnoise reported the death of a local clan chief, Richard Magrannell, after supping on the water of life, his death preceding an internal fire into the pit of his stomach. The water of life ironically became the water of death for this chief.

The arrival of the “e” in whiskey which separates it from its Scottish neighbours, was very much a late addition to the process and was added to mark clearly the difference between the two Celtic products. The two spirits are produced in very different ways, and it is Ireland’s more refined distilling process that brought a Scotsman to their shores to distil one of Ireland’s most famous whiskies!

Kilbeggan – Ireland’s Oldest Distillery and the Ghost of a Monk

Whiskey had to be regulated, which means it could only be officially distilled by licence. In 1608, King James I granted a licence to Sir Thomas Phillips, who owned property and land in County Antrim -Bushmills to be precise! This does give Bushmills the claim to fame of being the oldest surviving grant of licence distillery anywhere in the world. They cannot however, lay claim to being the oldest working distillery, as they did not register to trade until the late eighteenth century.

The honour instead, goes to the Kilbeggan Distillery in County Westmeath, which is also home to the oldest working pot still in the world, at more than 250 years old. In 1757, Matthew McManus began the distillation of the whiskey with his family for almost 100 years before it passed to John Locke.

During his tenure, a vital piece of equipment was damaged, projecting a halt to the production of Kilbeggan whiskey. John Locke put out the word in what could be described as an early ‘Go Fund Me’ move, which saw the people of the town of Kilbeggan make donations that enabled the broken part to be replaced and production to be continued.

This wasn’t the only time the townsfolk got together to protect the distillery – In 1878, a fire broke out and barrels of whiskey were set ablaze. The community once again came to the rescue, breaking down warehouse doors, going up against fire and smoke to rescue the ageing barrels of whiskey, rolling them down the street to safety. While many did go up in flame, the swift actions of the locals saved distillery once again!

Kilbeggan itself is haunted by at least two former residents. The first is the apparition of a monk, believed to be a part of the Cistercian order that had an Abbey founded very close to the distillery, dissolved in the mid 16th century. Murmuring, whispering and unexplained noises are also rife throughout the distillery.

The other is the spirit of founder Matthew McManus, who is seen walking through the distillery, no doubt checking the process is running as smoothly as the whiskey itself. Unfortunate circumstances would hamper the McManus link with the distillery. Matthias’s son, John McManus, the then manager of the distillery, was also a member of the United Irishmen who rose in rebellion against English rule and was executed in Mullingar for his part in the local uprising.

For some time now, locals and staff have told of close encounters and strange noises around the grounds. But all that was just hearsay, until the Irish distillery became so well known for its spooky reputation that it attracted the attention of the legitimate ‘psychic’ Derek Acorah. He said previous owners of the distillery continue to roam the grounds, including Matthew McManus, his son John and a lady descendant of the Locke family.

The Scottish Freemason Who Created Irish Whiskey

To the dismay of many an Irishman, the fine Jameson whiskey was actually created by a Scotsman! John Jameson was a Scot who married into the Haig distillery family. On arrival in Dublin in 1774, he immediately started networking and joined the Freemason chapter Convivial 202 in the capital city. A few years later, ‘The Liberator,’ Daniel O’Connell would join his own Dublin Freemason’s chapter and become pivotal in the demise of the Irish whiskey industry. In 1780, John Jameson obtained existing distillery premises on the legendary Bow Street site, already home to several distilleries and began the famous Jameson whiskey legacy. Four of his sons continued in the whiskey industry, with one continuing to run Bow Street and the others opening rival distilleries. One such son, Andrew, moved to County Wexford and while his own distillery didn’t achieve much, he went on to be the grandfather of Italian aristocrat and inventor of the radio, Guglielmo Marconi.

An American Slavery Abolitionist, An Emancipator and a Priest

In the 1830s, a priest called Father Theobald Mathew started the Cork Total Abstinence Society. Solicitor and politician, Daniel O’Connell took the pledge and heightened awareness and status of the movement. O’Connell was invited as a guest speaker in Cork, with his new friend, black slave and advocate of the abolition of slavery, Frederick Douglass. Inspired by Father Mathew, Douglass also took the pledge and befriended the priest.

Frederick had already whipped up a frenzy travelling and speaking around Ireland so once again the strength of Rev Theobald Mathew’s cause was at an all time high. The friendship between the two men was short-lived however, as Rev Mathew visited America, only to slight Douglass by refusing to return the favour at an abolitionist rally.

The damage was done and the demise of the Irish whiskey industry had begun. A solicitor had raised the bar for Irish whiskey distilling and another solicitor brought it down. The Temperance Movement peak was swiftly followed by the Irish Great Hunger – no grain meant no whiskey. Following on there was an ongoing battle for independence in Ireland, harsh tax levies, two world wars and the introduction of Prohibition and The Great Depression, plunging the Irish whiskey industry into a decline of epic proportions.

THE CURSE AND HAUNTING OF DUNDRUM HOUSE

The Rock of Cashel in County Tipperary is where the veil between worlds is at the thinnest in all of Ireland. Just a few miles away is Dundrum House, with a bloodied and chequered past, that remains very much in the present – the veil lifted and the ghostly remains of curses, insanity and haunting stepping firmly through.

Dundrum House And The Maude Family History

The area around Dundrum was owned by the O’Dwyers of Kilnamanagh. During Cromwellian occupation, Phillip O’Dwyer captured Cashel with his followers in 1641 which led to more retaliation across Munster. After a number of battles Phillip O’Dwyer of Dundrum was sentenced to death. He cheated the gallows however, by dying before he could be executed. His lands were taken from his kin and given to the Maude family.

The first Maude to gain the lands at Dundrum was Sir Anthony Maude, said to be a drummer in Cromwell’s army, although the title suggests a much higher rank. Anthony Maude was made High Sheriff of Tipperary and was succeeded by his only son Robert, who was made Baron of Dundrum and Dundrum House Estate was built in 1730. He in turn left the the estate to his eldest son, Sir Thomas Maude, who was born in 1727, and died at the age of 50. His final years were hell on Earth…

Thomas Maude maintained a life of nobility grandeur with little time for the normal things in life. So much so, he never married, not even to create an heir. Such was his holding over the area he even had his own private waiting room at Dundrum station. His wife was power and control was his mistress, stopping at nothing to retain his hold over Tipperary as High Sheriff and to keep the common man down. The worse his deeds, the greater his rewards. In 1768 he became a member of the Privy Council of Ireland, who held executive power. In 1776 he was granted the Baronetcy of Hawarden, with the title of Baron de Montalt, which meant little to the man who was by this stage, almost completely insane.

Thomas Maude died on 17 May 1777, unmarried and with no heirs, so the property passed to his younger brother Cornwallis, and thereafter to his son. The family home in County Tipperary remained until 1909 when it was sold to a religious order.  Quite unsurprisingly, the Maude family spent very little time in their Irish home, preferring the less controversial surroundings of their English estate.

The last Maude to reside in Dundrum House was Lady Clementina Maude, Viscountess Hawarden, by marriage. She was a recognised photographer in her own right until her unexpected death in 1864, with works continuing to sell under auction and shown in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Many of her photographs were of her young daughters, taken in Dundrum House. She cleared rooms on the first floor and created various “theatrical sets” posing her daughters and other subjects in various “scenes.” Remarks by critics were chastising. “Hawarden’s pictures raise significant issues of gender, motherhood, and sexuality,” said Carol Mavor.

Could it be the curse of Dundrum House and the lingering shade of Thomas Maude were creeping into the very essence of Clementina, touching her with a confusion and darkness of her own? Interestingly, it would appear that the children continue to run around the first floor, full of frivolity in their roles as models for the Victorian photographer.

DUNDRUM HOUSE AFTER THE MAUDE DYNASTY

After the Maudes left, in 1909 Dundrum House was acquired by a religious order of nuns, who later established a school which had a strict ethos and was known as an industrial school, although it carried the more delicate title of Domestic College. More than one nun was allegedly removed from faculty for harsh treatment of students, tormenting and hurting them so much that many needed therapy as a result.

It then became a hotel owned by the Crowe family. Those who visited the hotel noticed the stained glass windows in the cocktail bar. A room of prayer became a location for late nights and spirits of the noon ethereal variety. While the golf resort and restaurant flourish, Dundrum House itself has been closed to the living for several years.

FATHER NICHOLAS SHEEHY

Father Nicholas Sheehy was a local priest who was very outspoken against Penal Laws and what was known as the Tithes. These were extortionate taxes taken from the Catholic community and paid to the Protestant Church. What happened to him was in essence, judicial murder at the bloody hands of Thomas Maude.

Nicholas Sheehy was ordained in 1750 where he remained in the parishes surrounding Dundrum. An advocate of the Catholic Community who were being left destitute and marginalised by the Penal Laws which saw Catholic tenants evicted from their homes and common farmland by Anglo-Irish landlords, he spoke for the poor and the tithes taken under duress and used to bankroll the Protestant Church. Nicholas became more active in the cause and covered legal costs for those arrested for rioting and in particular, for the members of the group known as The Whiteboys. These were a fraternity with sects across the country.

Non denominatory, their aim was to cause civil unrest and claim back the lands taken from the locals. The Whiteboys would destroy fencing and walls to open communal lands back up, however as their notoriety grew, so did their level of violence and fearfulness.

Father Nicholas was a thorn in the side of the local landlords and Protestant Church, not only for his assistance and voice for The Whiteboys, but also his connections with France and Rome. Afraid that those with connections would bring in reinforcements and change the balance of power, they decided Father Sheehy had to go.

TRIALS AND EXECUTION

The Tipperary priest was subjected to three trials in total, in a bid to remove him from his position in the community and weaken the local cause. The first trial in Dublin found him not guilty. Straight away, Sheehy was accused of being complicit in the murder of a man called John Bridge, which rapidly turned into a charge of High Treason. The trial would once again take place in Dublin, where he was once again acquitted.

Thomas Maude was outraged. As High Sheriff, he plotted with the Rector of Clogheen and local landlords to bring Nicholas Sheehy down once and for all. In a carefully orchestrated plan, created in the Drawing Room of his home, Maude got the trial transferred to Clonmel, rigged the jury and had witnesses commit perjury on the stand, including Moll, a local prostitute who claimed to have witnessed the murder.

The judge sentenced Father Nicholas Sheehy to be hanged, drawn and quartered. Sheehy’s attorney on hearing the sentence of death turned to the jurors and said, “If there is any justice in heaven you will die roaring”. Nicholas Sheehy said in his final speech, after he was sentenced to death, that he was being put to death for a crime which had never been committed. John Bridge, the man, said to have been murdered, was seen in Cork after the date of the alleged murder, whereupon he emigrated, oblivious to his role in the murder of a priest.

Sheehy delivered an eloquent and well-reasoned protest against “the shameful injustice, the gross perjury, and the deadly malice of which we are the victims,” and concluded by declaring: “I leave it to God to distinguish between the innocent and the guilty.”He was executed and his  cousin Buck Sheehy, who appeared as a witness, was hanged two months later, along with two others in front of their families for the same murder.

Father Sheehy was very much respected as a local healer. It was said he healed the sick using secret herbal cures, much like the accused witch Biddy Early of County Clare which is fairly ironic as the Catholic Church were responsible for her demise. To this day Father Sheehy is regarded as a martyr. People visited his grave at Shanrahan cemetery to take the clay that encased him, because it was said to have healing powers. The priest was at peace and revered, his innocence never in doubt. The same cannot be said of Thomas Maude and those complicit in his heinous crime. Father Sheehy wasn’t entirely forgiving, and a curse was put on Maude, that he would go insane, slowly being dragged to hell by the wronged priest and as a lunatic, he would grow a tail so he could never sit down. In additions, the other participants would die unnatural and unholy deaths as a punishment for the parts they played.

Whether the priest, his legal counsel, his sister or The Whiteboys invoked a curse, there is no doubt one was cast, as all those responsible began to fall one by one…John Bagwell, became senile, incapable of speech and rational thought, sensing the headless Sheehy at his elbow. William Bagnell shot himself, while Mathew Jacob died from a violent epileptic fit. William Barker dropped dead on the street and Shaw choked to death. Ferris, a draper of Clonmel, went completely insane. John Dunville was kicked to death by his horse and Alexander Hoops drowned in a stream after a manic episode. Minchin, died a destitute beggar, ridden with disease. Osborn Tothall of Clonmel, cut his own throat, his family prevented from burying him in the graveyard by locals. Jonathan Willington died in agony on the toilet. Witness for the prosecution Moll Dunlea, a prostitute, fell down into a cellar and cracked her skull. Other prosecution witnesses died in agony of various diseases including leprosy. After Father Sheey’s beheading, loyal parishioners dipped their hands in his blood and used it to make the sign of the cross on the door of the Protestant Church House. The hangman Darby Brahan was some time later stoned to death by an outraged crowd in county Kilkenny.

Thomas Maude himself slowly spiralled into madness over ten years, as predicted and his staff said he did indeed, produce a tail. He was convinced Sheehy was pulling him slowly into the flames of Hades and eventually died in his bedroom, alone. It was said that once in his coffin and loaded onto the hearse, the horses refused to move their evil load. His corpse was instead said to have been bricked up in a closet in his chamber, his coffin filled with stones. A tad exaggerated perhaps, as no skeleton was ever recovered, but his room was indeed sealed off…

BIRD OMENS AND DUNDRUM HOUSE

When Father Sheehy was sent for execution at the hand of Thomas Maude of Dundrum House, part of the curse was that no bird would fly over Dundrum until Maude was dead. It is also said that for all the time the severed head of Father Sheehy remained on a spike outside Clonmel Gaol, no bird would go near it, while other heads were picked apart by crows and ravens. Crows and Ravens have long been emblematic of death, made all the more foreboding by their predisposition to feed on carrion, the decaying flesh of animals, as well as their black plumage. These birds were purported to be chaperones, guiding the souls of the departed into the next world as well as conduits between this world and the spirit plain.

The belief has continued over the centuries that when a single raven or crow has appeared at a house, tapping on the window, a death within was looming. Thrushes flying in the window and settling and white owls seen during the day are also signs of impending doom.

GHOSTS OF DUNDRUM HOUSE

Thomas Maude’s ghost is said to sit on a tree in the estate, watching, beady eyed, a maniacal, crazed expression on his face. Moll Dunlea, the prostitute who was bribed to bear false witness against Father Sheehy remains forever tied to the Estate. She lingers on the road bridge over the river adjacent to Dundrum House, hence its name Black Bridge. She she is said to revisit over and over again, unable to change the fate she made for herself.

One wonders if the darkness and madness that seep into the stonework affected the nuns within, a battle of good versus evil. Did this impact the behaviour of the women who treated the children in their care with cruelty and brutality?

Once Dundrum House became a hotel, accounts of supernatural experiences became rife. Thomas Maude’s room had to be unblocked, and a worker felt he was enveloped in an icy chill and did not feel himself thereafter, to this day believing something not of this world was released.

A guest was checking out of the main old building of Dundrum House and told the receptionist she felt sorry for the woman who had the children running up and down the hall all night long. The female guest had been the only person staying in the main house. The daughters of Clementina Maude perhaps?

Another guest had telephoned his girlfriend in terror begging her to come and get him. Apparently no calls he made from his room would go through to reception and the hotel room door just would not open. His girlfriend called the hotel, who entered the room to find the man huddled in a corner, crying and shaking.

A fire broke out in the hotel kitchen a few years ago, forcing the closure of the hotel building, however this did not stop the activity. Richard, the manager of Dundrum House, was escorting a few people from Head Office around the property. While doing so, he playfully pressed on the ring for service button by the fireplace in the drawing room, four times – a futile gesture, as the power was disconnected throughout the house. When they reached the reception, they all distinctly heard four rings in sequence from the drawing room, too terrified to turn around and see who, or what required their assistance

The restaurant and self catering premises as well as the golf course remain successful, yet staff will not enter the main house itself out of fear. The Irish Paranormal Investigations team decided to investigate Dundrum House over a few visits, determined to find out why.

A couple of hours in and it was turning out to be one of the creepiest locations ever investigated. Temperature drops, moaning, footsteps, doors banging, and this was just the beginning! As Thomas Maude lived out his final days here descending into madness, cursed by a priest he had executed, damned to hell – it’s not surprising there was more to come.

The drawing room was full of activity – Thomas Maude seemed to be present and not pleased to have the subject of Father Sheehy raised under his roof, particularly as this was the place his horrors had begun. Despite knowing the layout of the three connecting ground floor rooms well, it took the team three attempts to get out, each time unnerving them further, as if Maude was trying to show how he felt descending into madness. Suddenly, the spell was broken and they could leave, a weight lifting from their shoulders and the air around them. The picture of Dundrum was a big trigger for activity too, the speaking of the name itself drawing a reaction on multiple occasions.