Cavan Town: A history of the old Protestant Hall
Historian Jonathan Smyth brings us his latest instalment of his popular weekly Times Past column...
The Medieval Gaelic Town of Cavan has seen many changes during its long and illustrious history. The county town which in Irish is Cabhain, translates as hollow, a sheltering word of sorts that lends itself to the county and its hilly landscape. Prior to being shired as a county in 1579, the territory then know as Breifne was under the rule of the gallant O’Reilly chieftains. The town of Cavan in ancient times was a bustling market town, periodically disrupted by war and sometimes destruction. On a couple of occasions, the town was burnt, firstly, by the Normans in 1439 and again in 1468 by an English Lord, the suitably named Tiptoff, Earl of Worcester.
Farnham Street was set out by Lord Farnham in the early nineteenth century, intended as a place of high society. With its comfortable homes built for the middle classes, a bank, churches, Court House and a beautiful park for leisure, it was the essence of an ordered community . With the exception of some changes, the street largely retains its original character.
Protestant Hall
Today, the Johnston Central Library occupies the site where the red bricked Protestant Hall once stood. The hall was erected in 1876 by his lordship, Lord Farnham for the princely sum of £2,200. In July 1876, the foundation stone was placed in the ground by Lord Farnham, accompanied by the prayers of Bishop Darley. The bishop, a former headmaster at Dundalk Grammar, and founder of the Darley NS at Cootehill was renowned for as a man of charity. The hall’s architect was William Hague, famed for his churches both Catholic and Protestant which can be found dotted around the country. There are Hague buildings in towns such as Butlersbridge, Kingscourt, Ballybay, Monaghan, Clane, Sligo, and Dublin city.
Percy French who died in 1920, when living on Farnham street, had put on a show in the Protestant Hall which was just over the road from him. What a show it must have been, in the company of his Cavan troupe, the Kinnypottle Komics, named after Kinnypottle townland. The group included a local solicitor named Samuel Jones, as one of the musicians, along with French on vocals and banjo. A surviving, ‘hand decorated’ programme for the Kinnypottle Komics, entitled ‘Maud Nigri at Nigrati’ was sold at auction by Adam’s of Dublin in May 2004.
The Protestant Hall was a great hive of community activity with sports played such as badminton and table tennis. In the 1950s and 1960s, a Gramophone Society met weekly, indulging their ears to the likes of Debussy and Liszt. Its members included Michael Harding snr, an official with the County Council. Ceili dancing competitions were held both in the Town Hall and the Protestant Hall by Cumann Rince Chabhain on St, Patrick’s Day, Saturday, March 17, 1962. Twenty-six competitions took place in the junior and senior sections and the admission cost was two shillings for an adult and one shilling for children.
I was only ever in the Protestant Hall on one occasion at a quiz. It was sometime in the late 1980s, but my memories are hazy. All I do remember, is that it was a dark evening and the roads were iced in a winter frost. Perhaps if our team had won, I might have remembered more. The hall was closed a couple of years later when the building was sold to the County Council.
The final event to take place involved a gathering of ‘badminton players and former players’ from across the county who came to view a badminton exhibition. For eighty years, the Protestant Hall had served as the ‘best known’ venue for the sport in Co. Cavan, and the exhibition was made up of photographs and other memorabilia. One of the earliest photographs, was of a team who represented Cavan-Monaghan in a Founders Cup from 1932-1933. The team was made up of men and women. They were named by both Mrs Mai Kennedy who donated the picture, and Mrs Margaret English, Church Street. The names were: M.J. Pike, E.B. Baird, V.M. Baird, M.M. Trevor, R.G. Taylor, M.J. Fegan, M.B. Pollock, J. Donnelly (Captain), V.K. Talyor, C.M. Kennedy, D.J. Gamble and T.A. Pollock. Shortly afterwards, the hall’s trustees handed over the building which was ear-marked ‘for use as a Public Library’.
However, the building was later demolished due to structural reasons. In 2006, the newly built County Library, named the Johnston Central Library was opened on the site. The library building also built of redbrick, offers a gentle nod to the original hall. A painting which hangs in the library today, includes the old Protestant Hall in the foreground.
The statue which stands in front of the present-day library is of the 7th Baron, Lord Farnham, who was killed in a railway accident at Abergele, Wales in 1868. I suppose it could be described as Cavan's only moving statue, since it originally stood in the old Farnham gardens on the other side of the street, until it was moved to the front of the old Protestant Hall. It was removed again when the hall was demolished, eventually making its return in 2006, to its present location.
PROTESTANT KNOCKERS
On Saturday night, 15 May 1869, it was reported in the Cavan Weekly News that some ‘miscreants’ had broken several panes of glass in the Presbyterian and Wesleyan houses of worship in Cavan Town, and in addition, had ‘wrenched’ the knockers off the hall-doors of several of the Protestant inhabitants of Farnham street and one in Wesley street. The matter did not end there. On the following Tuesday, the delinquents took a more ecumenical approach, no longer confining themselves to the knockers belonging to persons ‘of any particular creed’ but ‘wrenched and carried off those that offered the least resistance’. Where they could not be entirely removed, they were left hanging ‘partly off’. Posters were placed throughout the town offering a reward which it was trusted would lead to the ‘detection and conviction’ of these rascals.