Talk gives rare window into New Ross in the 1600s

created which will outline changes in street names and the town’s commercial and municipal fabric.

Dr Doran drew on the corporation records which she said stretch further back in New Ross than their counterparts in most other Irish towns do, beginning as they do here in 1634/5.

‘ They are beutifilly bound. The great thing about them is that they allow to see every day life in the town.’

She described a walled town in debt, financially crippled by the cost of defending itself from the English. She outlined the social disruption of troops and their horses in the town.

‘Sentry boxes were put at the new quay and at the cross. At the time the master of the family had to have an axe.’

The debt is recorded over a period of 20 years. ‘For a town that must have been an enormous burden.’

She said following the Battle of the Boyne in April 1690, New Ross residents worried about what their futures and a siege mentality developed.

‘ There was an obsession with getting arms and the names of arms suppliers. In July 1690 there was a record of the cost of paying to care for wounded soldiers and for damage caused to barns. They are responding to events and they don’t know what’s coming down the line.’

She recalled how one local businessman was disenfranchised because he didn’t provide 50 lemons and oranges to the mayor.

Delving into the social history of New Ross in the late 1600s, she said there was an extraordinary number of wig makers, along with button makers and shoe makers. ‘ There were obviously a lot of very fashionable people in town. The town was very well run and organised.’

So much so a bell man was hired by the corporation to keep the town free of ‘strange beggars’ and ‘poor scholars’.

Residents faced fines of 30 shillings for not paving in front of their houses, with a threat hanging over them that they would be publicly named and shamed.

People are reprimanded for singing and dancing at a wake house in 1688. The records show how stocks were replaced often. There was a pillory and a ducking and whipping pool for transgressors, somof whom were accused of being a common scold.

In one of the books 20 pages are devoted to mending a water pump in Irishtown. Records from 1731 reveal how members of the corporation didn’t enjoy an easy life back then either. They were constantly insulted and in 1700 witnessed a massive salary cut.

In 1718 one man got into trouble for calling the sovereign a jacobite and threatening to kill him. ‘Burgesses were in fear of their lives and didn’’ t think they could carry out their duties.’

She said residents were very fearful of fire after most of the town was destroyed in a fire in the mid-1630s.

‘ The houses were wooden, thatched houses, close together. 264 houses and £20,000 in stock was destroyed in that fire. Afterwards there was a law that bake house ovens had to cease to be lit after 9 p.m.’

In 1693 there is a proposal to build two ships of war. Records from 1725 describe how Eleanor Ryan went on to become a porter taking the place of her husband. The records also described a wool tax appeal campaign to Westminster.

Other issues on the town’s councillors’ minds included who was being appointed master of Trinity Hospital, keeping people safe, rows with the Tottenham family over property ownership and Trinity Hospital. MEMBERS of New Ross GIY (Grow It Yourself ) group will be attending the Get Ireland Growing Awards today, Tuesday, March 21, at 11 a.m. at GROW HQ in Waterford city.

85 community groups from across the country will be presented with a fund from the Get Ireland Growing initiative run by GIY (Grow It Yourself ) and backed by Energia at the event.

Group projects from across the country will receive funding split across three categories, ‘Sow’, ‘Grow’ and ‘Harvest’ with awards ranging from €500 to €2,000.

The Get Ireland Growing awards will be presented by founder of GIY Michale Kelly, along with the Get IRELAND growing 2017 ambassador Alison Canavan.

In the past GIY’s ‘Get Ireland Growing’ initiative has supported over 400 community food growing projects to date, positively impacting over 100,000 people. €270,000 has been awarded over the last four years and this was distributed to projects all across the country.

Some of these flagship projects include the edible quayside project at North Quay in New Ross which has seen tomatoes flourishing on the railings, a food growing initiative in a young person’s probation centre in Cork; a vegetable garden for asylum seekers in Clonakilty, County Cork and a horticultural project for unemployed men in Waterford that supplies salads to restaurants to name but a few. TANYA Gardiner of 9 Bishop Land, New Ross was fined €80 as she attended the District Court in Wexford to admit that she had no valid tax displayed on her parked car last August.

The offence was noted by Garda John O’Leary at Barrack Lane in New Ross and the 35 year old told Judge John Cheatle that she had never been in court before.

She explained that she was two days late attempting to pay the original ticket.