Moatville House video features in Heritage Week 2020 - online
CHARLEVILLE Heritage Society have submitted a short video online outlining the history of Moatville House, Charleville to mark Heritage Week 2020.
The video was compiled by members of the Society and produced by Heritage chairperson Evelyn O’Keeffe, whose field of expertise is in computer studies and genealogy
The video tells the story of the origin of Charleville town, which was founded by Roger Boyle in 1661. A look at a map of Ireland published in 1650 doesn’t even show that Charleville town existed, but it lists Kilmallock in Co. Limerick and Shandrum on the outskirts of the present Charleville as settlements.
Roger Boyle, also known as the infamous Lord Broghill, also built for himself a magnificent Manor House at this time, which was defended by 16 canon guns, and having been elevated to the status of the Earl of Orrery and Lord President of Munster by King Charles II of England, decided to name the town, ‘Charlesville’ in the King’s honour. The middle ‘s’ was later dropped and the town became known as Charleville, as it is today.
Boyle held his Court at Charleville and ruled Munster from here for the next 11 years.
He also brought industry to Charleville in the form of manufacturing of linen and woollen products, and brought craftsmen and tradesmen from England to settle in the town.
When the King abolished the Munster Presidency in a conciliatory gesture to the Catholic population in 1672, Boyle left Charleville to live in his residence in Castlemartyr in east Cork, where he died in 1679. He is buried in the grand family tomb in St. Mary’s Collegiate Church in Youghal.
He did not live to see his Charleville Manor residence burned down by the Duke of Berwick in 1690 during the Williamite War.
Moatville House is built on the footprint of Charleville Manor, and though there is no trace of the former residence, the outline of the four ponds, in which the fish were raised for the Earl’s table, are still visible from the air, as is one of the bastions that formed the defence, and housed some of the canon to defend the Manor.
The video also lists the people who lived in Moatville, such as Captain Robert Bruce of the British Army who fought in the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) at the Battle of Bunker Hill near Boston on the 17th June 1775, where the British defeated the Americans early on in that war.
Moatville may have been built for the Bruce family c. 1730, as Captain Bruce lived out his life there after retirement from the British Army.
Attorney Boles D’Arcy Reeves and his wife Mary (daughter of Captain Bruce Roberts) and family, one of whom was their son Church of Ireland Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore in the Six Counties. An antiquarian, he was the Keeper of the Book of Armagh, Bishop William Reeves (1815-1892), who was at the time of his death
President of the Royal Irish Academy
In 1859 the house was let to another well-known Charleville family, the Clanchy family. Daniel Clanchy was in charge of the Fever Hospital in Charleville during the Gorta Mór - the Great Famine of 1845-1851.
Mary Clanchy was instrumental in bringing the Mercy Nuns to Charleville in 1836, along with the parish priest, Fr. Thomas Croke and the Mercy Foundress Catherine McAuley.
The Ryan family were in the legal profession in Charleville and their daughter was Marie Ryan, born in 1887, at the Turrets, Charleville. Against family wishes Marie, in 1914 married Perceval Lee-Wilson, a native of London, who was then a policeman in the Royal Irish Constabulary in Ireland. He joined the Royal Irish Rifles and was posted to France with the rank of Captain.
During the 1916 Rising he was on leave from the Western Front and on duty in Dublin, and reputedly abused prisoners from the Rising, including Tom Clarke at the Rotunda Gardens.
He was posted to Gorey in Co. Wexford a few years later and Michael Collins ordered his assassination, which was duly carried out.
His widow, Marie Lea-Wilson (nee Ryan) later became a doctor and purchased the Caravaggio painting ‘ The Taking of Christ’ in Scotland and presented it to a Jesuit priest, Fr, Finlay S. J. in Dublin, who had befriended her after her husband’s death.
The painting was later found to be the lost Caravaggio in the early 1990’s, and it now hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. Marie Lea-Wilson (nee Ryan) died in Dublin in 1971, aged 84 years, and is buried in Deansgrange Cemetery, Dublin.
The last family to occupy Moatville in the 1990’s was the Ball family of Charleville, who were wholesale and retail merchants in Charleville town. They acquired Moatville House in the 1930’s, and lived there until the early 1990’s when they sold the building and grounds to the then Golden Vale Food Products Dairy Company.
When the latter was taken over by Kerry Group plc in 2001 the building was part of the properties they acquired.