Cavan Town Hall: a glimpse at its history

Times Past

Jonathan Smyth

For over a century, Cavan Town Hall served as a centre of municipal administration in Cavan. The building provided space for a theatre, cinema, dances, and meetings. Changes came when the Urban Councils were ended in 2014. Thankfully, the Town Hall continues as a centre for arts, having undergone extensive renovation and restoration in recent years.

As far back as 1891, talk of a Town Hall was talked about. The Town Improvement Bill put before the House of Commons in London wanted to modify ‘to a small degree the restrictions imposed by the present law upon town commissioners in towns in Ireland’ who had populations less than 6,000.

The rating powers were one shilling in the pound, which the Cavan Weekly News, in February 1891 considered woefully inadequate to maintain the ‘paving, cleaning and lighting’ and ‘to provide proper markets and other public improvements’. A new Hall with the permission of rate payers and the well-heeled lord lieutenant would allow for an increase of two shillings to the pound. It was felt that the extra money would surely be ‘a help’ to push for the approval to construct the Town Hall.

What architect?

Nineteen years later, the Dublin Builder, on December 26, 1910, updated the public about the project. They apologised for a major oversight they made in a previous report where they forgot to give the name of the architect picked for the ‘design and execution of the works’. He was Mr Williams Scott, A.R.I.B.A., of Dublin.

Cavan’s Lord Farnham, a major landowner, had provided the site. The builders were William Callaghan and Sons who erected the building to Scott’s design and, on January 19, 1910, it was officially opened. This fine building is composed of a yellow sandstone that was quarried locally. In addition, a new road was created to the front of the property around 1911, which was aptly named Town Hall Street for the purpose of linking Farnham Street to Main Street.

Old photographs taken before that time show a grassy area in front of the building. A look through the 1911 census will reveal to you some of the residents who by then were living on the new street. The Hall cost just under £3,000 to build, which in 1910 was a lot of money.

American invaders

Historically, interesting things have happened at the Town Hall. A couple of months after opening a meeting was chaired by Mr L.C.P. Smith on behalf of the ‘American Invasion Committee’. What took place was reported in the Enniscorthy Echo and South Leinster Advertiser, on April 30, 1910, and this was not so much a ‘Greenland moment’ as an invitation to the Irish American diaspora to take their holidays in the homeland of their ancestors.

This ‘invasion’ was referred to by some as the ‘county of Cavan week’. Another person in the Town Hall that day was Vincent Kennedy, the MP for Cavan who put forward a motion to invite the Irish Americans who contemplated visiting Ireland, to come to Cavan during ‘Show Week’, which began on September 15, 1910.

Mr L.C.P. Smith, the committee chairman, said that ‘everything possible’ should be done to give their ‘Irish American friends a hearty Irish welcome’ and it was himself who suggested that they should make it into a longer ‘Cavan Week’ event. Mr E.T. O’Hanlon, secretary, spoke about the letter he received from Mr Kilkenny, chairman of the ‘American Homecoming Invasion Committee’, in which Kilkenny referred to the first shipload visitors who were booked for July on a ship named the Celtic and added that an enormous number were expected to follow them in the weeks afterwards.

Mr O’Hanlon told the crowd that he already had circulated photographs of the county’s beauty spots along with an invitation to be published in newspapers across the United States.

Uniting people

1926 was the year that the Fianna Fáil party were founded and a meeting of its members was held in Cavan Town Hall at which Mr Eamon De Valera made an appearance. At the gathering, he told the people present that ‘the chief objects of the new organisation were to unite the Irish people to resume the march towards an independent Republic and to abolish the oath of allegiance to England’. In the 1926 census it was shown that ‘a quarter of a million’ of the country’s best young women and men that emigrated since the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922.

That’s entertainment

The late Mel Doherty wrote a fascinating autobiography, which I have at home on one of my bookshelves. It is a wonderful account of his life and especially his connections to the Cavan Town Hall and the glory days of the 1950s and 1960s Cavan’s great Drama Festivals. Over the years, people have celebrated the craic to be had at a good show in the Town Hall. Mel himself was a true entertainer who could have graced the boards of the Abbey or the West End. I remember the time he told me about a humorous ‘big to do’ when a man came to film a play in the 1950s.

The hall was cleaned up and everything prepared for the occasion. The actors dressed in their best ‘duds’ and they all looked the part for their moment on the telly. The evening came around and everything went to plan like a dream. The cast were delighted with themselves. A photograph of the man was even taken to mark the occasion. The camera could be seen poised in the direction of the cast. The man was not from RTE, nor any other organization and the camera they realised was probably a fake. Mel told me that they never did discover who the mysterious man was. The only thing was for sure was that a stranger turned up with an offer to broadcast the performance on TV. In hindsight, it was an offer they could have refused.

Taken to theatre

All these years later, the Town Hall is still a great venue for entertainment. The theatre engages fantastic productions and in particular, my wife and I always try to see anything starring Seamus O’Rourke. And you always know there is going to be a good show in town because the restaurants are packed to the rafters before everyone heads down to the Town Hall Theatre.

Fógra

As already mentioned, Cavan Town Hall was once the administrative centre of the Urban Council. For history lovers there are records about the town council’s history in the Johnston Central Library on Farnham Street.