More on Thomas Waldron

Further to our story on 'Thomas Waldron's Plot', we can now bring it along a bit more, writes Brian Byrne.

According to the Irish Census documents 1821-1851, the property was in the hands of Thomas 'Waldren' in 1841, who had recently taken a 60-year lease at £3 a year. It is described as a house of '1A' quality having a 'small enclosed yard with good entrance'. It was occupied by Rev John Tyrell, a curate in Kilcullen according to the listings in Slater's National Commercial Directory of Ireland 1846. (Fr Tyrell was still in Kilcullen in 1860, where he is listed as a contributor to the national collection funding an Irish battalion to defend the Papal States in Italy from Garibaldi.)

Meantime, Robert Thompson has been in touch with the Diary and has provided more fascinating information. Thomas Waldron was his great-grand uncle, and in addition to building the house that currently stands on the site, he built several houses in Kilcullen on the Naas side of the bridge, including what is now Brennan's Hardware.

He lived at Sunnyhill House and is buried in Yellow Bog graveyard. The Thompson family has records of the transfer of the 'Thomas Waldron's Plot' property in the 1860s from landlord John Harvey Lewis, who was then an English MP.

Thomas had a brother William who lived at Carnalway, and one of his daughters, Evelyn (Waldron) Douglas, was Robert Thompson's grandmother. His other daughter married into the Chamney family of Carnalway.

(The search for further information here has brought me to a veritable rabbit's burrow of other material relating to Kilcullen of that time, which I'll mine for future articles.) 

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