quinheritagroup@gmail.com

Another estate in Quin associated with the Singleton family was Hazelwood.  It was the home of Hugh Singleton who resided there in the 19th century and whose family was affiliated with the estate throughout the 19th and early part of the 20th century.

Hazelwood House was described in Houses of Clare as being located in the townland of Ballyhickey, the ancestral home of the O’Hickeys, physicians to the O’Brien family.[1]  The house was the home of Hugh Brady Singleton, the second son of Edward Dalton Singleton, a second son of John Singleton Sr and Marcella D’Alton.  Hugh was a brother to John Singleton of Quinville and Edward Singleton and Anthony Singleton.

Hugh Singleton was married to Jane Massey of Waterpark and they resided at Hazelwood and raised their family there.  They had the following children: Edward Massey Singleton, John Copley Singleton, Ellen Singleton, Hugh Massey Singleton, Mary Henrietta Jane, Marcella and Annie.

The Singleton family played a prominent role in Quin throughout the 19th and 20th century.  Hugh Singleton was noted for being a controversial landlord who had been the subject of difficulties with his tenants, as well as with his neighbours.  In 1833, there was an exchange between himself and John P. Molony and Ralph Mansergh over trespass through his lands for hunting purposes.   The incident was reported in the Freeman’s Journal where a criminal case was brought by Hugh Singleton. Hugh Singleton maintained that not only were the two men trespassing on his lands, but that they used abusive language towards his steward, and then demanded that Singleton fire him, and that Mansergh on another occasion, challenged Singleton about the incident.[2]  The case was eventually settled in December of the same year  with a payment by Molony and Mansergh of £100 for sending a hostile message to Singleton.[3]  Hugh Singleton also had difficulties with Lord Dunboyne.  The incident was similar in nature to the earlier case with Molony and Mansergh.  Hugh Singleton had gone riding and had ridden through Lord Dunboyne’s demesne.  Lord Dunboyne confronted him over it and threatened to shoot him, called him “a ruffian, a vagabond, and threatened to put a bullet through his head”.  The incident was corroborated by several labourers who were present.  Singleton challenged him to a duel, but instead brought charges against Dunboyne.[4]  It was reported in the Belfast News-Letter several months later, that Dunboyne had made an apology, and the case was settled.[5]

It was not known why Singleton had had difficulties with other gentry and neighbours as evidenced above. The estate lands at Ballyhickey had the distinction of holding the largest mine of lead in County Clare.  The lead mine was very successfully quarried in the 1830s with substantial ore mined at a profit.[6]  It may have been jealousy that had instigated some of the incidents.

An incident that occurred during the Famine years may give a clue to Singleton’s behaviour.  In September 1846, Hugh Singleton had arranged for corn which had been harvested on his estate to be brought into Limerick for sale.  It was way-laid at Moll Ryan’s cross between Knappogue and Rathlooby where a group of men attacked the car.  Stones were thrown, and a shot was fired which wounded one of the horses.  The two caretakers turned the car back and returned to Hazelwood.[7]  The incident was notable as it was during this month that the newspapers were reporting dire conditions and the “impending Famine”.  Only two weeks after this incident, one of Hugh Singleton’s land stewards, McMahon was murdered at Cloontra.  He had been under police protection in the course of his duties on the estate and had had difficulties with tenants in arrears.  His body was found the following day.[8] Hugh Singleton had apparently not been seen as a very charitable or sympathetic landlord to tenants in difficulties, even at the beginning of the Famine when the potato crop was first noted as having failed.

Two children of Hugh Singleton married local families.  John Copley Singleton married Elizabeth Bindon, and Annie Singleton married Thomas Hall McGhee.  While John Copley Singleton remained in Clooney, Annie and her husband resided in St. Anne’s Hill, Blarney, Cork.  She married Thomas Hall McGhee on 1 May 1861.  She was the youngest daughter of Hugh and Jane Massey Singleton.  Annie would tragically die in May 1884 aged 45 years from a fractured skull after falling off a horse.[9]

John Copley Singleton married Elizabeth Bindon, a daughter of Burton Bindon of Clooney Castle.  This couple married in 1855 and they had a number of children, but only 2 survived to adulthood.  Their daughter, Janie died aged 13 in 1869 of scarlet fever.  She was buried in the Singleton plot in Clooney graveyard.  John Copley had been named after his ancestor John Singleton Copley, the famous American portrait artist.  John and Elizabeth Singleton’s second daughter, Elizabeth Singleton Tuckey would also become a well-known pianist and artist who performed in Dublin.[10]She married Davys Tuckey early in the 1900s.  Her sister, Eleanor Singleton married Walter Craven in England on 18 July 1895.    Both John Copley Singleton and Elizabeth Bindon Singleton were buried in Clooney Graveyard in the Singleton plot.  John died in 1890 aged 58, and Elizabeth died in 1918 aged 83.  Their children were also buried there with them.  It is not known if either daughter was buried in this family plot.

Hazelwood House was burnt to the ground on 5 July 1921 by the IRA.  The property suffered damage in the amount of one hundred thousand pounds and it was never rebuilt.

Hugh Singleton died on 29 September 1878 aged 82.  There was a tablet to his memory erected by his daughter, Annie McGhee in the Church of Ireland graveyard at Quin.[11]

Map of Hazelwood House Ballyhickey

Jane Halloran

April 2022

[1]Hugh W.L. Weir, Houses of Clare (Mountshannon, 1989?) p. 146. 

[2]Freeman’s Journal, 30 January 1833.

[3]Leinster Express, 28 December 1833.

[4]Carlow Morning Post, 3 December 1859. 

[5]Belfast News-Letter, 24 February 1860. 

[6]Freeman’s Journal, 1 January 1836; 7 June 1836 and Leinster Express, 7 October 1836. 

[7]Westmeath Independent, 19 September 1846.

[8]Kerry Evening Post, 2 October 1846. 

[9]Civil Death record for Anne McGhee dated 9 May 1884.  www.irishgenealogy.ie

[10]Irish Daily Independent, 25 February 1895.

[11]https://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/genealogy/memorials/quin.htm.

What did the Anglo Normans ever do for us?

We are well aware of the impact of the Anglo-Norman invasion on our history, the undermining of Gaelic society and the replacement of our native structures. Poor old Diarmuid MacMurrough takes a lot of blame for all of this, despite the fact that Henry II in England had already sought and had been given approval by Pope Adrian to invade and civilise us. Henry was just waiting to finish his war in France before sorting us out!

Anyway, in they came, conquered, settled, married and eventually becoming more Irish than even ourselves, ‘níos gaelaí ná na Gaeil féin’! But besides building towns and castles, robbing our women (and probably taking our jobs!), what did the Anglo-Normans do for us – if anything?

Well, for one, they gave us a whole new suite of names, both forename and surname, to choose from.

The Norman influence on Irish surnames

Following the invasion of 1169, a large number of Anglo-French first and last names entered into Ireland. Many, such as Power, Browne, Fleming, Joyce, Burke, Barry, Costello, Nagle, Nugent, D’arcy, Roche and Walsh/Welsh/Wallace, are nowadays considered Irish and are commonly found in Clare. So, too, are those with the Fitz prefix such as Fitzmaurice, Fitzgerald, Fitzgibbon and Fitzpatrick which most people would regard as Irish as the shamrock. Fitz, meaning ‘son of’, can be considered the Norman version of Mac (it derives from the Latin/French ‘fils de’, meaning ‘son of’). Burke came from de Burgh, Roche from de Roiste, Power from de Paor.

In 1366, a law was passed that “Every Englishman do use the English language, and be named by an English name, leaving off entirely the manner of naming used by the Irish.” This was introduced to dissuade the settlers from adopting Celtic prefixes or forms of surname. It didn’t have much affect as many settler families added Mac or ‘O’ and Norman names evolved into an Irish form (eg McHenry, McArthur).

In 1465 a law was passed enacting “that every Irishman that dwells betwixt or amongst Englishmen in the County of Dublin, Myeth, Vriell, and Kildare … shall take to him an English Surname of one town, as Sutton, Chester, Trym, Skryne, Corke, Kinsale; or colour, as white, blacke, browne; or arte or science, as smith or carpenter; or office, as cooke, butler ….”

Many of the trades of the early medieval period such as Archer, Butler, Cooper, Carpenter, Draper, Skinner, Tanner found their way into our surnames. Other introductions from this period came from the mercenary soldiers who accompanied the Norman invasion: Walsh (meaning Welsh), Joyce and Fleming (from Flemish mercenaries) are examples.

Incidentally, the Normans usually took their surnames from the place of their family origins. So, D’arcy originates in Arcy in Normandy. De Clare originates in Clare in Suffolk where the Anglo-Norman family were based. While De indicated their place of origin, Le was used to describe them, eg Le Poer meant ‘a poor person’.

De Burgh – Burke – from a placename in Suffolk, France

Le Botilier – Butler – Occupation bottle steward

De Barra – Barry – from an estate in Wales

Le Waleys – Walsh – the Welshmen

De Angulo – Costello/Nangle – from Nangle Pembrokeshire

What of their influence on forenames?

 Many of the Normans forenames introduced here were of a biblical or European saintly origin.

 In 1922, Reverend Patrick Woulfe wrote extensively on the topic of Irish name origins as follows:

In the same manner Norman and English names became current in Irish families during the thirteenth and subsequent centuries. These have now almost completely supplanted the old Gaelic names. The names borne by the Normans and by them introduced into Ireland, were of three kinds :

 (1) names of Scandinavian origin which their ancestors had carried with them to Normandy ;

(2) names of Germanic origin which the Frankish conquerors had brought across the Rhine and which had ousted the old Celtic and Latin names from France ; and

(3) Biblical names and Latin and Greek names of saints,, which the Normans began to adopt about the beginning of the eleventh century.

Together with these came in a few Celtic names from Brittany, a small number of Anglo-Saxon names, some Danish and Norse names from England, and one or two British or Welsh names. These were nearly all very rare and most of them soon died out. Of the Anglo-Saxon names, only two, Edmund and Edward, survived. Alfred has been revived in recent times. At the period of the Invasion, Frankish names were by far the most popular among the Normans, but Biblical and saintly names were coming rapidly into favour.

The following is a list, in order of frequency, of the more common names borne by the early Anglo- Norman invaders, the Biblical and saintly names of Latin and Greek origin being printed in italics :

William, Robert, Richard, John, Walter, Roger, Ralph, Adam, Hugh, Henry, Thomas, Nicholas, Gilbert, Geoffrey, Elias, Peter (Piers), Osbert, Reginald, Jordan, Simon, Alan, Stephen, Philip, David, Arnold, Alexander, Laurence, Baldwin, Herbert, Martin, Maurice, Godfrey, Andrew, Alfred, James, Samson, Turstein, Warin, Ailward, Daniel, Edward, Gregory, Bernard, Benedict, Hamon, Matthias, Michael, Gerard, Gervase, Lambert, Wilkin, Patrick, Edmund, Edwin, Hubert, Ivor, Joseph, Oliver, Mark.

 The following in alphabetical order were rare :

 Abraham, Adelard, Ailmer, Antony, Augustine, Brian, Clement, Constantine, Estmund, Eustace, Everard, Gocelin, Isaac, Leonard, Luke, Matthew, Miles, Milo, Odo, Osbern, Osmund, Pagan, Ponce, Randulf, Redmund, Rodulf, Silvester, Turold, Ulf, Vincent.

 The following names only came in, or at least became popular, at a later period :

Bartholomew, Christopher, Francis, Gerald, George, Paul, Roland, Theobald.

 Women’s names among the Normans were nearly all of the Biblical or saintly class:

 Agnes, Alice, Amelina, Anastasia, Annabella, Catherine, Cecily, Christina, Dorothy, Egidia, Eleanor, Evelyn, Frances, Honora, Isabella, Johanna, Matilda, Margaret, Susanna.

 The name Mary does not seem to have come into use in Ireland before the end of the16th century. Brigid only began to be used about the same period.

 

Extracted from ‘Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall’, Patrick Woulfe 1922

Out with the old, in with the new

The Anglo-Normans also brought with them new animal species such as the rabbit and fallow deer, new foods such as wheat, orchard fruits, mutton and farming practices such as hay-making. They introduced us to continental European religious saints and practices of the Roman Church. European religious orders soon followed such as the Franciscans, Augustinians, Cistercians, Dominicans etc. These replaced the structures of the native Irish Christian Church.

Up to then, the Irish natives did not adopt the name of saints as they considered this to be placing themselves on a par with the saint. Such naming convention was reserved for those of higher status in the monasteries. This was circumvented by use of the prefix Maol or Giolla meaning follower or servant. The Normans changed all of that and it was now acceptable to be called Peter, James, Michael, John, Mary, Brigid or Margaret.

Very few of us to this day do not have either a forename or surname that is not of Norman origin. Eventually, arising from the Gaelic Revival in the late 19th century, new Irish language versions of these forenames appeared such as Séan, Seamus, Peadar, Máire, Bríd, Mícheál, Cathal and many more appeared.

The Irish Church did not condemn the practice of slave-trading by the Irish until the invasion by the Anglo-Normans and the encroachment of the Roman Church. The story of Patrick (Patricius, son of a Roman administrator), which was introduced here after the Norman conquest, presents the native Irish as uncivilised pagan slavers who needed to be brought to heel. So the Normans inadvertently gave us our native saint and a forename for a good chunk of our population for generations following.

Out with the new, in with the old

Children are rarely given these European saint names today. Authentic Gaelic forenames are much more popular. We are nevertheless, unlikely to see the demise of the Anglo-Normans surnames that were introduced here. But all of us Mikes, Jimmies, Johnnys, Paddys, Kittys, Cathys, Maggies and Bridies can thank the Normans for what they brought us!