Ikerrin Homeplace

Last year, I travelled to Ireland to visit the place where my paternal ancestors came from. The Irish call it the ‘homeplace’, and my family’s homeplace is close to the village of Dunkerrin in County Offaly. It’s a stone’s throw from the Barony of Ikerrin (Uí Chairín), the ancient homelands to one of the oldest Irish families, the O’Meachair/Meagher/Maher Clan.

It had been passed down the generations of the Australian Meaghers, that our homeplace in Ireland was known as the ‘Meagher of the Cobbs’. It’s a particularly old Irish way for people to distinguish the home of one family from another through a geographical landmark.

My Irish relatives still live on the same farm where our respective great-great grandfathers grew up as brothers. The homeplace no longer has the Cobb (trees) on the property, the copse of trees cut down long ago, but the location and spirit of this old landmark still lives on in current memory. My relatives are the descendants of the eldest brother, John Maher, whereas my extended Australian family are the descendants of the youngest brother, Michael Meagher*.

Before and after the famine, the economic prospects were grim for many in Ireland and without an inheritance to tie my great-great grandfather to the land; he and his wife, Margaret Sheehy emigrated to Australia in 1863. Years later, before World War One, their son John Sheehy Meagher, my great grandfather, encouraged his sons to travel overseas, perhaps echoing a yearning of his own, to see the foreign country he was native to. He was clearly nostalgic about his origins as he chose to remember his ancestral homelands by naming his residence in Hawthorn, Ikerrin.

EXECUTOR’S SALE

‘EXECUTOR’S SALE, TO CLOSE ESTATE Of Commodious and Very Substantial FAMILY BRICK VILLA containing 10 Large Rooms, Wide Verandahs, Bathroom, Pantry, Scullery, Wash House and Stabling’.  Auction notice printed in The Age newspaper in 1911.[1]

When John Sheehy Meagher, aged 49, purchased this Hawthorn property, he was facing the first anniversary of the death of his beloved wife, Catherine Sophia (nee Carden), and had six of his seven children living at home.  The earliest reference of the property name, Ikerrin, is in a letter from John to his son Luxford in February 1912. In this letter, John urges Lux to save money from his new job as a journalist for future travels, ‘Why in 2 years’ time you would have £212 saved quite enough to enable you a modest way to see England Ireland and also part of Europe. That would be worth saving for indeed.’

How much did John know of his family history?

In 1901, John registered his father, Michael’s death without any details of Michael’s parents (John’s grandparents), listing them as unknown, except for his grandfather’s occupation as a farmer. However, in 1919, Frank, John’s third eldest son, wrote from Dublin of his attempts to locate the Irish Meaghers whilst on leave from his medical post in London after the War. Frank refers to John’s grandfather as “Phil of the Cobbs”.

In contrast, Irish historian, Joseph Casimir O’Meagher published a book detailing an extensive genealogy, including his own connections, of the Meachair/Meagher/Maher name titled, “Some Historical Notices of the O’Meaghers of Ikerrin”. The book was published in London in 1886 and New York in 1890 and is considered the authority on the history of the Meaghers/Mahers in Ireland. In a letter to the Editor of a Sydney based Catholic newspaper, Freeman’s Journal, a writer ‘Erionnach’ mentioned O’Meagher’s book in 1896 to dispute a report of the Beautification of the Bishop of Cork and Cloyne. Using O’Meagher’s book, he argued that the Bishop was not Thaddeus McCarthy but Thaddeus O’Meagher. Erionnach goes on to state that ‘every O’Meagher and Maher in Ireland, or out of it, trace their descent from a chief of Ikerrin, in the North Riding of Tipperary.’[1]

Although John knew of the meaning of Ikerrin to the Meaghers, John’s son Frank learns about it whilst travelling through Ireland. Frank wrote to John of this poignant lesson saying:

Quite half the parishioners bear the patronymic Meagher but we couldn’t trace what we were after. Then I bethought me of Ikerrin, but this helped us not at all. The whole district is known as Ikerrin. It is the barony and was, I take it, the demesne of the O’Meaghers is days long since past. I had thought Ikerrin was the name of your father’s little property and that it would have narrowed the search further.

The property at Hawthorn remained in the Meagher family for 28 years, although hardly a match with the original homeplace in Dunkerrin. The beloved home was described by John in a letter to Frank in April 1919, ‘I had thought of having the garden in royal order for [eldest son] Leo’s arrival but that imposter clone who started in December half- finished it, has not yet come back. So things are not as shapely as they might be. Nevertheless there’s a new lawn, beautifully green opposite the windows of the morning room & the roses are glorious.’ Twenty years later, in 1939, a well renowned artist, Victor Cobb, was commissioned to paint a watercolour of Ikerrin showing the Victorian house with striped awnings and an expansive garden blooming with spring flowers. The painting was well timed, as John succumbed to a short illness the following year and died.

The Hawthorn homeplace of my family, as my grandfather and his father knew it, no longer exists, save for the painting, some old photographs and a towering old gum tree. The grand old home made way for sixteen units on the expansive block in the 1960s, with a driveway that weaves around the old tree. Despite the loss of Ikerrin, if my Irish relatives were to visit, I would still take them to the site of the Melbourne homeplace and pay homage, not to the Cobb, but to a tall old gum tree that watches over the land of my people’s Ikerrin.

*Did you notice the spelling? It’s not a typo – the spelling of Meagher/Maher name is virtually interchangeable and always has been. The old church registers are a classic testament, but it is recognised that the spelling of Meagher is the old way and at some point in time, possibly in the 1860s, my Irish relatives changed their spelling to Maher.

[1] ‘Advertising’ in The Age, Wednesday 23 September 1911, p.3. 

[2] To the Editor from Erionnach, ‘Meagher or M’Carthy?’ in Freeman’s Journal, Saturday 28 November 1896, p.11.